INTRODUCTION TO SEX AND GENDER

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'. As a result, research in this area can perhaps most usefully be
divided into three main areas of study: first, there is a broad and sustained interest in the varieties
of speech associated with a particular gender; second, there is a related interested in the social
norms and conventions that (re)produce gendered language use (a variety of speech (or sociolect)
associated with a particular gender is sometimes called a genderlect); and third, there are studies
that focus on the contextually specific and locally situated ways in which gender is constructed
and operationalized.
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..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, and others. The 1995 edited volume Gender Articulated: Language and
the Socially Constructed Self is often referred to as a central text on language and gender.
In 1975 Robin Lakoff identified a "women's register", which she argued served to maintain
women's (inferior) role in society.Lakoff argued that women tend to use linguistic forms that
reflect and reinforce a subordinate role. These include tag questions, question intonation, and
"weak" directives, among others (see also Speech practices associated with gender, below).
Studies such as Lakoff's have been labeled the "deficit approach", since they posit that one gender
is deficient in terms of the other. Descriptions of women's speech as deficient can actually be dated
as far back as Otto Jespersen's "The Woman", a chapter in his 1922 book Language: Its Nature
and Development, and Origin.Jespersen's idea that women's speech is deficient relative to a male
norm went largely unchallenged until Lakoff's work appeared fifty years later.Nevertheless,
despite the political incorrectness of the chapter's language from a modern perspective, Jespersen's
contributions remain relevant. These include the prospect of language change based on social and
gendered opportunity, lexical and phonological differences, and the idea of genderlects and gender
roles influence language.
Not long after the publication of Language and Woman's Place, other scholars began to produce
studies that both challenged Lakoff's arguments and expanded the field of language and gender
studies. One refinement of the deficit argument is the so-called "dominance approach", which
posits that gender differences in language reflect power differences in society.
Jennifer Coates outlines the historical range of approaches to gendered speech in her book Women,
Men and Language. She contrasts the four approaches known as the deficit, dominance, difference,
and dynamic approaches.
Deficit is an approach attributed to Jespersen that defines adult male language as the standard, and
women's language as deficient. This approach created a dichotomy between women's language
and men's language. This triggered criticism to the approach in that highlighting issues in women's
language by using men's as a benchmark. As such, women's language was considered to have
something inherently 'wrong' with it.
Dominance is an approach whereby the female sex is seen as the subordinate group whose
difference in style of speech results from male supremacy and also possibly an effect of patriarchy.
This results in a primarily male-centered language. Scholars such as Dale Spender and Don
Zimmerman and Candace West subscribe to this view.
Difference is an approach of equality, differentiating men and women as belonging to different
'sub-cultures' as they have been socialised to do so since childhood. This then results in the varying
communicative styles of men and women. Deborah Tannen is a major advocate of this
position.Tannen compares gender differences in language to cultural differences. Comparing
conversational goals, she argues that men tend to use a "report style", aiming to communicate
factual information, whereas women more often use a "rapport style", which is more concerned
with building and maintaining relationships.
The "dynamic" or "social constructionist" approach is, as Coates describes, the most current
approach to language and gender. Instead of speech falling into a natural gendered category, the
dynamic nature and multiple factors of an interaction help a socially appropriate gendered
construct. As such, West and Zimmerman describe these constructs as "doing gender" instead of
the speech itself necessarily being classified in a particular category. This is to say that these social
constructs, while affiliated with particular genders, can be utilized by speakers as they see fit.
Scholars including Tannen and others argue that differences are pervasive across media, including
face-to-face conversation, written essays of primary school children, email, and even toilet graffiti.
Deborah Cameron, among other scholars, argues that there are problems with both the dominance
and the difference approach. Cameron notes that throughout the history of scholarship on language
and gender male-associated forms have been seen as the unmarked norm from which the female
deviates. For example, the norm 'manager' becomes the marked form 'manageress' when referring
to a female counterpart. On the other hand, Cameron argues that what the difference approach
labels as different ways of using or understanding language are actually displays of differential
power. Cameron suggests, "It is comforting to be told that nobody needs to 'feel awful': that there
are no real conflicts, only misunderstandings. ... But the research evidence does not support the
claims made by Tannen and others about the nature, the causes, and the prevalence of male-female
miscommunication." She argues that social differences between men's and women's roles are not
clearly reflected in language use. One additional example is a study she has done on call center
operators in the UK, where these operators are trained to be scripted in what they say and to
perform the necessary 'emotional labor' (smiling, expressive intonation, showing rapport/empathy
and giving minimal responses) for their customer-callers. This emotional labor is commonly
associated with the feminine domain, and the call center service workers are also typically females.
However, the male workers in this call center do not orient to the covertly gendered meanings
when they are tasked to perform this emotional labor. While this does not mean that the 'woman's
language' is revalued, nor does this necessarily call for a feminist celebration, Cameron highlights
that it is possible that with time, more men may work in this service industry, and this may lead to
a subsequent "de-gendering" of this linguistic style.
Communication styles are always a product of context, and as such, gender differences tend to be
most pronounced in single-gender groups. One explanation for this, is that
people accommodate their language towards the style of the person they are interacting with. Thus,
in a mixed-gender group, gender differences tend to be less pronounced. A similarly important
observation is that this accommodation is usually towards the language style, not the gender of the
person. That is, a polite and empathic male will tend to be accommodated to on the basis of their
being polite and empathic, rather than their being male.
Women are generally believed to speak a better "language" than men do. This is a constant
misconception, but scholars believe that no gender speaks a better language, but that each gender
instead speaks its own unique language. This notion has sparked further research into the study of
the differences between the way men and women communicate.

