Language and gender

This article is about how one's gender may influence language use. For noun class systems, see Grammatical gender.
"Gender and language" redirects here. For the journal, see Gender and Language.
Sociolinguistics
Key concepts
Areas of study
People
Sociolinguists
Related fields

Research into the many possible relationships, intersections and tensions between language and gender is diverse. It crosses disciplinary boundaries, and, as a bare minimum, could be said to encompass work notionally housed within applied linguistics, linguistic anthropology, conversation analysis, cultural studies, feminist media studies, feminist psychology, gender studies, interactional sociolinguistics, linguistics, mediated stylistics, sociolinguistics, and feminist language reform and media studies.

In methodological terms, there is no single approach that could be said to 'hold the field'. Discursive, poststructural, ethnomethodological, ethnographic, phenomenological, positivist and experimental approaches can all be seen in action during the study of language and gender, producing and reproducing what Susan Speer has described as 'different, and often competing, theoretical and political assumptions about the way discourse, ideology and gender identity should be conceived and understood'.[1] As a result, research in this area can perhaps most usefully be divided into two main areas of study: first, there is a broad and sustained interest in the varieties of speech associated with a particular gender; also a related interest in the social norms and conventions that (re)produce gendered language use (a variety of speech, or sociolect associated with a particular gender which is sometimes called a genderlect).[2] Second, there are studies that focus on ways language can produce and maintain sexism and gender bias,[3] and studies that focus on the contextually specific and locally situated ways in which gender is constructed and operationalized.[2] In this sense, researchers try to understand how language affects the gender binary in society.[4]

The study of gender and language in sociolinguistics and gender studies is often said to have begun with Robin Lakoff's 1975 book, Language and Woman's Place, as well as some earlier studies by Lakoff.[5] The study of language and gender has developed greatly since the 1970s. Prominent scholars include Deborah Tannen, Penelope Eckert, Janet Holmes, Mary Bucholtz, Kira Hall, Deborah Cameron, Jane Sunderland and others. The 1995 edited volume Gender Articulated: Language and the Socially Constructed Self[6] is often referred to as a central text on language and gender.[7]

  1. ^ Speer, Susan (2005). "Introduction: feminism, discourse and conversation analysis". In Speer, Susan A. (ed.). Gender talk: feminism, discourse and conversation analysis. London and New York: Routledge. pp. 7–8. ISBN 9780415246446.
  2. ^ a b Attenborough, Frederick (2014-05-02). "Words, Contexts, Politics". Gender and Language. 8 (2): 137–146. doi:10.1558/genl.v8i2.137. ISSN 1747-6321.
  3. ^ Coates, Jennifer; Pichler, Pia, eds. (2011). Language and gender : a reader (2nd ed.). Chichester, West Sussex, U.K.: Wiley-Blackwell. ISBN 9781405191449. OCLC 659305823.
  4. ^ Gormley, Sarah (2015), "Language and Gender", International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, Elsevier, pp. 256–259, doi:10.1016/b978-0-08-097086-8.53055-4, ISBN 978-0-08-097087-5
  5. ^ Bucholtz, Mary (2004) [1975]. "Editor's introduction". In Lakoff, Robin; Bucholtz, Mary (eds.). Language and woman's place: text and commentaries. New York: Oxford University Press. pp. 3–14. ISBN 9780195167573.
  6. ^ Hall, Kira; Bucholtz, Mary, eds. (1995). Gender articulated: language and the socially constructed self. New York: Routledge. ISBN 9781136045424.
  7. ^ Holmes, Janet; Meyerhoff, Miriam, eds. (2003). The handbook of language and gender. Malden, Massachusetts: Blackwell Pub. ISBN 9780631225027.