Studies on language and gender: a short review

Almost four decades have advanced since feminist movements around the world emerged, creating new foci of interest specially in sociology, psychology, anthropology, linguistics, literary theory and sociolinguistics (Gal, 1992). Nowadays women's studies and research on gender have been receiving more and more shelves in public libraries and bookstores. Dillon's bookshop in England, for instance, has a list of more than 350 books related to gender studies¹. In 1983 Thorne, Kramarae e Henley edited a book with articles which included topics as prescriptive grammar, the use of pronouns, interruptions

1 In 1994 in England I received a list of books on gender studies from Dillons’ bookshop, with more than 350 titles, including Oakley’s Sex, Gender and Society, Peteet’s Gender in Crisis, Frobyn’s Sexing the Self, Nye’s Words of Power, Nicholson’s Men and Women.

in male/female conversation and intonation in male discourse. At that time these authors presented an annotated bibliography about language, gender and society with more than 400 references. Today professional journals as Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society, Women’s Studies, Sex Roles, Psychology of Women's Quarterly, Gender and Education and Journal of Gender Studies focus on diverse issues concerning women, while other journals such as Discourse & Society, Language in Society, Language Sciences, Discourse Processes, Journal of Pragmatics, International Review of Applied Linguistics, Text, Educational Review, Socialist Review, Language and Education, Journal of Speech and Hearing Research, Journal of Acoustical Society of America, College Composition and Communication also publish articles related to language and gender, which evince the importance of the matter. Furthermore, seminars, congresses as well as graduate and post-graduate courses are being held in different universities around the world (Robinson, 1993). In Brazil, in 1994 the First Congress on Feminist Perspectives in the Academy was held at the Federal University in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro (Universidade Federal Fluminense), sponsored by the Brazilian Institute IUPERJ (Instituto Universitário de Pesquisas do Estado do Rio de Janeiro). There are study groups, such as the Núcleo de Estudos da Mulher and there have also been two seminars on Women’s Studies at the Federal University of Santa Catarina: Fazendo Gênero. This interest in women’s studies reflects a need for social awareness and for a reconceptualization of beliefs and values in our post-modern world.

As Reynolds (1993)² pointed out, there are varieties of feminisms, for women are different in different parts of the world; there is no ‘sameness’ in feminist theories, a fact which has led to different methodological perspectives based on diverse and complex theoretical feminist approaches and research methodologies (Robinson, 1993; Creedom, 1993). However, what all these various feminine voices have suggested is that there has been a valuing of masculine above the feminine, in different times in history and in different places of the world, in different fields of human activities (Reynolds, ibid;

Cameron, 1992). These researchers recognize several kinds of physical, sociocultural, ethnic, economic oppression or discrimination against women in distinct cultural settings.

2 (Communication at a lecture on feminist studies at The University of Birmingham, December 1993)

There is, as Mills (1995:3) states, ‘a general difference in the way that men and women are treated in society as a whole and in the ways that they view themselves and others view them as gendered beings’.

Feminist studies on language are usually divided into two broad categories: the dominance approach and the difference approach (Uchida, 1992; Cameron, 1992;

Coates, 1993). The dominance approach considers men’s language as powerful and dominant and women’s as being powerless and subordinate, implying that women have to negotiate their inferior position when interacting with men to eliminate the existing inequality. Followers of this approach see that ‘male social privilege is made manifest in recurrent patterns of language use’ (Cameron, 1995:33). The difference approach, on the other hand, sees women and men as having different cultural patterns, or as Coates (1993) says, as belonging to different subcultures. Uchida (1992) explains that the difference approach corresponds to cross-cultural miscommunication, where members of different cultures bring their own rules of communication to interact with other cultural groups. According to this approach, then,

Women and men carry over to their adulthood the conversational patterns they learned from interacting with their same-sex peers during childhood, and the differences between these patterns creates conflict and misunderstandings when they try to engage in a friendly female-male conversation. Problems of sex differences are, therefore, primarily caused by this cross-cultural miscommunication (Uchida, 1992:548).

Many researchers of language and gender have combined these two main divisions of feminisms (difference and dominance), taking into account other important variables, as I have already stated.

In the 1980s Spender (1980:139) discussed women's language use in patriarchal contexts, referring to results of her data in consciousness raising groups in England. She says,

While women reproduced the male limits of their worlds, they constituted little threat to patriarchal order, but now that they are beginning to encode their own definitions they are unmasking the patriarchal ideology which has defined and confined their world.

Gender differences in language can be traced back to what Coates (1993) and Cameron (1992) have called Folkslinguistics, that is, the work on language carried out before the advent of Linguistics as a science. In terms of taboo language, Coates explains that the general belief is that women's language is more polite than men's, but this generalization

lacks further empirical evidence. She criticizes Jespersen's sexist claims on women's language as well as Lakoff's observations for their lack of scientific support for their assumptions (in Coates, 1993). Coates suggests these two writers somehow intend to prescribe how women should talk and not describe their language.

The main objective of Coates' (1993) study on women, men and language is to discuss sociolinguistic differences between men and women. Discussing women as a social group, Coates explains they form a peculiar social group, different from the characteristics usually attributed to groups under analysis. Social groups are generally identified by: 1) their living in specified neighborhoods, or by having specific group gatherings (such as adolescents on certain places); 2) by their having an acknowledged sub-culture; and 3) by the members' recognition of the group.

Women do form a special social group. However, taking into account the three criteria above, we cannot say that women as a social group generally live in separate 'ghettoes'. They come from many different places, they are members of different socio economic classes, and speak many different dialects or languages. In spite of this diversity, women in general have gradually begun to become aware of their status as a social group.

Specifically for the study of women’s speech styles, the complex relations between linguistic form, communicative function, social context and social structure should be looked at in a holistic approach, according to Cameron, McAlinden and O'Leary (1988).

In their critical appraisal of Lakoff's (1975) famous study Language and Woman's Place, these authors point out the need to re-evaluate the form and function problem (which states that one specific linguistic form is related to one specific communicative function).

They emphasize that it is paramount to take into account linguistic and social contexts for the analysis of linguistic form in natural speech corpora, suggesting that for the analysis of women's speech several kinds of variables be taken into consideration besides gender. They state,

It needs to be borne in mind generally that 'women' do not form a homogeneous social group.

Gender is cross-cut with other social divisions and their relative importance is affected by the specifics of the situation (for instance, in a courtroom or classroom occupational role is likely to be more salient than any other social variable).

(Cameron, McAlinden and O'Leary, 1988:91)

It becomes clear that different constraints come into play for the analysis of texts on women or by women, such as the social class or the ethnic group they belong to, their age, their educational status and the functional/practical purpose of the interaction.

Generalizations, thus, have to be carefully made. As Sunderland (1994:3) points out, the social construction of gender ‘does not operate in a monolithic, universal way’. For example, Galindo and Velasquez (1992), who study the language of Chicanas in Texas and in New Mexico, suggest that even within this specific group, the Chicanas cannot be considered a monolithic entity, and that factors such as socioeconomic and educational levels, as well as geographic regions have to be taken into account.