SOCIOLINGUISTICS

Gender, politeness
and stereotypes

Ajid Irfan M. (2021120003)

Aurenza Shafa S. (2021120030)
 Contents of this Presentation

Women’s language

Gossip

Construction of gender identity

Constructing sexuality

Sexist language

This chapter tells about the language use between men and women, on
how they use politeness and uncertainty, interaction, feedback, also their
status in the community.
 01
women’s
language
and
confidence
 Robin Lakoff argued that women were using language which reinforced their
subordinate status; they were ‘colluding in their own subordination’ by the way they
spoke.
Robin Lakoff shifted the focus of research on gender differences to syntax,
semantics and style. She suggested that women’s subordinate social status in US
society is indicated by the language women use, as well as in the language used
about them. She identified a number of linguistic features which she claimed were
used more often by women than by men, and which in her opinion expressed
uncertainty and lack of confidence.
there are many other factors which are also relevant when comparing
women’s and men’s use of language, including culture, social role and
the formality of the context.
Women put more emphasis than men on the polite or affective
functions of tags, using them as facilitative positive politeness devices.
Men, on the other hand, used more tags for the expression of
uncertainty.
Lakoff’s linguistic features as politeness devices

The tag question is a syntactic device listed by Lakoff which may

express uncertainty as example 5 illustrates. Susan is uncertain
about the date, and she indicates this with a tag which signals
doubt about what she is asserting. This tag focuses on the
referential meaning of Susan’s assertion – the accuracy of the
information she is giving. But tags may also express affective
meaning. They may function as facilitative or positive politeness
devices, providing an addressee with an easy entrée into a
conversation, as illustrated in example 6 .
 🗣
interaction
 What’s?
There are two kinds of
interaction that is discussed
here: interrupting behavior
and conversational feedback.
In cross-sex interactions
almost all the interruptions
were from males. Women got
interrupted more than men.
Women evidently socialized from
early childhood to expect to be
interrupted. In the other hand,
women provide more encouraging
feedback to their conversational
partners than men do. The
differences between women and
men in ways of interacting may be
the result of different socialization
and acculturation patterns.
In research , gender rather than occupational status, social
class or some other social factor which most adequately
accounts for the interactional patterns described. Women
doctors were consistently interrupted by their patients,
while male doctors did most of the interrupting in their
consultations. A study of women in business organisations
showed that women bosses did not dominate the
interactions.
Males dominated regardless of whether they were boss or
subordinate. The societally subordinate position of women
indicated by these patterns has more to do with gender
than role or occupation.
 02

The linguistic
construction of
gender
Approaching gender identity as a
construction, rather than as a fixed
category, is also useful in accounting for
examples where women adapt to
masculine contexts, and men adapt to
feminine contexts by using features which
indirectly index or are associated with
masculinity and femininity.
Women in the police force, for instance,
are sometimes advised to portray a
masculine image – to wear bulky
sweaters suggesting upper-body strength,
and well-worn boots to suggest they are
used to hard work. They also adopt a cool
distant style; they don’t smile much, and
they talk ‘tough’. Men who work in clothing
shops and hairdressing salons, on the
other hand, often construct a more
feminine identity in these contexts than
when they are in the pub or the sports club
changing room.
 03

The linguistic
construction of
sexuality
 What’s?
Examining the relationship between language and
sexuality involves considering how people construct
their sexual identity – as gay, heterosexual, lesbian
or bisexual, for instance. But it also involves
considering how people use language to learn about
sex, talk about sex and desire, and engage in sexual
activities.
 …Continue
How do young women indicate to young men that
they are interested in them as potential sexual
partners? What are the features of the courtship
rituals in different societies? What are the discourse
features of ‘coming out’ stories? Who tells ‘dirty’
jokes to whom, why and how? How is the discourse
of sex education managed in schools? These are the
kinds of topics that researchers in the area of
language and sexuality consider interesting.
Researchers have identified a number of
features associated with English ‘gay’ speech,
including the use of stereotypically feminine
vocabulary items, such as divine , features of
pronunciation, such as affrication so that /t/
sounds like [ts], ‘wavy’ intonation and dramatic
variations in pitch. But, of course, it is not the
case that all and only gay people use such
features. Moreover, many of these features
prove to be ephemeral, since they are based on
the speech of people from particular social,
regional and ethnic backgrounds at a particular
point in time.
 04

Gossip
Gossip is interesting topic
that is discussed here
Gossip describes the kind of relaxed in-
group talk that goes on between people
in informal contexts. In western society,
gossip is defined as ‘idle talk’ and
considered particularly characteristic of
women’s interaction. Its overall function
for women is to affirm solidarity and
maintain the social relationship between
the women involved.
Women’s gossip focuses predominantly
on personal experiences and personal
relationships,on personal problems and
feelings. It may include criticism of the
behaviour of others, but women tend to
avoid criticising people directly because
this would cause discomfort. A common
male reaction to this behaviour is to label
it two-faced, but this is to mistake its
purpose which is often to relieve feelings
and reinforce shared values, rather than
simply to communicate referential
information.
In gossip sessions, women provide a
sympathetic response to any experience
recounted, focusing almost exclusively on
the affective message – what it says
about the speaker’s feelings and
relationships – rather than its referential
content. Recordings of a women’s group
over a nine-month period, for instance,
showed how women built on and
developed each other’s topics, told
anecdotes in support of each other’s
points, and generally confirmed the
attitudes and reactions of other
participants.
The male equivalent of women’s gossip is diffi cult to
identify. In parallel situations, the topics men discuss
tend to focus on things and activities, rather than
personal experiences and feelings. Topics like sport,
cars and possessions turn up regularly. The focus is on
information and facts rather than on feelings and
reactions. The men provided conflicting accounts of
the same event, argued about a range of topics such
as whether apples were kept in cases or crates,
criticised each other constantly for apparently minor
differences of approach to things, and changed topic
abruptly. Their strategies for amusing each other were
often to top or out-do the previous speaker’s utterance
or to put them down.
 05

Sexist
language
What’s?
Research in this area has concentrated on
the ways in which language conveys
negative attitudes to women. Many words
reflect a view of women as deviant,
abnormal, or subordinate group as the use
of an additional suffix to signal ‘femaleness’.
In the other hand, words like ‘generic’ he and
man can be said to render women invisible.
Now, the singular they is by far the most
widespread solution. It nowadays the most
frequently heard generic pronoun in informal
speech.
The relative status of the sexes in a
society may be reflected not only in
the ways in which women and men
use language, but also in the
language used about women and
men.
 “

A dame that knows the ropes isn’t likely to get tied up.
Anything worth doing is worth doing slowly.
Between two evils, I always pick the one I never tried before.
Don’t keep a man guessing too long – he’s sure to find the answer
somewhere else.

—Mae West quotes

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