Language and Gender

what is an unmarked form

the ‘norm’ term

what is a marked form

a form which deviates from the ‘norm’

example of a marked and unmarked pair

actor and actress

how are marked forms created

the suffix -ess or the premodifier such as male-

what was the s*x discrimination act of 1975

it made it illegal to write a job advertisement in a way that implied people of only one sex could apply – with some exceptions (for example, for a job in a women’s prison or for an actor for a specifically gendered role)​

why do some believe we should control language like this (s*x discrimination act)

language determines how we think – a concept called either ‘linguistic determinism’ or the Sapir Whorf Hypothesis

it therefore follows that if we change language to be less discriminatory, people’s thoughts and attitudes will become less discriminatory​

who came up with ‘male as norm’

Dale Spender

what does ‘male as norm’ mean

using the male pronoun to refer to everyone is an example of the how ‘male’ is seen as ‘norm’

ways in which the ‘male as norm’ problem has been addressed

replacing ‘him’ with ‘him/her’ but why is him still first

replacing he or she with them

swedens gender neutral pronoun

Sweden has successfully introduced a gender neutral pronoun(‘hen’) – however, attempts to do the same in English have been unsuccessful so far

other examples of ‘male as norm’

mankind, human, ‘man’ to refer to humans

the main 3 titles

mr, miss, mrs

why do women have 2 and why are they about marital status

there is also an outdated master and ms which have certain connotations

male terms of endearment

connotations of power authority (guv, boss)

connotations of friendliness (mate, pal, buddy)

female terms of endearment

connotations of fragility (petal, angel, baby)

what is semantic derogation

the female version of a term has strong negative terms

semantic derogation examples

what is semantic deterioration

the meanings of some female terms has become more negative over time meanwhile the male term stay positive e.g lord/lady

making assumptions about language that do not have any scientific basis is known as…

folklinguistics

peter trudgills phonological research

he researched how men and women pronounced the ‘ing’ suffix on the end of words e.g. playing​

he discovered that, across all social classes, men tended to use more non-standard pronunciation, such as “playin”​

trudgills self evaluation

asking the participants whether they thought they used non standard pronunciation.​

men said they used non standard pronunciation more than they actually did​

women said they used non standard pronunciation less than they actually did

why were the responses like that in trudgills self evaluation

men said they were more ‘nonstandard’ than they actually were because they see more value in the ‘rebellious’ associations with non standard language (COVERT PRESTIGE)

women tend to favour ‘OVERT PRESTIGE’ – the obvious status attached to standard pronunciation, hence why they thought they were more standard than they actually were​

Jenny cheshires research

what was robin lakoffs