Gendered Verbal Communication

MALE GENERIC LANGUAGE EXCLUDES WOMEN

• One way that language erases women
• Claim to include both women and men yet refers only to men.
• Examples are nouns such as businessman, spokes-man, mailman, and mankind, and pronouns such as he used to refer to both women and men.
• no problem with male generic language and that using inclusive language, such as he or she, is just about political correctness.
• Research…inclusive language is about something far more substantial than political correctness.

LANGUAGE DEFINES MEN AND WOMEN DIFFERENTLY

• Women are frequently defined by appearance or by relationships with others, whereas men are more typically defined by activities, accomplishments, or positions.

Example: Sports

-Women’s sports frequently focuses more on women athletes’ appearance than on their athletic skills.

-Male athletes focus on their athletic abilities

• Language also reflects social views of women as passive and men as active when engaged in sexual activity.

Like…

“He laid her,” “He balled her,” “He screwed her,” “She got laid,” and “He made love to her”? 

Each of these phrases suggests that, in sexual activity, men are active, whereas women are passive.

• Our language also reflects society’s view of women as defined by their relationships with others rather than as independent agents.
• In Western culture, a woman who doesn’t marry historically has been viewed with sympathy or pity.
• unmarried American women were called spinsters or old maids (contrast this with the nonpejorative term bachelor for men).
• In Japan, however, unmarried women are called leftover, underdog, and parasite single (Onishi, 1998; Retherford, Ogawa, & Matsukura, 2001). 
• In 2007, Japan’s Health Minister Hakuo Yanagisawa referred to Japanese women as “birth-giving machines and devices” (Dyer, 2007).
• There are a number of alternatives to the traditional ways of naming ourselves (Foss, Edson, & Linde, 2000; Fowler & Fuehrer, 1997).
• Some heterosexual women choose to retain their birth names when they marry.
• A number of men and women adopt hyphenated names, such as Johnson-Smith, to symbolize the family heritage of both partners.
• Another alternative, one less often practiced so far, is renaming oneself to reflect matriarchal rather than patriarchal lineage. 
• (The term matri-archy means “rule by the mothers”; it generally refers to systems of ideology, social structures, and practices that are created by women and reflect the va-lues, priorities, and views of women as a group.)
• This involves changing a last name from that of the father’s family to that of the mother’s.for example, Lynn Franklin’s daughter, Barbara, might rename herself Barbara Lynnschild.

Exploring Gendered Lives- Parallel Language? What's in a Name?

Transgenderism & Gender Nonconformity

Transgenderism is a variation on gender norms, and may be understood as a form of gender nonconformity. Transgenderism, or Transgendered is a broad, relatively new term that includes people who live part of their lives as other than their birth gender, transsexuals, intersexed people, and cross-dressers.

Gender and Sex

The concepts of sex and gender are essential to understanding human nature and society, primarily because gender roles and norms often result as the outcome of the socialization process. Both psychologists and sociologists have argued that personality formation is inherently linked to gender, by the forces of both nature, or genetics and biology, and nurture, or the conditions of the environment as they directly impact upon males and females.

Gender Discrimination in Workplace

Gender discrimination in the workplace occurs when a woman is treated less favorably than a male for the simple reason of her sex. Gender discrimination involves a variety of forms of discrimination, including such ones as sexual harassment and wage inequality. The 1964 Civil Rights Act prohibited employment discrimination based on an employee’s race, color, religion, national origin or sex. 

Parallel language means equivalent terms. For instance, male and female are equivalent or parallel.

Masculine Term           Feminime Term

Master                          Mistress

Wizard                          Witch

Patron                           Matron

Language also reflects social views of women as passive and men as active participants in sexual activity. Our language also reflects society's view of women as more defined by relationships than men are.

What's in a Name?

•U.S laws concerning marriage and naming have undergone  significant transformation. The law was resolved when a Hawaiian statute requiring women to give up thier birth names on marriage was ruled unconstitutional in 1975 ( Schroeder, 1986).

•Research demonstrates that a great number of heterosexual men prefer that thier partners change thier  name upon marriage, and some indicate disappointment or a feeling a loss if thier partners refuse ( Emens, 2007).

•Currently, approximately 20% of U.S. women who marrychoose to keep thier birth names ( Foss, Edson & Linde, 2015; Nagem 2015).

•Like heterosexual couples, lesbian who place high priority on social recognition  of thier relationship prefer that one or both partners change thier name. For lesbian who keep thier names, individual identity is a higher priority ( Suter & Uswald, 2003). 

