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Theories of Language and Gender

The document discusses several theories of language and gender: 1) The deficit theory argues that women's language is inferior to men's and women imitate men's language. 2) The dominance theory claims that men dominate language use due to having more social power than women. 3) The radical theory views language as constructed by men, so women have limited experiences and perceptions. 4) The difference theory says boys and girls develop different linguistic subcultures from different socialization. 5) The reformist theory criticizes sexist language and proposes reforms like using gender-neutral terms.

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Risma Dwi Aryanti
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2K views

Theories of Language and Gender

The document discusses several theories of language and gender: 1) The deficit theory argues that women's language is inferior to men's and women imitate men's language. 2) The dominance theory claims that men dominate language use due to having more social power than women. 3) The radical theory views language as constructed by men, so women have limited experiences and perceptions. 4) The difference theory says boys and girls develop different linguistic subcultures from different socialization. 5) The reformist theory criticizes sexist language and proposes reforms like using gender-neutral terms.

Uploaded by

Risma Dwi Aryanti
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as DOCX, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Theories of Language and Gender

a. The Deficit Theory


In this theory, it is believed that the language of women is not good enough as the language
of men. So, women are considered to copy most of men’s language, while men play
important role in creating the language. As a result, women use the language by imitating
men’s language and by expressing the language that is not as perfect as men. The work of De
Beauvoir (1949) and Danish grammarian Jespersen (1922) supported those ideas.
Meanwhile, Lakoff’s view is a little different. She argued that gender inequity that happened
when women expressed their language occurred because they were marginalized in their
social life. They were hoped to speak in certain ways according to their social level which is
lower than men’s. Consequently, the language expression of women was not as efficient as
men’s.
b. The Dominance Theory
Dominance theory considered that men and women could express language differently
because there was an inequity of power relations between men and women. Men dominated
the language because men had more power in politics and culture in social life. Due to their
power, men could have control over many aspects, including language use. This theory was
supported by the findings of O’Barr and Atkins (1980), Zimmerman and West (1975),
Swacker (1975), Spender (1980) and hultz (1990). Nonetheless, some studies argued against
this theory by mentioning that the term of power in this theory is oversimplified. They argued
that in a communication process, the sex of communicant is less crucial than experience and
social status. It means that women can express language better if they have higher level status
than men’s in society.

c. The Radical Theory


This theory stemmed from the Sapir-Whorfian Hypothesis and Orwell’s views which
considered humans view their world through the language that they use and express.
Therefore, the fact about the world is built based on the language that is created by men.
Women were just the followers who merely imitate the language that were created by men.
As a result, women had lack of experiences and perceptions because they had limited
linguistic expression.

d. The difference Theory


According to The Difference theory, because boys and girls were not socialized similarly,
they had different sociolinguistic subcultures which are called male subcultures and
female subcultures. In this theory, the place of women’s conversation was tried to be
taken back by feminist by arguing that the pattern of women’s speech was different from
men’s. Even women are considered to have some superiority in some certain linguistic
domains. However this theory was criticized by arguing that it just pay attention on
women’s contributions to the language, but it ignore the social reality that women and
men are considered unequal.

e. The Reformist Theory


In this theory, reformist feminists criticized sexist language that is considered
unreasonable and able to create bias when the reality is represented. They also proposed
reforming language by avoiding the use of sexist words in language and neutralizing the
sexist words like chairperson instead of chairman, Ms instead of Missus or Miss, men and
women instead of men, humanity instead of mankind and he or she instead of he.
Although this theory is very popular, some critics were addressed by arguing that the
prejudice cannot be changed because there is no control toward people say and mean.

4. Categories of Gender in language


It is important to know some terminologies that are used to represent men and women
directly in a language. There are four terms as stated in Hellinger and Bubmann (2002):
a. Grammatical gender
In linguistics, the category of grammatical gender is a crucial issue. In some languages,
they consist of three gender classes like feminine, masculine or neauter. Grammatical
gender is a basic part of a noun that determines which kind of agreement such as article,
adjective, verb, numeral or preposition that can follow the noun. In English language for
example, although it is common to refer to the pronoun of an animal as “it”, the pronoun
can be changed to be “he or she” as in person’s pronoun when the sex of the animal is
known. The following sentences will show how the subject pronoun of an animal can be
different:
I saw a cat on the street. It ran so fast. (unknown cat)
I brushed my beautiful cat “Meow”. She was very happy. (house pet and very well- known)
Occasionally, in some languages like in Serbian, Croatian, Bosnian and Russian, new
subclasses of their grammatical gender can appear. In some languages however, it can be
decreased such as in Germanic, Romance and most Iranian language, or even the original
gender system can disappear totally as occurred in English and Persian. In old English for
instance, wif (neuter) and wifmann (masculine) were used to refer to “woman”.
b. Lexical Gender
In linguistics, “gender” is usually used as a property of extra-linguistic femaleness or
maleness. It can be seen in English personal nouns of mother, sister, son, and boy. Lexically,
the meaning of mother and sister represents femaleness while son and boy relate to maleness.
In other words, such nouns can be referred to as “gender specific” (female-specific or male-
specific). However, there are many words that can be classified as “gender-indefinite” or
“gender-neutral” which do not specify the sex of the referent, For example, citizen, patient,
or individual. In all languages, lexical gender becomes a crucial base in deciding the form of
terminologies, address terms, and a number of personal pronouns. In Bahasa for instance,
“bibi and ibu” are used to address aunt and mother respectively, it is similar to “paman and
bapak”, the former means uncle, and the latter means father.

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