Gender factor in society, culture and language: female and male language pictures of the world (part II)

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Gender factor in society, culture and language: female and male language pictures of the world (part II)

Anna Arestova

This article is the second one in the series of the publications devoted to the problems of gender factor in society, culture and language and to the peculiarities of female and male language pictures of the world. In the given work we present the brief review of the second (starting from the 17^th century) and the beginning of the third (from the end of the 60s - the beginning of the 70s of the XX^th century) period of gender studies mainly in linguistics. Special attention is paid to the works of F. Mauthner, E. Sapir, O. Jespersen and R. Lakoff. The authors also tackle the main postulates of the feministic linguistics at the initial stage of its development.

Key words and phrases: gender; sex; society; culture; language; man - woman; male - female; masculine - feminine; manliness - feminity.

Эта статья - вторая в серии публикаций, посвящённых проблемам гендерного фактора в обществе, культуре и языке, а также особенностям женских и мужских языковых картин мира. В данной работе мы представляем краткий обзор второго (начиная с 17-го века) и начала третьего (с конца 60-х - начала 70-х гг. XX века) периода гендерных исследований преимущественно в лингвистике. Особое внимание уделяется работам Ф. Маутнера, Э. Сепира, O. Есперсена и Р. Лакофф. Авторы также выделяют основные постулаты феминистской лингвистики на начальной стадии её развития. gender feminist linguistics language

Ключевые слова и фразы: гендер; пол; общество; культура; язык; мужчина - женщина; мужской - женский; мужественный - женственный; мужество - женственность.

This work is the continuation of the article published in [12].

In the seventeenth century the stimulus of the research of gender factor in language was the discovery of “exotic' primitive languages where there was a division into male and female variants or even separate male and female languages. Reports concerning such languages sporadically appeared since 1664, but there weren't any regular researches of them. The common thing for all the sparse descriptions of gender variability was that the male variant was considered as actually the language and the female one - as a deviation from it.

The mainly descriptive character of scientific discourse and purely biological approach to the material were typical for this period. As a rule, the initial position of the researchers was influenced by the so-called predetermined by nature distinctions in cognitive and as a whole in mental abilities of men and women. The correlation of sex, education, culture and age was not considered; all the conclusions were drawn basing on the non-representative material. It was believed that all the distinctions between male and female speech are determined by the biological sex. The starting point of the interpretation of the features of sexual dimorphism in language and speech was their natural conditionality: “The idea about gender accepted in culture tackles a man and a woman as the naturally and unambiguously determined categories of existence with obviously different preferences which are possible to predict on the basis of reproductive functions. Competent adult members of these societies consider the differences between a man and a woman as fundamental and steady… Things are such as they are due to the fact that men are men and women are women: such division is considered as natural and rooted in biology” [17, p. 97].

At the beginning of the XX^th century the interest to the gender aspects of language and communication increased due to the works of E. Sapir, O. Jespersen and F. Mauthner though an independent trend was not formed yet.

The information about the distinctions in language conditioned by the sex of its native speakers, especially in the languages of the peoples which were at the stage of primitive development and in a number of languages of SouthEastern Asia led the linguists and philosophers to the idea about the possibility of gender distinctions in “civilized' languages of Europe. In 1923 F. Mauthner's work devoted to the language critique was published in which he recognized gender distinctions in language substantiating them by social and historical reasons [9].

Analyzing communication in various social layers, the author revealed a number of features of male and female speech behaviour having ascertained that in the sphere of factory workers substandard lexicon was used by men. And in high society the men used the ambiguities which were allowed to be pronounced by women as well but only until their euphemistic character was not lost.

According to Mauthner women are less educated and consequently aspire to use foreign words without need whereas educated men do not use them being able to find the equivalent in their mother tongue. Mauthner thinks that the creative use of language is the prerogative of men, and women are only capable to acquire the language created by men. Mauthner links the appearance of “female” language to the historical traditions of ancient theatre where originally female roles were played by men. Only with the appearance of women on the stage there happened the changes in the technique of dramatic art which gave the opportunity to the female variant of the language “to begin to sound”. The historical approach led the author to the conclusion that the society accepted the “female” language only when it was allowed to women to act that proves the influence of the unequal position of sexes on the language socialization. Earlier the social aspects of the gender variability of language were not taken into account; however, Mauthner's idea was not developed for a long time and remained unclaimed.

E. Sapir paid special attention to the distinctions resting upon the social identity (person implications) in the American Indian languages. Sapir considers sex and status as the dimensions of social identity which purpose is to signal the “deviation from the norm” by means of the linguistic form [14]. Sapir also considered the phonologic distinctions within the framework of one morpheme, interpreting them as the sex signal system. Sapir came to the conclusion that sex marks are obligatory in the morphology of many languages.

