Gender, Language and Discourse

Ann Weatherall

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2005
• eBook ISBN: 9781134701926
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

Is language sexist? Do women and men speak different languages?
Gender, Language and Discourse uniquely examines the contribution that psychological research - in particular, discursive psychology - has made to answering these questions. Until now, books on gender and language have tended to be from the sociolinguistic perspective and have focused on one of two issues - sexism in language or gender differences in speech. This book considers both issues and develops the idea that they shouldn't be viewed as mutually exclusive endeavours but rather as part of the same process - the social construction of gender. Ann Weatherall highlights the fresh insights that a social constructionist approach has made to these debates, and presents recent theoretical developments and empirical work in discursive psychology relevant to gender and language.
Gender, Language and Discourse provides the most comprehensive and up-to-date discussion of the gender and language field from a psychological perspective. It will be invaluable to students and researchers in social psychology, cultural studies, education, linguistic anthropology and women's studies.

1: SEXIST LANGUAGE

Introduction

A feminist concern with words for woman in the English language has a long history that continues today. Issues concerning sexism in language and feminist endorsement of non-sexist language policies attract public comment as well as academic attention. In fact, the ongoing ridicule in the media of concerns about sexism in language is one form of evidence that rules about words are not neutral but deeply ideological. For example, the headline ‘Try a little togethern’ used by The Economist (Johnson, 1994) was written to undermine a feminist lobby to ban job titles marked with feminine suffixes (e.g. waitress, actress). The reason for dropping ‘-ess’ endings is that they seem to imply that the role is less important than when the ending is not used, which is typically the case when the terms are used to refer to men in the same roles (e.g. waiter, actor). Another example was the Sunday Times (UK, 23/03/97) article headlined ‘Women may give Ms a Miss’, which argued that ‘Ms’ was being shunned by a new generation of women because of its association with aggressive feminism.

Butler (1990a) suggested that a sense of trouble tends to arise when there is some kind of threat to a prevailing law. The trouble provoked whenever feminist issues are raised about words and women is, I would argue, an indication that issues of sexist language are inextricably tied to the prevailing social and moral order. To say that rules about words are closely intertwined with dominant social belief systems is not to say that a non- sexist language would naturally and inevitably lead to a non-sexist society. The important point is that language about women is not a neutral or a trivial issue but deeply political. Cameron (1995) made a similar point in her work on verbal hygiene: rules about language and standards of ‘correct’ speech reveal information about patterns of power and privilege in society.

Challenging sexism in language and making trouble with words can be an important feminist strategy to engender social change. However, it seems to me that the solutions offered to the problem of sexist language are somehow less important than the issue itself. One reason for this is that there is no simple relationship between linguistic forms and non-sexist language. For example, words that are marked for gender can be construed as sexist (e.g. chairman) or supporting a feminist political agenda (e.g. wife basher). Similarly, unmarked forms may include women (e.g. chairpersons) but exclude women’s issues (e.g. partner abuse). Furthermore, a natural and inevitable link between bias in language and social discrimination seems unlikely. Nevertheless, language issues have a strong political component.

The aim of this chapter is to explore the issue of sexist language and to examine the contribution psychology has made to debates about the significance of sexist language. Sexist language is not just about the words used to describe women but also how they are used and to what ends. A shift from a concern about sexist words to sexist discourse reflects a profound theoretical shift in some areas of psychology and in the gender and language field, which is detailed in later chapters. Much of the discussion on sexist language in this chapter is predicated on the rather simplistic assumption that language is a stable system of meaning that has an existence outside its users. Despite the limitations of this assumption, the awareness about gender issues that feminist attention to sexist language has created makes the issue important in its own right.

Discussion of sexist language in this chapter will be confined to my mother tongue, the English language, although it exists and has been analysed in other languages too (see Pauwels, 1998 for a comprehensive overview). Also, the topic seems to be as troublesome in other languages as it is in English. For example, women’s insistence, in the French cabinet, on the title Madame la Ministre, despite ‘le ministre’ being a masculine word in French, created such an uproar in France that it attracted international media attention (e.g. Dominion, NZ, 11/03/98; Independent, UK, 10/01/ 98). The newspaper articles reported an open letter from the French Academy to the French prime minister which argued that the women cabinet ministers were committing grammatical nonsense and undermining the feminist cause.

