GirlTalk–BoyTalk-UniversityofFlorida.pptVIP

Gender Language Derivational Thinking (DT) Linguistic Postulates: number (use of singular/plural structures) sex-based gender (with the masculine form as the root and the feminine derived from the masculine) ranking comparative/absolute (e.g. better, best) e.g. Hardman (1996) Social Features Talking the Talk Conversational Roles Conversational features Some Grammatical Features What do you think? In Living Language (p. 222), George Keith and John Shuttleworth record suggestions that: women - talk more than men, talk too much, are more polite, are indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag, ask more questions, support each other, are more co-operative, whereas men - swear more, dont talk about emotions, talk about sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more. Do we mean what we say? Gender and Sex Do they mean the same thing? English marks gender on pronouns: he/she his/hers him/her Other languages Some marker gender irrespective of actual biological differences (sex) Some make no distinctions (Bali, for example) Can he mean she? What’s wrong with generic masculine terms? Generic term is a hypernym meant to refer to all members of a class. Example: Furniture is a generic term (hypernym) referring the the hyponyms table, chair, beds, desks. This works well with pairs like: Animals: fish, mammals, birds or Cars: Ford, Jaguar, Toyota Man as Hypernym Man: woman, girl, boy ?A man is a man. ?Girls and boys are man/men ?Half of all men are women. ?Man, being a mammal, breastfeed his young. The “Elsewhere” Gender Man includes woman Woman does not include man Therefore, woman is the “marked” term, the more restricted. Man is, therefore, the “unmarked”, the “elsewhere” term: Conclusion: Man is the “human” and woman the “allohuman” (so to speak). And so….? Where do we go from here? Be aware of gender-lad