GENDER AND COMMUNICATION

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GENDER AND COMMUNICATION

• HELSINKI 2008

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THEORETICAL DEBATES IN THE STUDY OF LANGUAGE AND
GENDER 1.) Deterministic approach - Language
(just like gender) is an attribute Most people,
when they think of work on language and gender,
probably think of works like psychologist John
Grays Men are from Mars,Women are from Venus
there is a permanent miscommunications
between women and men in heterosexual couples.
2.) Practice approach Language (just like
gender) is practice. Stereotypes about womens
speechfall apart when talk in a range
of activities is examined in order to construct
social personae appropriate to the events of the
moment, the same individuals will articulate
talk and gender differently as they move from one
activity to another.
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Gender and Multilingualism In settler societies,
postcolonial contexts, diglossic linguistic
situations, and many other multilingual
situations, it may be use of or access to certain
languages which differentiates the speech of men
and women. A research project on the use of
Hungarian and German in Austria focuses on the
effects of urbanization and industrialization on
the speech patterns of women and men. Because the
urban settings associated with use of German have
different meanings and present different
opportunities for young women and men, they use
German and Hungarian differently. Young women are
leading in the shift to German because, for them,
German is associated with urban opportunities,
having husbands who are workers, and having less
strenuous and time-consuming household responsibil
ities, while Hungarian is associated with
having peasant husbands and physically taxing
household and farm responsibilities. Younger men,
for whom the peasant life-style retains the
attraction of self-employment and some measure of
personal autonomy, use Hungarian more than young
women. Because they cannot find Hungarian-speaking
women to marry, however, they marry
German-speaking women and their children tend to
speak German.
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Gender and Politeness Politeness is A special
way of treating people, saying and doing things
in such a way as to take into account the other
persons feelings. On the whole that means that
what one says politely will be less
straightforward or more complicated than what one
would say if one wasnt taking the others
feelings into account. (Brown, 1980, p. 114) In
societies where politeness is normatively valued
or seen as a skill, or where acquisition of
politeness is not an automatic part of language
learning but requires additional training, men
tend to be understood as more polite, and women
are understood as impolite (Malagasy) or
too polite (Java). In societies where directness
is valued, and politeness is seen as a form of
deference rather than a skill, women tend to be
more polite, or at least are perceived as more
polite (many groups in the United States, certain
Mayan womene.g., Brown, 1980). In certain cases,
at certain times, women challenge such dominant
views of their actions.
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Gender and Genre in Egalitarian Societies In
societies that have traditionally been called
egalitarian by anthropologists, men and women
often have their own distinct social spheres.
Participation in culturally central rituals and
concomitant verbal genres is often linked
to (though not necessarily absolutely determined
by) gender. In most of traditional societies
there are some distinction in verbal genres men
tended to tell the two major genres of stories
(trickster stories and bird or animal stories),
and women performed sung-texted weeping at
funerals and on other occasions of profound loss.
Both men and women composed songs and dances for
exchange and ceremonial contexts, although women
composed a more limited number of song types.
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Gender Sensitive Language

• Most of us were traditionally taught in school to
  understand the word men as including both male
  and female people. When the gender of the subject
  is unclear or variable, we have also been taught
  to use masculine pronouns.
• Even the US Declaration of Independence states
  that .all men are created equal
• Why it is preferable to use the proper noun/
  pronoun
• - to be better understood. In the recent decades
  women are increasingly becoming involved in the
  public sphere, so men is no longer understood
  as synonymous to people
• - this is important for people concerned about
  issues of social inequality

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HOW TO USE POLITICALLY CORRECT NOUNS?

• Gendered noun Gender neutral noun
• Man person, individual
• Freshman first- year student
• Mankind humanity, people, human beings
• The common man the common person
• Chairman chairperson
• Mailman mail carrier, postal worker
• policeman police officer
• Steward, stewardess flight attendant
• Congressman congress person, legislator,
  representative
• Dear Sir Dear Sir or Madam, To Whom it May
  Concern

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HOW TO BE POLITICALLY CORRECT WHEN USING PROPER
NOUNS

• Ex. We would never refer to William Shakespeare
  as just William. We call him Shakespeare or
  William Shakespeare. Thus you should never
  refer to Jane Austen simply as Jane, you should
  write Jane Austen or just Austen.
• Solution Refer to women by only their last names
  just as you do for men.

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• Ex. If you are writing about George and Martha
  Washington, referring to him as Washington and
  to her as Martha, conveys a greater respect for
  him than for her. In order to express an equal
  amount of respect for both of them, simply refer
  to each subject by her/his full name George
  Washington and Martha Washington.
• Solution In circumstances where you are writing
  about several people who have the same last name,
  try to use the full name of the person every time
  you refer to him/ her. This option may sound like
  it could get too wordy, but it actually works
  very well in most situations.

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• Ex. You would not call American President Bush
  George, so you should not refer as well to
  British Prime Minister Thatcher as Margaret.
  Simply call her Prime Minister Thatcher just as
  you would write President Bush to refer to him.
• Solution Refer to women subjects by their full
  titles, just as you would refer to men subjects.

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VERONIKA AZAROVA, PhDNEW BULGARIAN UNIVERSITY

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