This chapter will begin by describing the features of English that have been identified as sexist, and reviewing the psychological research that has investigated the impact that sexist language has on the way individuals think and behave. An important theme of this chapter is that language not only transmits social information about discrimination against women, but it also reveals how successful feminists have been in promoting a greater awareness of language change as important in social and political change. Throughout the 1970s and early 1980s many works appeared that critically detailed sexist language and provided evidence of its significance (e.g. Miller and Swift, 1976; Nilsen, 1977a, 1977b; Thorne and Henley, 1975; Thorne, Kramarae and Henley, 1983; Vetterling-Braggin, 1981). In the 1990s investigations into language change were indicating that the continued work of feminists was impacting on language (Holmes, 1993; Pauwels, 1998). English is evolving so that fewer ‘sexist’ forms are used; there are new ways to label experiences of oppression (e.g. sexual harassment); there are new words to celebrate the resilience of women (e.g. abuse survivors), and more words to describe barriers to women’s achievement (e.g. glass ceiling, mommy track). An exciting development is the appearance of new words and phrases that seem to challenge normative assumptions about gender (e.g. gender bending, Bob’s your Auntie). Furthermore, discursive work (discussed in detail in later chapters) suggests that non- sexist language has become normative, with the use of sexist forms typically being accompanied by a self-correction or an explanation for their use (see Edley and Wetherell, 1999; Hopper and LeBaron, 1998).

Sexism in the English language

The idea that language treats women and men differently is not new. Feminists have long voiced their concerns about the ways in which women are represented in language. Penelope (1990) documented an early challenge to sexist language from St Hildegarde of Bingen, who in the eleventh century attempted to construct a non-sexist language alternative. Lana Rakow and Cheris Kramarae (1990) edited a collection of articles from The Revolution, a radical American women’s rights periodical published from 1868 to 1871. They found that a substantial amount of writing in The Revolution drew attention to (what I would consider as) sexist language. Issues discussed in The Revolution included the more frequent use of terms of endearment when addressing women than when addressing men, and men’s renaming of women after marriage.

Consideration of the relationships between language and sexism in society has been evident for a long time in some feminist philosophical writings. For example, Simone de Beauvoir (1952) noted that in male- dominated cultures the term man:

represents both the positive and the neutral, as is indicated by the common use of man to designate human beings in general; whereas woman represents only the negative, defined by limiting criteria, without reciprocity.

(de Beauvoir, 1952/1988, p. xv)

In this brief quotation, de Beauvoir insightfully anticipated ideas that were to become central to later empirical work on sex bias in language. During the 1970s and 1980s considerable social science research investigated the psychological significance of using the term ‘man’ generically - that is, using man to refer to a person whose gender is unspecified or unknown. De Beauvoir’s observation that man is generally regarded as ‘both the positive and the neutral’ also pre-empted a later concern that the addition of adjuncts (e.g. lady doctor) and suffixes (e.g. poetess) detracts from connotations of potency that the unmarked forms (e.g. doctor, poet) normally invoke.

While feminists have long demonstrated an awareness of gender and language issues, a focused academic interest in sexist language has been relatively recent. Inspired by the American feminist movement of the late 1960s, a large literature on the topic has emerged (e.g. Bergvall, Bing and Freed, 1996; Coates, 1986; Graddol and Swann, 1989; Henley, 1989; Hill, 1986; Key, 1975; Kramarae, 1990; McConnell-Ginet, Borker and Furman, 1980; Mills, 1995; Penfield, 1987; Smith, 1985; Spender, 1980). Many forms of sexist language have been identified, but feminist social psychologist Nancy Henley (1987) suggested that they might be classified into three types: language that ignores women; language that defines women narrowly; and language that depreciates women. I will use Henley’s typology to organise the following discussion. However, it is important to note that the three types are very broad, and some issues, such as bias in traditions of personal naming, straddle all types. Also the three types are not mutually exclusive - language that defines women narrowly may also depreciate and demean.

Before discussing sexism in language at greater length, I would like to make a point that seems to me to be very important. Although words can define, depreciate and demean women, the same words may also inspire resistance and rebellion against that negative meaning. Thus, sexist language should not just be thought of as constructing women as invisible or passive and silent. Sexism in language may also inspire resistance and demonstrate women’s agency. A similar point was made by Judith Butler:

One is not simply fixed by the name that one is called. In being called an injurious name, one is derogated and demeaned. But the name holds out another possibility as well: by being called a name, one is also, paradoxically, given a certain possibility for social existence … thus the injurious address may appear to fix and paralyse the one it hails, but it may also produce an unexpected and enabling response.

(1997, p. 2)

Invisible women

One way in which language can be considered sexist is that, at a symbolic level, it makes women seem invisible. One aspect of the invisibility of women in language is their absence as the subjects of stories or topics of articles. Some empirical evidence of women’s absence was provided by Caldas-Coulthard (1995), who analysed the content of a sample of American newspapers. Caldas-Coulthard found that news items were more likely to be written by men than women and were also more likely to be about men. Furthermore, Caldas-Coulthard found that men were more often quoted as saying things than women and were more often attributed as being the agents of action than women. Hence, in news reports women are not only ignored by not being the writers and subjects of stories, but are also marginalised by being denied the role of active agents.