In 1922 Otto Jespersen devoted the whole chapter of his fundamental work about the origin and development of language to the features of female language competence [4]. Jespersen provided wider than Sapir's review of distinctive features of sex in language. He is also considered to be one of the first linguists who paid attention to the existence of male and female preferences in lexicon use.

Though Jespersen provided the fullest for his time interpretation of the question about the influence of gender factor, his views during the subsequent period were criticized because he drew the conclusions basing only on personal observations, many of which were not proved enough [3].

As a whole, the first and the second periods of studying the gender factor in language are characterized by two features: а) the researches had irregular character and were at the periphery of linguistics; b) during the description of the features of male and female language competence the conception of the “deficiency” of “female” language in comparison with the “male” one was formed. The norm was the “male” language and the deviation from the norm - the “female” one. However during the second period new data appeared and besides the theme became interesting for famous linguists that promoted the greater spread of gender researches and the increase of their authority.

From the end of the 60s - the beginning of the 70s of the XX^th century there happened a radical turn in the approach to gender researches. It was caused both by the change of scientific paradigm (transition from structuralism to pragmatics) and social changes [13].

The development of sociolinguistics, the formation of the postmodernist theory of cognition and the rise of feminist movement played an important role. During this period several linguistic trends were formed differing in conceptual positions, research methods and the character of studied material:

1. Socio-linguistic gender researches.

2. Feministic linguistics.

3. Actually gender researches studying both sexes.

4. Manliness research (men's studies) - the newest trend which appeared at the beginning of the 90s of the XX^th century [2].

5. Psycho-linguistic study of sex which recently integrated with neuro-linguistics. Here we can also consider the bio-determinative trend basing on the natural conditionality of cognitive differences between men and women caused by different hormonal balance [11] and also the research of children's speech.

6. Cross-cultural, linguo-culturological researches including the hypothesis of gender subcultures [7; 16]. All these trends study the following groups of problems from different points of view:

1. Language and sex reflection in it: nominative system, lexicon, syntax, gender category and a number of similar objects. The purpose of such approach is the description and explanation of how the presence of people of different sex is manifested in language, what estimations are attributed to men and women and in which semantic areas they are mostly spread. They can be both the researches of one language and comparative works.

2. Speech behaviour of men and women where the typical strategies and tactics, gender specific choice of lexicon units, ways of achieving the success in that is the specificity of male and female speaking are distinguished. In this sphere, in turn, it is possible to distinguish several conceptual approaches, first of all, the theory of sociocultural determinism and the theory of bio-determinism.

Many of the trends develop in interdisciplinary paradigm that in general is a distinctive feature of gender researches. Their other feature is an applied character, a number of successful attempts of language reforming that, probably, is possible to explain by the significant political activity of feminism.

It is necessary to note that these trends did not replace each other but “grew' one from another and nowadays continue to coexist in some cases competing with each other.

Besides the gender aspect of linguistics is characterized by that practically any area of linguistics (problems of reference, cognition, morphology, grammar, syntax, lexicology and phraseology, semantics and pragmatists, text linguistics, etc.) can be considered from the point of view of the reflection of gender relations in them.

The stimulus for more intensive and regular gender researches in the 60s of the XX^th century was the development of sociolinguistics which gave the scientists extensive statistical material about the functioning of language in groups of people incorporated according to the attribute of profession, sex, urban or rural way of life, etc. So, the quantitative researches showed that the sex of native speakers definitely influences on the language performance. In particular it was determined that women tend to use more prestigious variants of pronunciation [5].

In sociolinguistics there is also a hypothesis about the greater conservatism of “female' language; however its validity is doubted by some researchers [10].

One more stimulus for the comprehension of gender specificity of language and speech was given by ethnographic and ethnologic works where the broader range of phenomena in which gender distinctions can become apparent was considered: lexicon, phonology, morphology, syntax.

At the end of the 60s - the beginning of the 70s of the XX^th century gender researches in language received one more very powerful impulse due to the so-called New women's movement in the USA and Germany, as a result in linguistics there appeared an original trend called the feministic linguistics or the feministic criticism of language. The main goal of the feministic linguistics is the unmasking of patriarchy - the men's domination in public and cultural life [1].

R. Lakoff's work “Language and a woman's place” became basic in the field of linguistics; it proved the androcentredness of language and the lameness of a woman's image in the picture of the world reproduced in the language [6].