•Like many traditions, those related to naming are culturally variable. In china, women keep thier birth names when they marry, and Quebec has laws requiring both spouses to keep thier birth names upon marrying ( Ingber, 2016). 

LANGUAGE SHAPES AWARENESS

Naming is Important

• We give names to things that matter to us. We don’t bother to name what doesn’t matter (Coates, 1997; Spender,b1984a, 1984b). The power of naming is clear with sexual harassment and date rape.
•  For most of history, sexual harassment occurred frequently but was unnamed. Because it wasn’t named, sexual harassment was not visible or salient, making it difficult to recognize, think about, discipline, or stop.
• If sexual harassment was dis-cussed at all, it was described as making advances, getting out of line, or being pushy.
• None of these phrases conveys the abusiveness of sexual harassment. And only with this awareness were efforts devised to redress sexual harassment.  
• Until we coined the term date rape, women had to deal with their experiences without the language to define and help them think about grievous violations that often had life long repercussions (Wriggins, 1998)
• Naming creates awareness.
• language is not static. Instead, we continually change language to reflect our changing understandings of ourselves and our world.  
• We reject terms we find objectionable (girl, male generics), and we create new terms to define realities we think are important (sexual harassment, Ms., womanism).
• As we modify language, we change how we see ourselves and our world. Further, we shape meanings in the culture.

LANGUAGE ORGANIZES PERCEPTIONS OF GENDER

• A stereotype is a generalization about an entire class of phenomena based on some knowledge of some members of the class.
• Relying on stereotypes can lead us to overlook important qualities of individuals and to perceive them only in terms of what we consider common to a general category 
• Many people stereotype women as emotional and weak and men as rational and strong. Stereotypes such as these can distort our perceptions. 
• For instance, women’s arguments are sometimes dismissed as emotional when in fact they involve evidence and reasoning (Mapstone, 1998).
• Women who use assertive speech are frequently described as arrogant and rude, whereas men who employ emotional language may be described to be“wimps” or weak (Rasmussen & Moley, 1986).
• The English language may also encourage polarized thinking, which is conceiving of things as absolute opposites.     
• Something is right or wrong, good or bad, appropriate or inappropriate.
• Queer performative theory - challenges polarized language for sex, gender, and sexual orientation, claiming that the polar—or binary—terms.
• Our culture’s binary labels for sex, gender, and sexual orientation encourage us not to notice how much variation there is among women and among men (Lorber,2001) 
• Polar language for sex erases transgendered people because the only linguistic options are men and women, neither of which describes their full identities.
• Likewise, people who are intersexed or transsexed don’t fit into the male–female dichotomies of our language. 
• Awareness of our language’s polarizing tendencies allows us to question dichotomous conceptions of sex and gender and the ways that those labels exclude some people

Language Evaluate Gender

Language is not neutral. It reflects cultural values and is a powerful influence on our perceptions.

• Language devalues females by trivializing women:
• Immature and juvenile ( baby doll, girlie, little darling)
• Equate with food ( dish, feast for the eyes, sweet, etc.)
• Equate to animals ( catty, chick, dog, pig, cow, bitch)
• Diminutive Suffixes
•  Sexually Active
• Women (slut or worse)
• Men (Stud) 

Language allows self-reflection

How does Language allows Self-reflection?

One alternative to traditional sex-typing is “Androgyny”

Androgyny people posses qualities the culture defines as masculine and feminine instead of only those assigned to one sex.

Example:

Both men and women are assertive and sensitive, ambitious and compassionate. 

 Research shows that androgynous individuals tend to be more successful personally and professionally. 

Androgynous people can be able to communicate in a range of ways and can respond to others with flexible skills.

Androgynous women and men have higher self-esteem and are better adjusted personally than sex-typed individuals.

In workplace, androgynous individuals are more flexible and effective in interacting with range of people. (Health, 1991) 

Androgynous individuals and feminine-typed individuals of both sexes have happier marriages than masculine-typed individuals (Health, 1993)

Gendered Styles of Verbal Communication 

 this piece is meant to open up the dialog about different communication styles to help us better recognize patterns within ourselves. 

 also to enhance our interactions with others in both our personal and professional lives

Research shows that men and women are more likely to exhibit different styles of verbal communication. Men are more prone to adopt what is called “report talk”, while women gravitate more toward “rapport talk”. 

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