1. Introduction:
Language plays a notable role in life as means for communication; people have different ways of doing it. In a sense, language states identity, and social individuality. Communication, which is a part of the language which in its turn shapes a person and allow him to use global language experience since there is a little history of the person who speaks, the way he speaks, and the motive of speak stands behind every word said. Every word could be said reflects many personal aspects, especially the speaker's status. All that was mentioned led to the appearance of language differences between genders.
In addition, because of the growth of women's work in academic fields, the gender differences in using language have attracted great attention. Robin Lakoff (1975) was one of the first linguists of her time to classify the connection between language and gender. As a result, linguists began to look more closely at gender variation in language. In an attempt to go beyond "folk linguistic", studies have concentrated on syntactical, phonological and lexical uses of language that included nomination and control, interruptions and other interactional features. At the time that some research has focused only on describing differences, others have worked to show how the reflection of linguistic differences reproduces social difference. As a consequence, Coates (1988) proposes that research on language and gender can be divided into studies that focus on dominance and those that focus on difference.
In our project, we tried to discuss some of the gender differences appeared in a sitcom depending those revealed in linguistic research. For that reason, we have chosen a British sitcom (Mind Your Language) from the 70s era. The sitcom was set in an adult education college in London in an English class of foreign students. The differences in spoken language where mentioned according to their appearance and were discussed and explained referring to linguistic research.
2. Male-Female differences in using language based on the sitcom.
By watching the sitcom, some differences in spoken language between men and women became clear to our group. Those were classified into 7 sections according to the purpose language is used for and the way it was used by both genders. A try to give a brief definition and explanation of each difference was included under each classification.
2.1 Manner
The manner or ‘politeness’ can be defined as a social behaviour or etiquette within a culture. Women and men show a different kind of manner in spoken language or when having a conversation. For instance, from the sitcom, we found that female talks much more politely and formal with someone that she just first met compared to men. This happened when the principle first met Ali in her office, the principal spoke formally with him. In this case, when she did not understand what Ali was saying and she asked him with proper way such as “I beg your pardon?” at minute 1:11. From the observation, we can say that women’s speech sound more polite and they tend to use politeness strategies in their conversation than males. It clearly shows that women show and receive manners more than men do. The reason behind this because of the status of the genders differs. This happens when social issues of power get involved and this implies that women’s speech expected to be more polite than men due to less freedom of movement, insecurity, uncertainty, and lack of confidence. It’s an accepted idea that women are more careful, sensitive and considerate than men. Before a woman talks, she usually thinks the effect her words will cause, so she often appears to be more polite. On the contrary, Xia (2013) assumed that men appear to be rash, and they just say what they want to say and seldom care what others think, so men’s speech is usually blunt and solid.
Over time we can see the change in women's speech where they use manner in speech according to the different situation. For example, a woman shows feminine identity in a romantic dinner, while on the other hand when she is in a meeting she will linguistically construct a powerful identity. When interacting with her children at home maybe she uses different manner to build her maternal identity. On the other hand, men found to have fewer manners when they talk. They tend to interrupt while talking to men or women and use vulgar terms. Holmes (2013) stated that women use more standard forms than men points to the way society tends to expect ‘better’ behaviour from women than men. Following this argument, society expects women to speak more correctly and in more standard way than men because society thinks women are models for children’s speech. In addition, women are known as a subordinate group, therefore they must avoid offending men and so they must speak carefully and politely. In such cases, women use appropriate forms to reflect their social background. Thus, women are more plausible compared to men in this context.
2.2 Attitude
When having a conversation, Carli (2001) men prefer vernacular forms because they carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness. In the sitcom, it showed that men try to challenge each other to show who is better. When Giovani and Max( Italians) fight with each other using their own accent because both of them want to sit beside a beautiful lady, Giovani felt annoying with Max as Max said “Huh!” and showed unpleasant feeling to him. Then, Giovani started to challenge Max by asking him “You think you’re tough?” Thus, it leads to a fight because both of them wanted to show who is tougher in order to win the lady at minute 15:24. In a “masculine” culture the roles are clearly distanced, the men being assertive, tough, and materialistic while the “feminine” involves modesty, nurturing and sensitivity according to (Rising & García-Carbonell, 2006). In other situation in the sitcom, the English teacher (male) talks with the principal (female) about his experience handling and teaching the students in the class. He said that ‘Yes, well looking at my class, I don’t think we will be too bothered with anything like that. “When he talks to the principal (female), he does not look at the principal at all and indicates that he is being sarcastic at the same time showing his arrogant.