To the specificity of the feministic criticism of language it is possible to attribute its strongly expressed polemic character, the development of own linguistic methodology, the attraction to the linguistic description the results of all the spectrum of sciences about a man (psychology, sociology, ethnography, anthropology, history, etc.) and also a number of successful attempts to influence the language policy [8].

The ideology of feminism is frequently considered as one of the components of postmodernist philosophy [15]. From here its heightened interest to the phenomena of language results. The feministic linguistics pays attention to the uneven manifestation of persons of different sex in the language.

The language fixes the picture of the world from the male point of view, that is why it is not only anthropocentric (focused on the person) but also andro-centric (focused on the man): the language creates the picture of the world based on the male point of view, on behalf of the male subject, from the point of view of male perspective where everything female appears mainly in the role of object or ignored as a whole that is the essence of feministic “reproach”.

The feministic linguistics distinguishes the following attributes of andro-centrism:

1. The identification of the notions “person” and “man”. In many European languages they are designated by one and the same word: man in English, homme in French, Mann in German. In the German language there is also one more designation - Mensch, but it also etymologically goes back to the Old Upper German mannisco - “male”, “connected with man”. The word der Mensch is of masculine gender, but it can ironically be used in relation to women with the article of neutral gender - das Mensch.

2. Nouns of feminine gender are, as a rule, derivatives of masculine nouns, not vice versa. They are frequently accompanied by negative estimation. The application of masculine designation to the referent - woman is possible and raises her status. On the contrary, the nomination of a man with a feminine designation carries negative estimation.

3. Nouns of masculine gender can be used not specifically, that is for the designation of persons of any sex. There is a mechanism of “inclusion” in the grammatic masculine gender. Language prefers masculine forms for the designation of persons of any sex or the group of persons of different sexes. Thus, if hosts and hostesses are meant, it is enough to say hosts. So, the feministic linguistics considers that in the vast majority of cases women in general are ignored by the language.

4. The agreement at the syntactic level is performed according to the form of the grammatical gender of the corresponding part of speech, not to the real sex of the referent: Germ.: Wer hat hier seinen Lippenstift liegen lassen? (Word for word: Who has forgotten here his lipstick?) - though it is talked about a woman.

5. Feminity and manliness are differentiated sharply - as poles - and are opposed to each other qualitatively (positive and negative estimation) and quantitatively (domination of masculine as human as a whole) that leads to the formation of gender asymmetries.

This topic is in detail developed on the material of the English and German languages (to be continued).

References

1. Borneman E. Das Patriarchat. Ursprung und Zukunft unseres Gessellschaftssystems. Frankfurt a. Main, 1991.

2. Erhart W., Hermann B. Wann ist der Mann ein Mann? Zur Geschichte der Mannlichheit. Stuttgart-Weimar, 1997.

3. Janssen-Jurreit M. Sexismus. Uber die Abtreibung der Frauenfrage. Munchen-Wien, 1975.

4. Jespersen O. The woman // The feminist critique of language / ed. by D. Cameron. L., 1998.

5. Labov W. Variation in language // Carrol E. Reed. The learning of language. National council of teachers of English. New York, 1971.

6. Lakoff R. Language and women's place // Language in society. 1973. № 2.

7. Maltz D. N., Borker R. A. MiЯverstandnisse zwischen Mannern und Frauen - kulturell betrachtet // Gunthner, Kotthoff. Von fremden Stimmen. Weibliches und mannliches Sprechen im Kultur vergleich. Frankfurt am Main, 1991.

8. Mandele N., Rundle L. Feminist qualitative research methods: a handbook for researchers. York University, 1998.

9. Mauthner F. Beitrage zu einer Kritik der Sprache. 3. Auflage. Stuttgart und Berlin, 1921. Band 1. Zur Sprache und Psychologie.

10. Nabrings K. Sprachliche Varietaten. Tubingen, 1981.

11. Philips S. U. Introduction: the interaction of social and biological processes in women's and men's speech // Language, gender and sex in comparative perspective / ed. S. U. Philips, S. Steel, Ch. Tanz. New York, 1987.

12. Philological sciences. Issues of theory and practice. Tambov: Gramota, 2009. № 2 (4).

13. Samel I. Einfuhrung in die feministische Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin, 1995.

14. Sapir E. Male and female forms of speech in Yana // Donum natalicium schrignen / ed. by St. W. J. Teeuwen. NijmegenUtrecht, 1929.

15. Smith S. Post-modernism and social history in the west: problems and perspectives // Issues of history. 1997. № 8.

16. Tannen D. Das habe ich nicht gesacht! Kommunikationsprobleme im Alltag. Hamburg, 1992.

17. West К., Zimmerman D. Doing gender // Gender note-books. SPb., 1997. Issue 1.

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