Language, Gender, and Society: Exploring the intersections

Language has been a building stone of society. Language provides us with a means of
communication; it helps us articulate our emotions and formulates our perception. Language is a
powerful tool; it can shape our cognizance and lifestyle. It can be used to form, follow or break
stereotypes. Language and culture run parallel to one another, language shapes the culture and
culture shapes the language. We cannot separate these two processes. Language can shape our
thinking, how we look at time, how we see genders, it speaks about the type of community we
belong to. Sex and gender are two different aspects of a single person. Sex is the biological
aspect while gender is determined by the society. Society dictates what a certain gender should
be and how they are supposed to behave. The differences in biological sex are used to
discriminate against different genders. It is common for societies to equate gender and sex,
which might not be true for large number of people. The difference in language as spoken by
different genders can be either by the structure of language or due to the difference it specking
styles of different gender. The first is due to the grammar of a language while the second arises
out of different social norms and perspectives.

The language and gender in society can be studied at two levels:

2. The difference in language used by different genders.

Form and structure is based on the language and its grammar. In English for example we use
three genders. Masculine, feminine and neutral but the sentence formation does not change with
the gender. Only the 3rd person pronoun differ. I.e. she is sleeping, he is sleeping, and it is
sleeping. Take another language Urdu, in Urdu the formation of sentence changes with the
gender. Lakdi so rahi hain. Ladka so raha hai. And some languages are not gendered like
Bengali.

Non-living things are personified, in general discourse non-living things with traditional
masculine characteristics are masculine gender and feminine characteristics with feminine
gender. Personification of country, flowers and earth are feminine while sun, storm and god are
masculine.

The idea of there is Difference in language use by different gender by first bought by Otto
Jespersen in his book Language, its nature, development and origin . In the chapter titled ‘The
Woman’ he discussed about the deficiency in woman’s language.

Ideas about language and gender was popularized in sociolinguistics because of the book
Language and gender by Robin Lakoff. This lead to three major theories in sociolinguistics. The
deficiency theory, the dominance theory and the differentiation theory.
How Men use language in Society, and how women use language in society
Women are expected to be polite and have empathy. They are told to react pleasantly and be
active listeners. Women tend to ask several questions and be uncertain about their opinions. They
reply or react with a smile, apologies more often and tend to be passive in their roles. This can be
observed in children’s cartoons. The male characters are the exaggerated version of male
chauvinism while the female characters are sub ordinates with passive roles. Women tend to talk
over a subject for long time, they build the conversations on the previous subject and discuss it
with great details. Men on other hand change the topics very quickly, they will only talk about
the important aspects and conversations are mostly informative. Even when it comes to written
text messages men use more abbreviations, and less emoji and gifs, unlike women who use
excessive amount of emoji and gifs. They are more expressive. Men will give you logical
solutions if you go to them with certain problem, they will try to solve it. Women lend you a
sympathetic ear, they will listen to your problem. The topic of conversation to be very different
in men and women. Men talk about work, finance, and politics; women about household, kids,
and relations.

Form of protest by men and women is also very different. Men go for more violent or regressive
forms of protest. Women protest with less aggression, they use their bodies to as means to
protest.

1. DISCRIMINATION DUE TO THE USE OF GENDERED

1.1 DEFAULT USE OF MASCULINE GENDER

In English language or various other languages the default pronoun is masculine, he. It is used at
places meant to include both genders. The common slangs to (example- hey guys) though you
can argue include both men and women, yet it is a masculine word. In a study it was concluded
that, women refrain to apply for job descriptions that are written in masculine generic.

1.2 ORDER OF CONJOINED PHRASES

Using of he/her too shows the regressive sexism in language. This idea of using conjoined
phrases follow male first rule- king-queen, mister-mistress, and romeo-juliet. In The Arte of
Rhetorique by Thomson William author states that, “The worthier is preferred and set before let
us keep a natural order and set the man before the woman for manners’ sake”. Though this rule
is irrelevant in today’s time we see people using this pattern. A study was conducted, in which
the participants were given two pictures one was in office setting and another was in classroom
setting, both featured same man and a woman. Respondents were asked to describe them. 92.4
percent people used male first approach in office setting (man and woman), 85.7 used male first
approach in the classroom setting. Further the same researcher, asked respondents to write story
on businessman and businesswoman and another story on businesswoman and a businessman.
The outcome was rather surprising, while the first group wrote a story with the businessman as
the central figure, the second group used the businesswoman as central figure. The results show
the relevance of the order of conjoined phrases. The first in the order is more relevant as assumed
to be the central figure, while the second is secondary. Using male first approach may seem
trivial but it has a psychological effect on how we perceive the parties in question.

As the dynamic of the relationship changes so does the relevance. In a setting that is family or
kin, more relevant party is the women, in this pairing on conjoined phrases women will succeed
men, “mom-dad, and granny-grandpa”. In family mothers are the primary care giver, they are
more relevant, hence the order of phrase will change.

1.3 WOMEN AT WORK

Another trend that is a great example of discrimination and stereotypes is,” shEO, Girl Boss,
Lady lawyer”, these words make being both a women and a professional sound like something
that is abnormal, something that is unique or is a rare incident. This ridiculous trend reinforces
the view of traditional discriminatory gender roles. Due to these notions women were excluded
from the workforce for long period of time. It is also to be noted that the work- life balance
question are more frequently asked to a woman interviewee than her male counterpart. We need
to not only let go of these words but also of by default masculine words (chairman, watchman),
instead we should use more neutral words (chairperson, watchperson).

1.4 MASCULINE TO FEMENINE

The quantum of importance of the words when changing from masculine to feminine changes,
you can be reputed man if you are called a mister but the feminine mistress has a not so good
connotation. Lord is another example, my lord is against respectful but my lady seldom has that
effect. A women is more often referred to as a wife of someone. Even the salutations change as
per the marital status of women- miss, and Mrs. It remains the same for men- Mr. In the
wedding ceremony, the officiate declares the couple as man and wife. The existence of a women
is depended upon her husband. But this has a turn around when he comes to abusive words, most
languages have an extensive abusive vocabulary degrading a women, either mother, sister,
daughter or the wife, the mentality of people that chastity of women is of prime importance is
reflected, most of these languages attack the chastity of women.

Sometimes the feminine words are made using the masculine as root words, this makes the
masculine as a natural state while feminine as made up. Examples Lion-lioness, actor-actress,
men-women etc.