Religion has long been criticised for effectively undermining women’s existence through language style choices. For example, Miller and Swift (1976) criticised major Western religions for their patriarchal world view which, they argued, gets maintained by the use of metaphors and symbols that are male-oriented. Referring to God with words such as father and king evokes the image of a god that is male - a myth that is attacked in feminist humour (e.g. when God created man she was only joking) and by those directly involved in religious organisations (see Gross, 1996).

Feminist activists such as Dale Spender have responded to women’s exclusion. The response has included writing books that recover and publicise stories about and by women - stories that have, for a number of different reasons, been hidden and forgotten. In her book Man-made language Spender (1980) argued that just because women, historically, have not been the influential thinkers and have not had the opportunities to influence language does not mean that women have not had great thoughts or held important theories of language. Rather the knowledge that women have produced and the meanings they have generated have not always entered the public arena like those produced by men. The reason for women’s relative invisibility in the public arena is that women have not always had straightforward access to the technologies and institutions that transmit information from one generation to another.

A well-documented aspect of women being ignored in language is the use of masculine forms, such as ‘chairman’, ‘mankind’, ‘guys’, ‘helmsman’ and ‘fireman’, when referring to people in general or a person whose gender is unknown or unspecified. Conventionally these forms, called masculine generics, are the grammatically correct way to generally refer to an unspecified person or to a group of people. But of course such words are also masculine-specific terms and can be interpreted as excluding women. Arguably, terms such as ‘chairperson’, ‘humans’ and ‘helm’ are more neutral than their masculine generic equivalents because they have no gender marking.

Although conventional, Ann Bodine (1975) documented that masculine generics are not natural, trans-historic aspects of English grammar, but are the result of specific efforts by particular grammarians in the past. She found that the first grammatical rule supporting the use of a masculine pronoun to refer to people in general or a person whose gender was unknown, arose in the eighteenth century. Kirby, an English language grammarian writing in 1746, wrote: ‘The masculine Person answers to the general name which comprehends both Male and Female; as Any Person, who knows what he says.’ Kirby’s rule was introduced as legal usage by a British Act of Parliament in 1850. It was not until that time that masculine generic forms became conventional in written language.

Despite the prescriptive grammarian movement to eradicate ‘he and she’ or ‘they’ as gender-indefinite referents, these forms have persisted, especially in spoken English (Baron, 1986). However, during the 1970s the formal grammatical rule prescribing masculine generic forms attracted explicit and vehement criticism. Feminists viewed masculine generics as both ambiguous and discriminatory because they could be interpreted as being masculine-specific or neutral and thus, in some cases, be interpreted as not referring to women at all (e.g. Martyna, 1980a, 1980b). As one anthropologist noted:

If you begin to write a book about man or to conceive a theory about man you cannot avoid using this word (man). You cannot avoid using a pronoun as a substitute for this word, and you will use the pronoun ‘he’ as a simple matter of linguistic convenience. But before you are halfway through the first chapter a mental image of this evolving creature begins to form in your mind. It will be a male image and he will be the hero of the story: everything and everybody in the story will relate to him.

(Morgan, 1972, pp. 8-9)

Masculine generic forms seem to exacerbate an existing tendency for a pro- totypic person to be considered male (e.g. Broverman, Vogel, Broverman, Clarkson and Rosenkrantz, 1972; Hamilton, 1991). I found an example of this tendency in an analysis that I conducted of children’s conversation. When the children used personal reference terms, the majority (88 per cent) were male terms (Weatherall, 1998). Many of the male terms were used when the children anthropomorphised objects. For example, the train was Mister Train, while the different-shaped train tracks were Mister Turny and Mister Downhill. A toy dog was assigned a masculine gender and called Joey, and masculine-specific terms were used for job titles (e.g. fireman). In addition both the girls and boys referred to each other as guys. I didn’t ask the children why they referred to things as he, but Wood (1997) cited the experience of a mother who asked her 6-year-old daughter why she called stuffed animals ‘he’. Her daughter replied that there were ‘more hes than shes’. So, at least for one girl, the impression gained from the world was that it contained more male entities than female ones.

A masculine impression of the world may also be, in part, due to the prevalence of male characters in children’s stories and the masculinisation of children’s toys (e.g. Thomas the tank engine). Nilsen (1977b), in early work in the field of education, documented the pervasive sexism in children’s books and classroom materials. Nilsen found that books were overwhelmingly oriented towards boys, and gender was depicted sex- stereotypically. The bias concerned Nilsen because it gave children the impression that males are more important and that females’ contribution to society is trivial (see also Cooper, 1989).

