Summary for chapter 7: Gender and Age

Sociolinguists have found that women speak differently compared to men. It is claimed

women are more linguistically polite than men. Apart from that, women and men emphasize

different speech functions. In non- western communities the way women and men speak are

different compared to western communities. In non- western communities, women and men do

not speak in exactly the same way as each other in any community. For example, in the Amazons

Indians community, a wife speaks in a different language from her husband’s language to

distinguish their different tribe. In this community, it is compulsory for a man to marry outside

their tribe. As a consequence, in this community women and men speak in different languages.

Besides, in non- western communities although women and men share the same language, but

there is still a difference exist between men and women. There are some differences in linguistic

features like pronunciation or word shape (morphology). This phenomenon is different with

Western community because in Western community women and men do not use completely

different forms, but they use different quantities or frequencies of the same forms. Though both

women and men use particular forms, one gender shows a greater preference for them than the

other. Women tend to use more of the standard forms than men do, while men use more of the

vernacular forms than women. The linguistic features which differ in the speech of women and

men in Western communities are usually features which also distinguish the speech of people

from different social classes. In the lowest and the highest social groups the women’s speech is

closer to that of the men in the same group than to that of women in other groups.

There are some factors why women choose to use more standard speech forms than

men. First, women are more aware of the fact that the way they speak signals their social class

background or social status in the community. Standard speech forms are generally associated

with high social status. So, women are using more standard speech forms as a way of claiming

such status. It is suggested that women who are not in paid employment are most likely to claim

high social status by using more standard forms. The second refers to women’s role in society.

Women use more standard forms than men points to the way society tends to expect “better”

behaviour from women than men. The third factor is since the status of the women as

subordinate groups, so they must be polite. This factor links to the social status explanation.

Women are looking after their own need to be valued in society. Women also try to avoid

offence to others. The last factor is because vernacular forms express machismo, so only men

who are more attracted to use vernacular language. In contrast, standard forms tend to be

associated with female values and feminity.

As Shuy (1969) mentioned that ‘women continue to be one of the mysteries of the

universe’, because researchers often used the woman’s husband’s occupation as a major criterion

to differ their speech functions but the fact that not all women marry man from the same social

class has lead to the miscategorisation. In such cases, women tend to use standard forms possibly

because of the standard form is an appropriate form which reflected their social background

accurately. Not only that, the interviewer can also give a big effect to the context. Women tend to

be more cooperative conversationalist than men. On the other hand, men tend to be less

responsive to the speech of others, and to their conversational needs. Despite, most of the

interviewers who collected the social data discussed were male. This can be a reason why the

interview context was differs between women and men. Considerably, men will be more

comfortable than women in such circumstances as male solidarity would reduce the formality of

the context which might account for their greater use of vernacular forms. Women’s greater use

of standard speech forms may be a reflection on their sensitivity to contextual factors which

reflected the social distance of interaction with a stranger. This proves that the forms differ in

women’s and men’s speech to the relationship between the people concerned in the context in

which they are operating. Women characterize as status-conscious individuals who use more

standard speech forms to ensure they are perceived as socially statusful.

Besides, research has proved that speech can differ based on the age of a speaker. Firstly,

the voices pitch. Male voices generally sound lower in pitch than women’s. Adult voices also

sound deeper than children’s. However, this can be overlap between women and men as there

will always be some women whose natural speaking pitch is deeper than the men in a

community. For the social and cultural factors, it is more masculine for men to speak with a

lower-pitched voice. So, this is one of the reasons why young boys often develop this masculine

feature by using vernacular forms. Second, vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar can also

differentiate the age groups. The frequency of swear words was minimize as people move into

adulthood. Slang can also act as one of the aspect which reflects persons’ age. Current slang of

young people may sound odd to the older person. It signals the membership of a particular group

according to their speech. Third, for the social dialect cases suggest that they are high in

childhood and adolescence, and then steadily reduce as people approach middle age and once

again increase in old age characterized by vernacular forms.