Part 3. Language and gender

LISTENING 1. Verbal Hygiene for Women

Exercise 1.

Now anyone familiar with the scholarly research on gender differences in language will immediately recognise the source of this magazine article, a book by the American linguist, Robin Lakoff, published in 1975 under the title, Language and Women's Place. Lakoff was the first linguist to publish a whole book on the subject of gender differences in the use of English and her book was influential because it opened up a whole new line of enquiry.

What Lakoff suggested was the existence of a distinctive register in English called 'women's language'. The alternative, by the way, is not men's language, it's neutral language. The difference between neutral language and women's language is that women's language lacks force, authority and confidence. It's full of hedge words like 'perhaps', 'sort of and 'I'm not really sure'. It's full of tags, rising intonation which makes statements into question, trivial words and polite expressions. Women use this language, Lakoff suggests, because they were taught as little girls that it was feminine or ladylike. But what's charming in a little girl becomes irritating in a grown woman trying to make her way in the world.

Women who talk the way women are supposed to won't be taken seriously as competent professionals because the language itself is neither competent nor professional. This argument in the last 20 years has provided a very strong rationale for courses designed to change women's speech habits and make them more effective or powerful communicators. As I said before, such courses might look like a classic example of linguistic findings being applied to a real world problem, the problem of women's speech style. If we believe in gender equality, perhaps we should be applauding.

Exercise 2.

But those of us who work in the field of language and gender studies are unlikely to be applauding for several reasons. One is that, although Lakoff deserves credit as a pioneer who brought the subject of gender differences in language to the attention of a wide audience, she can't be given much credit for the quality of her research on the subject since she did no empirical research at all. Her book really belongs to a very old tradition of anecdotal speculation about women backed up by no real evidence. Those who've set out to gather the evidence since 1975 have found a much more complicated picture than Lakoffsuggested.

There are differences in speech style between women and men, though like all social differences they're not absolute or without exception. We're dealing here with generalisations, averages. Nevertheless, even having said that, there is no such thing as a women's language. On one hand, the linguistic differences between different women are as great as the differences between women and men. On the other hand, many differences that seem to 8e connected with gender are actually more closely connected with an intervening variable such as social status or situational context.

The way women are said to speak often turns out to be the way people speak in a particular setting or the way people speak when they are in a subordinate position. Because in most societies women tend to be found in some settings more than men and vice versa and also women tend to occupy low status positions more than men, the variables of status, setting and gender can very easily get conflated. When this is done by academic theorists, it is a regrettable error. But when it becomes the basis for real world interventions, it has more serious implications.

If women's generally low status, for example, is the reason for certain features of their speech style, and not as the trainers would have it, the other way round, then obviously training women in a different style of speech is not going to solve the problem. At the same time, the theory of women's language gives employers and others a justification for women's continuing low status, that women don't get on as well as men because they're not effective communicators. This is a stereotype and a damaging one for women.

That brings me to the second problem with Lakoff s work and with training materials based on the idea of women's language as an inferior register. I've already said that Lakoff over-estimated the degree to which women differ from men, but in addition, later researchers have suggested she was wrong in her very negative assessment of so-called women's language. Even if all women in all situations did speak in the ways Lakoff claimed, which, to repeat, is very far from being the case, you would still have to pose the question: What's wrong with the way women speak?

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