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Language

The question “What is language?” is comparable with – and, some would say, hardly less

profound than – “What is life?”, the presuppositions of which circumscribe and unify the

biological sciences. Of course, “What is life” is not the kind of question that the bioliogist has

constantly before his mind in his everyday work. So it is for the linguist in relation to the

question “What is language?” Language is the unique possession. It is God’s special gift to

mankind. Without language human civilization as we now know it would have remained

impossibility. Language is ubiquitous. It is present everywhere—in our minds, thoughts and

dreams, prayers and mediations, relations and communications and in rituals. Besides being a

means of communication, and a store house of knowledge, it is an instrument of thinking as well

as a source of delight for example singing. Language is also the maker or unmake of human

relations. It is the use of language that makes our life bitter or sweet. Without language man

would have remained only a dumb animal. It is our ability to communicate through words that

makes us different from the animals. language is an omnipresent phenomenon. It is not only the

concern of linguists but also of logicians, philosophers, scientists, critics, psychologists and of

many others.

Since linguistics is the study of language, it is vital for a linguist to know what exactly language

is? Language is a very complex human phenomenon; all attempts to define it have proved

inadequate. In a nutshell, a language is an ‘organized noise’ used in actual social situations. That

is why it has also been defined as ‘contextualized systematic sounds’.

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In the Encyclopedia Britannica, vol.13 language is defined as “a system of conventional, spoken

or written symbols by means of which human beings, as members of a social group and

participants in its culture, communicate.” Some other definitions are cited below:

 “Language is a primarily human and non-instinctive method of communication ideas,

emotions and desires by means of a system of voluntarily produced symbols.”

Sapir, Language, 1921

 “Language in its widest sense means the sum total of such signs of our thoughts and

feelings as capable of external perception and as could be produced and repeated at

will.” A.H. Gardiner, Speech and Language 1935.

 “Language may be defined as the expression of thoughts by means of speech-sounds”.

Henry Sweet, The History of Language.

 According to Transformational Generative linguists like Noam Chomsky, language is

the innate capacity of native speakers to understand and form grammatical sentences.

Anthropologists regard language as a form of cultural behavior, sociologists as an interaction

between members of a social group, students of literature as an artistic medium, philosophers as

a means of interpreting human experiences, language teachers as a set of skills. Truly speaking

language is such a complex phenomenon that to define it in terms of a single level as knowledge,

skill, behavior, habit, and an object will not solve the problem of its definition. None of the

above definition is perfect but each of them just hints at a certain characteristics of language.
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Linguistics

The word Linguistics is derived from Latin lingua (tongue) and istics (knpwledge or science).

Therefore, etymologically, linguistics is the scientific study of language. The central object of

linguistics is language. But it is not the study of one special language but of human languages in

general. Linguistics is that science which studies the organization, origin, nature and

development of language descriptively, historically, comparatively and explicitly, and formulates

the general rules related to language. Diachronic linguistics studies the development of language

through history, through time, for example the way in which French and Italian have evolved

from Latin. Synchronic linguistics investigates how the people speak and use language in a given

speech community at a given time. Comparative linguistics, the comparison with two or more

different languages is made. So linguistics is a new science relatively as compared to the natural

sciences and its very dynamic field and a lot much work is being done in this dynamic field.

Sociolinguistics

Language is a very dynamic and ubiquitous phenomenon. It is the part and parcel of a society

and culture. So it is a geographical-social-cultural phenomenon. Language has a deep routed

relation with society. “The study of language in relation to society” can be said as

sociolinguistics, (cf. Hudson, 1980 I). Human beings use language in society and they acquire it

from society and its application is widely used in society. The study of language with relation to

society is called sociolinguistics. And this is a challenging and dynamic and fascinating field of

linguistics. It studies the ways in which language has its interaction with society. The social

aspects of language in the modern sense were first studied by Indian and Japanese linguists in the

1930s, and also by Gauchat in Switzerland in the early 1900s, but none received much attention
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in the West until much later. The study of the social motivation of language change, on the other

hand, has its foundation in the wave model of the late 19th century. The first attested use of the

term sociolinguistics was by Thomas Callan Hodson in the title of a 1939 paper. Sociolinguistics

in the West first appeared in the 1960s and was pioneered by linguists such as William Labov in

the US and Basil Bernstein in the UK.

Broadly speaking, Sociolinguistics is the branch of linguistics which studies the relation between

and society. It may be defined as the study of variation in language, or more precisely of

variation within speech communities.

Language variations

“The existence of observable differences in the way a language is used in a speech community”

is called variation. And it is very common observation that speakers of a same language living

within the same sppech community donot speak uniform language, there exists certain

differences always. Language is not a static phenomenon. It has a lot of variations in it.

Language varies on the basis of variations such as according to age, ethnicity, politeness, power,

status and gender. Older people don’t speak the same way as the youngsters speak. Men don’t

speak like women. This variation was long neglected by linguists but in the 1960s, the

sociolinguists, led by William Labov, began to make variation a central object of investigation,

and this effort revolutionized in the field. Variations show strong correlation with social

variables like social class, sect, status and gender.

Sex
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female male

Sex is a biological term refers to the biological differences based on chromosomes, hormonal

changes, internal and external body structure. The sex of every individual is determined in the

womb of his/her mother.

