Gender and Language

Use
by Joan Swann
The Structure:
1 Introduction

2 Women’s and Men’s Languages

3 Variationist Studies: Quantifying Gender

4 Gender in Interaction: ‘Deficit’, ‘Dominance’ and ‘Difference’

5 Gender and Politeness

6 Contextualised Approaches: Performance and Performativity

7 Conclusion
 1
INTRODUCTION
We have to know that:

• To know the relationship between gender and language use

• To increase our knowledge about language for sociolinguistics study
• To know the differences between woman and men in using language
 2
Women’s and men’s Languages

 Distinctive  Different words

expression VS and phrases
 Masculine  feminine
 Gender and Social Stratification
women use more ‘prestige’ and
3 men more ‘vernacular’ features
of speech
Variationist
Studies: Gender and Lifestyle/Patterns of
Interaction

Quantifying with whom they interact, and

what might motivate them to
Gender adopt certain varieties.

Gender and Acts of Identity

speakers select certain ways of
speaking so as to be like groups
with which they wish to identify
 4
Gender in Interaction:
‘deficit’, ‘dominance’ and ‘difference’

Male and female talk Difference

in different ways.
It often makes a
Deficit disadvantage for the female
men’s ‘different’ speaking speakers in an interaction
styles allow them to
Dominance
dominate in mixed-sex
interaction
 5
Gender
and
Politeness
Man To the point

Use positive &

Woman
negative politeness
 6
Contextualised Approaches: Performance and
Performativity Continuing Challenges and
Debates
Changing Conceptions of ‘
Language’ and ‘Gender’ This contextualised
01 03 approaches to language and
Sociolinguistics said that gender have become
people talk the way they do mainstream
because of who they
(already) are Contextualise Approaches
in Empirical Research
02 How a man or a woman
negotiate their gender to be
a professional worker in
their workplace.
 CONCLUSION

• Women and men use language differently

• Language functioned as a kind of social mirror
• Language may have a direct relationship with gender
• There are diversity between women and men as social groups.
Thank you