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A-level English Language - Evaluate the idea that men and women speak differently.
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An answer to an evaluate question considering whether men and women do speak differently.
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Charlotte Corrigan‘Evaluate the idea that men and women speak differently.’
The use of the English Language varies between men and women across the
country: two juxtaposed dialects which reflect two different genders. Stereotypically,
men’s language is associated with power, dominance and hierarchical authority.
Whereas women’s lexis is deemed inferior, fragile and precious. However, the idea
that men and women’s speech is different is not encoded within their DNA or limited
to their sex. The contrasting speech between the two sexes seems to have been
characterised and cultivated as a result of their socially constructed ‘gender’, to
which they have been taught. Like Judith Butler argued, language is not specific to
either gender, men and women simply ‘perform’ their genders – an idea which she
entitled ‘gender performativity’. Therefore, whilst men and women appear to speak
differently, it is their gender and the societal expectations of men and women which
have shaped and defined the key differences between the two genderlects.
On one hand, the lexical and semantic differences between male and female speech
reinforce the view that men and women’s speech is antithetically juxtaposed, evident
through Deborah Tannen’s publication of ‘You Just Don’t Understand’, underlining
the fundamental differences of the male and female lexicons. More importantly,
Tannen’s research has founded the ‘Different Model’ which illustrates the main
linguistic differences in terms of male and female speech. In particular, Tannen
coined 6 key differences in the way men and women speak such as status versus
support to emphasise how the different natures of male and female language have
shaped the way they speak. Men seek to gain status and authority during
conversation, which is juxtaposed to women who constantly support one another.
Therefore, men and women adopt different lexis to achieve this. This can be
reinforced through Robin Lakoff’s ‘Deficit Model’ illustrating how women use
mitigated imperatives and indirect requests contrasted against men who just issue
commands. It almost appears that the previous subordination of women in a
patriarchal society has repressed language and deemed it as powerless: an idea
proposed by Dale Spender. Perhaps the difference of men and women’s speech is
embedded within our rich history and women’s speech is built purely on the
foundations of male speech, laid out by a patriarchal society.
Arguably, more modern linguistic research has recently revaluated and re-analysed
the discoveries uncovered by folklore linguists. Robin Lakoff is a folklore linguist,
who put forward her own observations of genderlect without any scientific evidence.
She coined the idea that taboo lexis (cursive language) is only constrained to men,
emphasising a major difference between the lexis of males’ and females’ speech.
However, a recent study carried out by Julia Blake uncovered that during an all-
female conversation, women swore 8% of the time, opposed to 4% for men. Maybe
this huge difference illustrates the advancement of women’s speech. However, this
research seems to conclude that women’s speech is no longer stigmatised and is not
too dissimilar from male speech. It seems that it is an overgeneralisation to say that
men and women speak differently, as there are internally diverse groups within both
categories. For example, the emergence of Polari, a language used to communicate
with other homosexual men because at that time, it was illegal to be homosexual.
So, it can be correct to assert that there are differences between the way two men
speak.
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