Gender

Gender is not something we are born with, and not something we have, but something we do

(West and Zimmerman 1987) – something we perform (Butler 1990). In the famous words of

Simone de Beauvoir, ‘‘Women are not born, they are made.’’ The same is true of men. Gender is

a social phenomenon and it is determinded by the societ. Society assigns different roles to

gender. In sociolinguistics role of gender si defined by the society and culture, so a real man in a

society would consist of male sex and masculine characteristics. It is important to realise that

grammatical gender has nothing to do with sex. “In english we don’t have any gender, but we

have a few sex-marked pronouns like he and she, and a few sex-marked nouns like duke and

duchess, but we have no grammatical gender”. Gender is an old term in linguistic discourse used

to designate whether nouns are masculine, feminine, or neuter. It was not normally used in the

language of social or natural sciences or in sexology until 1955, when John Money adopted the

term to serve as an umbrella concept to distinguish femininity, or womanliness, and masculinity,

or manliness, from biological sex (male or female). Though the term was quickly adopted in

studies of transvestism and transsexualism, it did not receive widespread circulation until 1972 in
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a book coauthored by Money and Anke Ehrhardt. Its popularity became firmly established in the

1980s as the feminist movement increasingly adopted the term gender studies as a replacement

for women's studies. In a sense by using a new term to describe a variety of phenomena, Money

opened up a whole new field of research since it implied that genitalia were not the only factor

involved in being a man or a woman. Gender is a social phenomenon. It is socially identified and

given notion to the members of the society. the wide set of characteristics that are seen to

distinguish between male and female entities, extending from one's biological sex to, in humans,

one's social role or gender identity. We are surrounded by gender lore from the time we are very

small. It is ever-present in conversation, humor, and conflict, and it is called upon to explain

everything from driving styles to food preferences. Gender is embedded so thoroughly in our

institutions, our actions, our beliefs, and our desires, that it appears to us to be completely

natural.

Language and gender

Language is having variation on the basis of gnder too. Language of males and females is not the

same although they live in the same society, in the same family even under the same roof, but

there are certain vivid differences on the basis of this phenomenon; gender.

Background

In sociolinguistics the gender was ignored till 1970s, but the the other

variation in language were studied and this aspect was totally ignored
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because academic research was dominated by the white, well educated

males who were busy in the variations such as social class, status, age,

power, and ethnicity. But the gender was invisible to them because the

role of women in the society was also invisible. So up till 1970s it was

totally invisible on the map sociolinguistics.

Males were the dominating and leading figures of the society as well as

in the field of research. So they did not even bother to take female

speakers’ language and their differences seriously.

How gender was focused?

The explosion of interest between language and gender is in use for the

last 3 decades. And at this present time, it looks odd and queer that

gender as a social variable was ignored at all in the infant

sociolinguitics. The change was brought by the a female member of the

ignored community, who published her article and a book later on

“Language And Women’s place” in 1975. She belonged to the

University of California, her name is Robin Lakoff. According to

Lakoff, who drew her attention to the gender as a social variable, all the
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gender differences in language use were firmly attached with the social

powerlessness of female speakers. As they were powerless, they were

ignored by the powerful i.e. the male speakers. Her publication proved

to be the turning point in the field fo sociolinguistics.

Now her work seems dated, and the notion of powerlessness of female

speakers is out of tune in modern times, but her book proved to be the

first stone in the lake of sociolinguistis and it influences hugely the

subsequent research.

Research into Gender Differences

This area is now the center of attention in sociolinguistics, and a vast work has been done in this

scenario. The early researchers focused on mixed talks, core features of language such as

pronunciation and grammar. Thus early work was done on quantitative bases because large

groups were used as sample and results were shown diagrammatically to show the differences

between male and female speakers.

The researchers focused on glottal stops and counted the incidence of multiple negations

(sentences that contain more than one or two negative words, such as I have not seen nothing).

Peter Trudgill, in 1974, was the first British sociolinguist who made an impact with quantitative

sociolinguistics approach. He showed that in his native city male speakers were inclined to use

frequently the local vernacular as compared to the standard English.

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Jenny Cheshire in 1982, conducted a research to know the linguistic behavior of three groups of

teenagers who used to play in grounds and were quite familiar with her. She observed that males

used to speak non standard grammatical forms more as compared to the female speakers.

In the other findings of quantitative research it is proved that linguistic change is often led by the

female speakers who were more inclined to use the innovative forms.

In high rising terminal, where the coive of a speaker goes up towards the end of a clause is

associated with the young male speaker but female speakers use this HRT three times more than

males.

In 1980s, the area was broadend. Now some conversational strategies were taken into

consideration, for example minimal responses (e.g. yeah, mhm),hedges (e.g. I mean, maybe, you

know), tag questions (e.g. Isn’t it), questions, commands, swearing, directives, taboo language;

compliments and turn taking patterns. The research in this area showed that folklinguistics

beliefs are not always true. The notion that females are chatterboxes is not right. Male speakers

in mixed groups talk morfe as compared to the female speakers.

Then the researchers have started to look at single-sex interaction. Now the women’s and men’s

talk was analysed on separate platforms. Now the females were not considered as powerless.

Now the women’s conversation at practices are being investigated in a range of communities—

African, whit, brirish African, hearing, deaf, lesbian, gay, teenage, adults and straights.

In the last decade the issues of male, men and masculinity have been studied before this they

were sidelined and ignored

Now the research is being conducted on both the genders simultaneously.

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Different Approaches towards language and gender

Linguists have aporoached gender and language from different perspectives. These approcahces

are as under.

Queer linguistics