Gendered Language

Patricia Hodges

As we continue to debate power differences between men and women in the workplace and in society generally, it seems that the issue cannot escape a personal and political but also a linguistic dimension. So, what is the power dynamic in English language use and how does it affect social relations? In the 20th century, Virgina Woolf and Dorothy Richards had already debated the question of the ‘woman sentence’, looking for a literary language that would fit ‘the female experience’. But is there such a thing as a male and female language style? Are there conventions and behaviours through which speech reflects and perpetuates gender differences in power? This is what I found on Google: "Women are more likely to hold their own in a more relaxed informal environment", "Women generally use more question forms in conversation and use more linguistic hedges such as ‘I think’ and ‘sort of', more listening noises such as hmm, and more paralinguistic responses such as smiling and nodding."

According to British linguist and scholar Deborah Cameron, from her seminal essay Why is Language a Feminist Issue?, "in its capacity to organise and control human social relationships, language is thought to have potential as an instrument for the sustained domination of subordinates", and this is presumably why the issue of language has been at the centre of the feminist debate for some time. To see how things are moving, we can look at the reforming approach which focuses on modifying particular items of vocabulary. This includes promoting gender-neutral terms (for example chairperson instead of chairman) and eliminating sexist grammar rules to ensure equal visibility. For example, standard grammar dictates that when referring to a hypothetical or unknown individual, the masculine pronoun (he/him/his) must be used as a universal generic. Research has concluded that the ‘generic he’ causes the human brain to picture a male, effectively deleting women from the mental landscape.

There is also a more radical approach where it is argued that the entire structure of language is inherently patriarchal. In this scary view, theorists believe that small vocabulary changes are not enough, advising instead that women should disrupt normative narrative structures and create totally new ways of expressing thought. This involves dismantling the stranglehold of the binary man/woman system on which other oppositions such as activity/passivity and culture/nature apparently depend. Philosopher linguists such as Hélène Cixous, Luce Irigaray, Dale Spender and Mary Daly are some of the proponents of these changes. It is easy to assume that any significant gender-linked differences can be attributed to the general operation of gender roles. Is this the foundation of the apparent marginality of women? I say marginality because the differences in female speech I mention above all seem to point to a deferential role; hesitancy, lack of confident assertion and so on. Stereotypes, however deceptive, tend to endure for as long as the power differences that they reinforce are maintained.