Are There Significant Differences Between the use of English by Men and Women, and (if so) are they Linked to Sex or Gender?
While sex and gender may appear to be similar concepts, they are in fact different. The Oxford English Dictionary (2018) online notes that sex divides people into two categories dependant on their reproductive functions. On the other hand, gender is defined as being “expressed by social or cultural distinctions and differences, rather than biological ones”. In this essay, I will be analysing aspects of language to establish whether there is a difference between how men and how women use it while also considering whether there is a link between given sex and gender identity. This will be accomplished by examining and researching properties of the English language through analysing conversational habits such as tag questions. I will also consider a multitude of studies conducted on language in regard to gender to further my argument. Coates (2013, p. 1) states that “gender plays a significant role in the construction of the linguistic landscape of our everyday lives” which helps to emphasise my argument clearly: there are differences between the way men and women use the English language.
Debates about whether there are variances in how the different sexes use language have been prominent throughout the twentieth century. Crawford (1995, p. 22) writes that psychologists, linguists and researchers began to focus on this notion in the early seventies. She also argues that gender is intrinsically linked to both forms of linguistic variation, such as pronunciation and syntax, and stylistic distinctions, with examples of politeness and hesitancy. This demonstrates that there is a basis for the belief that there are evident differences between the language that is used. An early analysis by Otto Jespersen (1922, p. 237-239) implies that women are emotional rather than grammatical, which could be an explanation for his assertion that women use hyperbolic phrases and adverbs too much. He claims that women have a less extensive vocabulary than men and associates the development of new words with the speech of males. The association of the advancement of language being exclusive males presents multiple ideas. Firstly, it highlights the socio-political context of the time with women being considered somewhat inferior in intellect. It also displays that there is some reasoning for the belief that women and men use language differently. However, Jespersen’s research has been criticised as he only reviewed literature as opposed to performing studies himself. Although, this does heighten the foundation that there may be disparities in the use of language. This research considers matters of sex as it is not considering the foregrounded patriarchy but instead analysing the presentation of women within literature. It helps to suggest that differences may be linked to sex rather than gender. However, it could be a mixture of both as it considers the dominating sex as being solely responsible for the introduction of vocabulary into the language which coincides with the power dynamic of society in the twenties. Furthermore, another piece of research that could be considered as mixing ideas of gender and sex is Deborah Tannen’s (1994, p. 85-126). She performed a study on both physical features, such as body language, and “topical cohesion”, which she defines as how speakers discuss, help advance and introduce new topics. Her study is of twenty-minute long videotapes of eight pairs of friends, with one of the friends being male and the other being female. They were recorded by Bruce Dorval at four levels throughout their life, from the age of around seven up until they were twenty-five. From her analysis, she concludes numerous things about both sexes. Firstly, the women appeared to adhere to the task of finding a topic and advancing it the most with lower signs of discomfort being witnessed. In addition, the female participants displayed higher levels of eye contact and body alignment to the person they were conversing with. Whilst this does not necessarily relate to a specific use of language directly or have a high generalisability, it implicates that there are disparities between surrounding elements like body language and attentiveness. It also could be considered that the socialisation of the participants may have affected how they acted within the study illustrating that, just like Jespersen’s research, the dissimilarities could be linked to both sex and gender. On the other hand, Tannen (1990, p. 17) suggests that researchers try to avoid displaying differences in the way the sexes use language because it could be used to defend actions of inequality. This demonstrates that perhaps the distinctions within the way men and women speak cannot be fully assessed as researchers favoured publishing similarities.
Moreover, some research has been done on the disparities with Speer (2005, p. 21), expressing that researchers of gender and language state that there are three main male-female linguistic variances. She outlines these as being the “deficit”, “dominance” and “difference” frameworks. The deficit framework is largely attributed to Robin Lakoff (1975, p. 7-8) and the aforementioned Jespersen, who suggests that the language of women is somewhat inferior and deficient and, by contrast, that the use of language by males is the norm. She illustrates that a woman’s way of speaking allows for them to be considered incompatible candidates for particular job roles. The model considers a multitude of aspects including a woman’s use of hedging, tag questions and rising intonations to classify them as the less confident sex. However, this is heavily criticised by feminists with Cameron (2004, p. 454) outlining their belief that women were instead “socialized into a “feminine” way of behaving” instead of lacking an equal vocabulary. Thus, the model implicates that differences are based around a person’s sex as opposed to gender because the analysis focuses more on biology: a woman, regardless of what she may identify as, will be considered insufficient. In comparison to this, the relation of women to tag questions was somewhat disproven by Dubious and Crouch (1974, p. 289-294). They performed a study where they tape-recorded a small conference which was attended to by both men and women. The findings from the study illustrated that men used tag questions more often than women did, at least for their sample size. This could be an indication that context could be a considerable factor into whether people use tag questions or not: it is not specific to gender, but more so to the context and situation. Secondly, the dominance framework of language and gender concentrated on issues of patriarchy. It aligned with feminist theory that society was patriarchal and consequentially “led to a division of language practices, one belonging to the powerful and the other belonging to women” (Freed, 2004, p. 701.) The theory also suggests that as a species, men are more likely to strive for dominance and authority which includes control in conversations. For instance, it notes that men interrupt more and try to control which topics are being discussed. Men also appear to challenge and protest more when they are interrupted within