The whole woman Sex and gender differences in variation.pdfVIP

Language Variation and Change, 1 (1989), 245-267. Printed in the U.S.A. © 1990 Cambridge University Press 0954-3945/90 $5.00 + .00 The whole woman : Sex and gender differences in variation PENELOPE ECKERT University of Illinois, Chicago and Institute for Research on Learning, Palo Alto ABSTRACT Speakers sex has emerged as one of the most important social factors in the quantitative study of phonological variation. However, sex does not have a uni- form effect on variables or even on variables that represent sound change in progress. This is because sex is not directly related to linguistic behavior but reflects complex social practice. The correlations of sex with linguistic variables are only a reflection of the effects on linguistic behavior of gender —the com- plex social construction of sex—and it is in this construction that one must seek explanations for such correlations. Sociolinguists generally treat sex in terms of oppositional categories (male/female), and the effects of sex on variation are generally sought in linguistic differences between male and female speakers. However, because gender differences involve differences in orientation to other social categories, the effects of gender on linguistic behavior can show up in differences within sex groupings. Data on sound changes in progress (the North- ern Cities Chain Shift) among Detroit area adolescents show that gender has a variety of effects on variables and that the significance of gender in varia- tion cannot be reduced to notions of male or female speech as more or less conservative. The tradition of large-scale survey methodology in the study of variation has left a gap between the linguistic data and