Role of language and gender in society

2.  Since the dawn of human history, what makes
people different from other creatures on the
earth is their ability to use language to
communicate with one another. When it comes
to language, people define it as a system of
communication based on words and sentences to
make our communication meaningful and
understandable. However, the ways language is
used are not the same in different countries, by
different people and by different genders. A
major topic in sociolinguistics which has been
discussed over the last few decades is whether
men and women speaking a certain language use
it in different ways.

3.  Do men and women use language differently? If
there are differences in the language used by
different gender, what linguistic aspects are
different? And what are the reasons for those
differences. With a view to answering those
questions, sociolinguists have been trying to
carry out such a lot of research and surveys and
lay out different thesis and theories for this
issue. There are two important things
sociolinguists did in their study about language
and gender. The first one is the differences in
linguistic aspects the two different genders use
in their language. The second thing is the reason
why there are such differences.

4.  When we look at the linguistic literature,
two different types of studies have been
made .The first study tries to look at the
societies where there are very clear
differences in the language used by gender.
The second one examines the society where
there are preferential speech features in
using language by gender. Those two types of
studies cover all of the sociolinguists’ studies
in the field of language and gender.

5.  Generally, sociolinguists indicate that there
are speech varieties used by men and women
in some societies. In these societies a woman
or a man cannot speak the language of the
other gender. For that reason, the varieties
are considered as gender-exclusive speech.

6.  According to Baron (1986), the most typical
example of gender difference is found among
the Carib Indians. He reports that male and
female Caribs speak different languages.
Their children are described having different
languages as the boys learn language from
their fathers and girls learn language from
their mothers.

7.  Lakoff (1975) and Holmes (1992) also claim
that in some languages, the male speaker’s
form is longer than that of the female’s. For
example, women are more likely to say “Will
you help me with these groceries, please ? ”
than to say“ help me”

8.  In addition to standard and non standard, some
studies find differences in word choice,
vocabulary and morphology used by men and
women. Ekka (1972 as cited in Fasold, 1990,
p91) found that there are several morphological
forms used by women only when a In many
societies, different genders show a preference
for using certain linguistic features more than
others. One of the claims is that women use
more socially accepted variants of language than
men. This means that women generally choose
and use forms which are much closer to the
standard ones more frequently than men.
ddressing other women.

9.  1. Social status:
 According to Holmes (1992) women are more
status conscious than men. Therefore, they
use the standard form more. Further support
for this explanation is the fact that women in
New York (Labov) and Norwich (Trudgill)
reported that they used more standard forms
than they actually did .It was speculated that
women lack the social status because they do
not have a social identity which is usually
obtained through work. Since language
defines class, the use of the standard variety
becomes more important to them.

10.  2. Guardian of society’s values
 In many societies women are expected to be better behaved than
men. Little boys are given more leeway than girls and
girls’misbehaviours are more often corrected. Similarly, rule
breaking by women is frowned upon because women are
supposed to be models of correct behaviors in community. For
example, in Australia school teachers especially the primary
school teachers are considered to be the models for their
students, so they must be selected through a strict process in
which they are tested carefully by the police. This explanation
may be true in some social groups but according to my
observation, in the relationship of family members. The language
used between family members seems to be more relaxed and
informal. In this case we cannot expect the mother or the father
and their children to use standard language to communicate.
Instead, the mother will try to speak as similarly to the way her
children speak the language as possible. This is the situation
where we have to accept more vernacular forms.

11. THANK U