a conversation. This framework mixes both ideas of sex and gender together. Notably, the belief that dominance is an innate characteristic to all males is based around biological attributes to men. However, the association of women being inferior in combination to the proposed male-dominant society, it can be concluded that the theory considers both sex and gender to be a factor in the differences exhibited. On the other hand, James and Clarke (1993, p. 231-281) analysed numerous studies which researched into the notion of interruption and dominance in regard to gender. They found that there was not a significant difference, with men and women interrupting each other equally. Although, they do add on that there was some evidence that women tended to interrupt to build rapport or as an act of conversational cooperation more times than their male counterparts did. Finally, the difference theory displays the belief that men and women have “different conversational goals” (Wardhaugh and Fuller, 2015, p. 326) and therefore despite using the same words, the two sexes communicate different meanings. This is reinforced by Gray (2002, p. 41) who presents the argument that what is said by a man and a woman respectively seldom mean the same thing despite them using the exact same words. In addition, the difference theory also has underlying focusses on a child’s interaction instead of the aforementioned theories that focus on ideas of patriarchy. It proposes that society subjects men and women to different experiences in life which subsequently leads to differences in speech patterns. The theory has been criticised, though, with people often disregarding it because of the assumption that most human interaction is within same sex groups. In comparison to the other theories, this one appears to be primarily focussing on gender with some consideration to sex. For example, the notion that it is society which differentiates men and women in what they encounter in life is based around both the cultural and social beliefs of the time. In addition to this, all of the theories could be arraigned, with Cameron (2007) writing that the belief that there are disparities between the way men and women use language in communication is simply a myth. Moreover, critics have suggested that while they demonstrate that variations do exist, there are more similarities between the way the sexes use language.
The differences listed above still leave some ambiguities on whether the variations are linked to concepts of gender or sex. Cameron (2007, p. 100-103) weighs in on the debate by discussing research performed of the brain. She refers to a technique called functional magnetic resonance imaging (or fMRI) which measures activities within the brain such as blood flow during tasks. She notes that the evidence highlights that language “may be more strongly lateralized in men’s brains than in women’s”. It is also illustrated that the left-hemisphere of the brain, which is bigger in men, is renowned for dealing with language. Instead, women appear to use both the left and right-hemispheres. She concludes that this could be why men are more likely to suffer from aphasia after an injury. Although this does not restrict men and women to the way they use language, it emphasises that there are differences between the way men’s and women’s brains handle language. Adding to this view, Joseph (2000, p. 35-66) explains that the argumentation for women talking more may be as a direct result of the previous prehistoric roles. Where men were forced to be silent while hunting, women were in charge of foraging and raising children meaning they had longer periods of verbal interaction. He argues that the divide in gender roles led to the development of an early women’s skill in vocal interaction which therefore led to enhancing the advancement of the parts within the brain associated with this throughout evolution. This view provides a reason behind the belief that women talk more than men while referring to examples from the past. However, there are two flaws with this theory with the first being in relation to how true it is. It will never be known whether women spoke more than men at the time as it relies on speculation of the past. Conversational habits of the primitive men and women are impossible to study as, unlike bone structures, conversations were not able to be preserved due to the lack of technology. Likewise, there is a lack of compelling evidence for this belief as it is difficult to determine if the evolution of brain structure was related to this assumption that women spoke more than men. Moreover, both males and females have the power to express themselves as being either masculine or feminine. The social construct of gender is not confined to biological traits like genes, allowing for people to express characteristics that defy the norm applied to their sex. Similarly, Marchbank and Leatherby (2014, p. 6-8) detail how social learning theories propose that men and women acquire behaviour that is deemed acceptable based on their gender because of messages transmitted from society. They note that gender is a “learned set of behaviours”, highlighting the influence that gender has on language. Though, they do illuminate that the messages that are transmitted may differ due to the biological sex with men and women receiving alternate sets. This helps perpetuate that the differences in language use may be a result of both sex and gender. It is difficult to determine the influence of one without considering the influence of other. Using Marchbank and Leatherby’s idea of social theory, it is clear that there is an overlap between the two ideas with what is deemed acceptable being both based on the concepts. Additionally, both Joseph’s and the social theory described by Marchbank and Leatherby perpetuate the belief that roles within society may be dependent on your sex. Although, the views surrounding gender may have some influence on the prescribed roles toward the sexes. Whilst this information may not be directly influencing the language used by men and women, the above research suggests that the roles you are forced to subscribe to do influence your behaviour including your language.
Before writing this essay, I believed that differences between the ways in which men and women utilised their language did not exist. Based on my experiences, women interrupt just as often as men; men use just as many tag questions. However, this was only on a surface level and after researching literature surrounding the topic, it was apparent that there were differences even if they were only somewhat minor. However, I think that only focussing on sex or gender could be considered reductive. The biology of a person or what they identify as is not the only feature that affects language. Many studies have suggested that social class and race may also be pivotal characterisations in use of language. That is not suggesting that gender or sex are not significant as there are differences which exist purely based on both the biology and the view of society on gender on how people interact with each other. Moreover, it is ultimately impossible to consider the effect of gender and sex without deliberating on the other social classifications applied to humanity as a whole.