What Are Language and Gender Studies?

"Regarding gender, extensive research on language, culture, and identity has sought to uncover
'the logic of the encoding of sex differences in languages,' to analyze the 'oppressive implications
of ordinary speech,' to explain miscommunication between men and women, to explore how
'gender is constructed and interacts with other identities,' and to investigate 'the role of language
in helping establish gender identity [as] part of a broader range of processes through which
membership in particular groups is activated, imposed, and sometimes contested through the use
of linguistic forms . . . that activate stances' ([Alessandro] Duranti 2009: 30-31). Other work
explores how language is used to reproduce, naturalize, and contest gender ideologies, drawing
from many disciplinary perspectives . . .. Critical discourse, narrative, metaphor, and rhetorical
analysis have been used to examine other gendered dimensions of processes of meaning making,
such as gender bias in cell biology (Beldecos et al. 1988) and factory farm industry language used
to conceal violence (Glenn 2004)."
(Christine Mallinson and Tyler Kendall, "Interdisciplinary Approaches." The Oxford Handbook of
Sociolinguistics, ed. by Robert Bayley, Richard Cameron, and Ceil Lucas. Oxford University
Press, 2013)

Doing Gender

"We act out gender roles from a continuum of masculine and feminine characteristics; we are
therefore gendered and we are involved in the process of our own gendering and the gendering of
others throughout our lives. In the field of gender and language use, this performance of gender
is referred to as 'doing gender.' In many ways we are rehearsed into our gender roles, like being
prepared for a part in a play: gender is something we do, not something we are (Bergvall, 1999;
Butler, 1990). Over our lives and particularly in our early formative years, we are conditioned,
prompted and prodded to behave in acceptable ways so that our gender, and our community's
acceptance of it, aligns with our ascribed sex. "[S]ome scholars in the field question the distinction
that sex is a biological property and gender is a cultural construct, and both terms continue to be
contested . . .."