In Girls, boys and language, Swann (1992) provided a comprehensive analysis of the role language plays in providing children with equal opportunities in education. Referring to books she said:

Educationists have been concerned about sexism in print resources because of the local, or immediate effects this may have; for instance, the predominance of male examples in science textbooks may suggest to girls that science isn’t really for them; in assessment tasks, girls or boys may be disadvantaged depending on whether male or female experiences are drawn upon. But there is also a concern about continuing, more general effects: that the female and male images conveyed to pupils contribute to their sense of what is normal for girls and boys and women and men in our society; that children’s reading material helps reinforce gender as a social division, and perpetuates inequalities between girls and boys and women and men.

(Swann, 1992, p. 96)

Of course, it is not only books and reading materials that may perpetuate inequity in education. Teachers’ language, such as the way they talk to pupils, may also impact on the learning experience. An area of education that Levi (1995) criticised for patronising and excluding females was physical education. Levi pointed out that comments like ‘last one across is a big girl’s blouse’ were frequently used by men, and these had the effect of discouraging women from participating in outdoor activities. The way in which talk-in-interaction functions to reproduce and support a gendered social and moral order is central to discursive social psychological approaches to gender and language.

A study of language bias and its consequences, using a traditional social psychological approach, was Hamilton’s (1988) research on the influence of different words for homosexuality, on people’s judgements of groups at risk of contracting Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS). Hamilton analysed the content of newspaper articles reporting on AIDS, and discovered that almost all references to homosexuality were gender- neutral - for example, ‘gay’. She found that people interpreted the terms generically (i.e. referring to both women and men), which resulted in the assumption that gay women and gay men were at equally high risk for contracting AIDS. So in this research the use of gender-neutral terms encouraged an over-estimation of the degree to which lesbian women were at risk of acquiring AIDS.

In Hamilton’s (1988) research and in many other studies on generic language, the use of unmarked or gender-neutral terms seemed to function to increase the perceived salience of women as subjects. In many contexts - for example, in children’s stories or job advertisements - the increased relevance of women leads to more accurate comprehension. However, in Hamilton’s research the use of neutral terms resulted in a misperception.

The term ‘partner-abuse’ is another example of an inclusive word that may lead to a false impression of the gender of the referent. Women are far more likely to be victims in violent relationships than men (French, 1992), but the gender-neutral term may disguise that fact. A friend of mine whose job involved drafting plans for architects provided a further example of generic language use - with an interesting twist. She told me that she encouraged the use of the term ‘draftsman’ in the business that she worked for because it meant that clients tended to mistake her for an architect, and treat her with more respect!

Although there are exceptions, psychological research on masculine generic terms tends to assume that such words function to disadvantage women and that gender-neutral forms are favoured by feminists advocating English language reform. Interestingly, the corrective strategies for features of sexist language vary across languages. In general, English- speaking feminists advocate making terms neutral or unmarked for gender. However, in other languages the recommended strategy has been to make terms gender-specific, as was the case with the French women cabinet ministers who wanted to be called ‘la ministre’ even though ‘le ministre’ was the correct grammatical form (see also Michard and Viollet, 1991).

The lack of direct correspondence between language forms (e.g. gender- marked or gender-unmarked generic forms) and effects (gender issue being highlighted or hidden) shows that the relationship between language form and symbolic meaning is not straightforward. Sometimes discussions of bias in language imply that particular words (e.g. ‘girl’ to refer to an adult woman) or word forms (words ending in ‘-ess’) naturally and inevitably define women negatively. Other times it is claimed that particular words are offensive because they seem to reflect and perpetuate bias and stereotypes (e.g. referring to a sexually active woman as a ‘slut’). Language policies can be a useful strategy for ensuring that the language used in institutions and in formal publications is not blatantly offensive. However, it is impo...

Table of contents

• COVER PAGE
• TITLE PAGE
• COPYRIGHT PAGE
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• INTRODUCTION
• 1: SEXIST LANGUAGE
• 2: QUESTIONS OF DIFFERENCE: VERBAL ABILITY AND VOICE
• 3: WOMEN’S LANGUAGE?
• 4: THE DISCURSIVE TURN
• 5: GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN ETHNOMETHODOLOGY AND CONVERSATION ANALYSIS
• 6: LANGUAGE, DISCOURSE AND GENDER IDENTITY
• 7: FOLLOWING THE DISCURSIVE TURN
• REFERENCES