(Carli, 2001) stated that “when women exhibit the exact same competent behaviour as men do, even though that behaviour is, in fact, perceived to convey competence in women as well as men, women still remain at a disadvantage.” For example, the principal said “Typical of the male sex! No stamina. He seemed to be able to cope at first, but one day he just snapped, “It was really quite disgusting!” at minute 3:29. When people watch this scene, people probably have a stereotype which this woman shows a negative attitude. In another scene shows that woman is easy to get annoyed with people if something does not go right with her. When Ali does not understand what the principal is trying to say due to different languages, she gets annoyed with Ali because she needs to repeat the same thing all over again at minute 2:26. Women are expected to show greater warmth and nurturance than men do, whereas men are expected to show higher levels of competitiveness and aggressiveness (Eagly & Johannesen-Schmidt, this issue). These scenes show that it appeared inappropriate for women to show bad attitude towards men or women, however it considers as a good trait for men. Thus, it is more plausible for men to show such attitude since it is acceptable in our society and culture. Compared with male speakers, women speakers who communicate in the same threatening or aversive manner exert less influence over their audience (Burgoon, Birk, & Hall, 1991; Burgoon et al., 1983; Perse, Nathanson, & McLeod, 1996).
2.3 Social status
In the sitcom, there is a scene where the principal Miss Courtney has her own way of speaking when she talks to the teacher and the students. Due to her status as a principal, she shows a gap when having conversation with them. At minute 2:44, she stresses the word “Miss” when the teacher, Mr Brown mistakenly called her Mrs. Courtney assuming that she is married already. Even though she has a social status as a principal, as a woman, marital status is still a sensitive issue to talk about. When we talk about leadership, (Merchant, 2012) stated that through the lens of the male-oriented leadership models, men are automatically viewed as better leaders, while women have to work to adopt masculine behaviours in order to be taken seriously as leaders. Because of that, Miss Courtney presents herself as a strong woman with masculine behaviour when talking to students and colleagues. However, many suggestions are made for women to enhance their influence in their influence by combining highly competent behaviour with warmth and by showing other-directedness in interactions with subordinates and colleagues (Carli, 2001). Generally speaking it is more plausible for men to have status as leaders because they appear themselves as decisive, decision maker and using persuasive communication but nowadays many women are slowly become a leader in many workplaces and there should be no discrimination towards women. Usually men generally take a more aggressive task-oriented approach, as identified by their goal-oriented communication style, women tend to be more relationship-oriented in their approach to leadership (Eagly & Johnson, 1990; Gray, 1992; Eagly, 1987; Eagly & Karau, 2002).Female leaders have also been described as taking a more “take care” leadership approach compared to the males “take charge” approach (Martell & DeSmet, 2001; Yukl, 1994; Hater & Bass, 1998).
2.4 Indirectness
Indirectness is often used in our communication as one of communicative skill. This skill occurs is because to keep a harmonious interpersonal relationship between the speaker and listener. According to Searle (1975), indirectness is defined as cases in which one illocutionary act is performed indirectly by ways of performing another. In other words, indirectness happens when someone try to convey indirectly either by verbal or non-verbal communication in order to achieve a certain goal. There are basically a few motives for using indirectness in speech. For example, self-protection, denial, humor, politeness, etc.
It has been observed and claimed by Lakoff (1975) and Swacker (1976) that women tend to use indirect speech in their daily communication. This situation is very different if we compared to men languages because men tend to use more direct words and less complicated than women. We can see from the sitcom that we have chosen, there is indirectness speech occurs between the principal and Mr. Brown. It clearly shows when the principal wants to describe the action by the previous English teacher to the new teacher, Mr. Brown. She uses the word ‘departed’ instead of word ‘demented’. By this way, the new English teacher which misunderstood with the use of word ‘departed’ and he thought that the previous teacher is dead. Basically, the context of the speech is the principal wants to explain to Mr. Brown that the previous teacher stops teaching the class due to anger that caused by the students. The reason of why the principal use indirect word instead of just telling the truth directly to Mr. Brown probably because she wants to make the conversation less serious and make a fun of the previous teacher’s case.
Until today, women still prefer to use indirect words in their speech instead of just give a straightforward speech. This is because, women love triggered their listener’s minds in order to look either they are pay attention with what you are saying or not. Thus, using indirect words can arouse the listener’s interest in knowing what the speaker want to convey.
2.5 Irony
Irony can be mean as the use of words by a speaker to express his/her something especially the opposite of literal meaning. Speaker tends to use irony in his/her speech as their sardonic literary style or to make the speech looks humorous. According to Averbeck and Hample (2008), irony is actually an indirect argument which attempts to convince receiver not to perform a particular behavior or to seek of “win-over” by the receiver (Enright, 1986).