(Allyson Julé, A Beginner's Guide to Language and Gender. Multilingual Matters, 2008)

The Dangers of Abstraction

"Our diagnosis is that gender and language studies suffer from the same problem as that
confronting sociolinguistics and psycholinguistics more generally: too much abstraction.
Abstracting gender and language from the social practices that produce their particular forms in
given communities often obscures and sometimes distorts the ways they connect and how those
connections are implicated in power relations, in social conflict, in the production and reproduction
of values and plans. Too much abstraction is often symptomatic of too little theorizing: abstraction
should not substitute for theorizing but be informed by and responsive to it. Theoretical insight
into how language and gender interact requires a close look at social practices in which they are
jointly produced." (Sally McConnell-Ginet, Gender, Sexuality, and Meaning: Linguistic Practice
and Politics. Oxford University Press, 2011)

Background and Evolution of Language and Gender Studies

"In the United States during the late 1960s and early 1970s, women began to examine and critique
societal practices that supported gender discrimination in consciousness-raising groups, in feminist
cells, in rallies and media events (see [Alice] Echols, 1989, for a history of the women's movement
in the United States). In the academy, women and a few sympathetic men started to examine the
practices and methods of their disciplines, subjecting them to similar critiques for similar ends: the
elimination of societal inequities based upon gender. The study of language and gender was
initiated in 1975 by three books, the latter two of which have continued to significantly influence
sociolinguistic work: Male/Female Language (Mary Ritchie Key), Language and Women's
Place (Robin Lakoff), and Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance (Barrie Thorne and
Nancy Hedley, Eds.). . . . Overly dichotomous ideas of gender pervade Western society in ways
that must be challenged. Because, however, it is important that challenging exaggerated notions of
difference does not simply result in women assimilating to male, or mainstream, norms, feminist
scholars must simultaneously document and describe the value of attitudes and behaviors long
considered 'feminine.' In doing so, feminist scholars challenge their exclusive association with
women and point out their value for all people."
(Rebecca Freeman and Bonnie McElhinny, "Language and Gender." Sociolinguistics and
Language Teaching, ed. by Sandra Lee McKay and Nacy H. Hornberger. Cambridge University
Press, 1996)

"In the first phase of language/gender research, Many of us were eager to piece together an overall
portrayal of differences in the speech of women and men. We invented notions like 'genderlect'
to provide overall characterizations of sex differences in speech (Kramer, 1974b; Thorne and
Henley, 1975). The 'genderlect' portrayal now seems too abstract and overdrawn, implying that
there are differences in the basic codes used by women and men, rather than variably occurring
differences, and similarities."
(Barrie Thorne, Cheris Kramarae, and Nancy Henley, 1983; quoted by Mary Crawford in Talking
Difference: On Gender and Language. SAGE, 1995)

"Interactional sociolinguistics [IS] serves as one of many theoretical orientations that have been
drawn on to investigate gender and communication. The pioneering study of Maltz and Borker
(1982) provided a starting point for [Deborah] Tannen's (1990, 1994, 1996, 1999) writing
on language and gender in which Tannen investigates interactions between women and men as a
kind of cross-cultural communication and firmly establishes IS as a useful approach to gendered
interaction. Her general audience book You Just Don't Understand (Tannen, 1990) offers insights
into everyday communication rituals of speakers of both genders. Much like Lakoff's
(1975) Language and Women's Place, Tannen's work has fueled both academic and popular
interest in the topic. In fact, language and gender research 'exploded' in the 1990s and continues to
be a topic receiving a great deal of attention from researchers using various theoretical and
methodological perspectives (Kendall and Tannen, 2001)."
(Cynthia Gordon, "Gumperz and Interactional Sociolinguistics." The SAGE Handbook of
Sociolinguistics, ed. by Ruth Wodak, Barbara Johnstone, and Paul Kerswill. SAGE, 2011)

"Language and gender studies have seen significant expansion to encompass sexual orientation,
ethnicity and multilingualism, and, to some extent, class, involving analyses of spoken, written,
and signed gendered identities."
(Mary Talbot, Language and Gender, 2nd ed. Polity Press, 2010)