From our observation, we see that men tend to apply irony in their speech compared to women. It happens normally when man belittles himself for any other motive. For instance, he may be want to deceive cunningly and then he tried to use irony in his speech. This actually can be seen clearly from the sitcom during the conversation between Mr. Brown, Giovanni Cupello, and Maximillian Andrea Archimedes Papandrious, where the students trying to explain the situation that they both wanted to sit beside Danielle Favre. Max trying to convince Mr. Brown by saying that he has a problem with his eyesight and need to sit in front. Meanwhile, Giovanni also has problems where he cannot hear well and need to sit in the front. However, Mr. Brown realized that both of them are not serious and just lying by making excuses because they want to sit beside the lady. We can see that, if men trying to speak from what they have on their minds on certain topics, they will do it ironically. In fact, if it seems really dangerous for them to speak what they actually thought, but they will redouble their disguise by involving with mysterious or nonsense content.
2.6 Speech Style
As we all know, men and women differ in the way their act, their style of communication, until the way in influencing others. Generally, men and women use the language differently. The differences that occur between men and women are basically their choice of vocabulary and their speech style.
Until now, we can see that men’s verbal behaviour is more aggressive if we compared to women. According to (Leaper, 1991; Mulac, Bradac, & Gibbons, 2001), women use communication to enhance their social connections and relationships, while men use language to enhance their social dominance. This can be shown from the sitcom when the student from Punjab, Ranjeet Singh trying to tease Ali Nadim, which is from Pakistan. Ranjeet and Ali do not have a good relationship together since both of them come from a different country and they had a conflict due to war issues between their countries. That is the reason why we can see Ranjeet always tease Ali by calling him “Barbarian!” Those action by Ranjeet actually wants to show that he is more dominant than Ali. In fact, it also clearly shows Ranjeet is a racists because he cannot get along with Ali due to their different nationality.
Men and women also differ in their speech style especially when they have to resolve a crisis or conflict. In the attempt on resolving their conflict, men tend to follow their naturally inclines in order to offer a solution. Different with women, where women often seek empathy so that the others will understand and agree with her. However, sometimes men tend to show off their ability by challenging their friend or enemy in order to resolve the conflict. Not only that, men also speak with a higher tone and easy to be rude either in front of a person that has higher status than him or not. We can see in the conversation between Giovani and Mr. Brown, where Giovani use higher tone when Mr. Brown asking them where are they going. Giovani said “We are going outside to havada punch down” with a hand sign of punch to Mr. Brown. Somehow, that is not a proper way for a student by doing that body language with a higher voice, especially when talking to the teacher.
There are differences in communication between men – women, and men – men. It has been proven that men always use rough or bad words when speaking among them. The reason why men usually use rough words in their speech is because of their friendship bonding where they do not always take things seriously. Furthermore, men tend to use those words because to tease their friends or just want to make a joke. From the sitcom that we have chosen, this situation happened during the conversion between Max and Giovani, where Giovani called Max as a fool. It also shows in the scene during Ranjeet called Ali with a rough word, which is “You are a stupid poof.” However, there is a difference in a speech of between men and women. This is because men usually use flowery words when speaking with women. Men tend to be a soft-spoken person especially when they have to communicate with women since women are much more feminine and they tried to respect them. In fact, men will always use flowery words typically if they want to try flirting with a woman. This clearly shows the difference in the sitcom when Max keeps on using flowery words to Danialle in order to praise her. For instance, “You are beautiful. You are wonderful.”
Thus, from the examples that we mentioned above, it shows that men are more aggressive in their way of communication.
2.7 Intonation
The psychologist reported that there are differences in production of intonation between men and women. Generally, women use high-pitch voice in speech, while men tend to use falling intonation in their speech. The reason why sometimes men look like they are always right with what they are saying especially in a conversation between men and women is because the way of men’s intonation that shows their confidence as well as their power. However, both men and women shared similarities in producing of intonation especially when they faced a conflict issue. For example in a situation that needs for men/women to argue with other people regarding a certain issue that probably both parties did not share the same interest. Apart from that, they tend to use high-pitch voice in their speech in order to show their power, dominance and their confidence with what they are saying. As we can see in the sitcom, where Giovani explains to Juan Cervantes about what Mr. Brown’s trying to teach him. However, the situations getting tense when Juan Cervantes keeps on saying “por favor” and he did not understand what Giovani said until both of them use their high-pitch voice and got into a fight.
References
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