1.6.2. Differences encoded in language

Many differences in how men and women talk may be grounded in power differences between men and women. Power of men and women’s lack of power are encoded in the language.

Generic “he” and “man”

“He” and its forms “his”, “him” refer to a sex-indefinite antecedents:

e.g. If anybody reads this book he will learn about dialects.

Alternatives:

● informal they that refers to singular antecedents

● to pluralize sex-indefinite antecedents: e.g. If people … they will …

● to use he/she

Increased usage of the noun “man” to refer to “humankind”

e.g. “Man shall not live by bread alone”

Opponents argue that the use of generic “he” and “man” in no way excludes women or obscures their role in society, however experiments show that in reality, there is a tendency for readers to associate “he” and “man” with males alone, particularly when the readers themselves are male. It has been noted that unchecked usage of generic “he” can have far-reaching social implications:

e.g. Women tend to avoid responding to job advertisements containing generic “he” because they feel that they do not meet the qualifications outlined in the ads (Miller 1994)

Family Names and Addresses

Family names and addresses show that male-female differences are encoded in language.

D. Spender (1980) writes that traditional adoption by women the husband’s family name may signify “that women’s family names do not count and there is one more device for making women invisible”. Women have to use titles which indicate their marital status: Mrs /Miss, but both married and unmarried men are using Mr. This indicates that women are defined according to their relationship to men, but men are more autonomous.

Other address forms indicate that men typically are more respected and treated with more formality than women.

e.g. Men are more likely to be addressed with formal “sir” than women as “ma’am”.

Women are more frequently addressed informally as “dear”, “honey”, “sweetie” in social contexts where men would not be addressed in this way.

Relationships of Association

Certain language forms suggest relationships in which women are defined in terms of the men with whom they are associated, but the other way round does not take place.

e.g. man and wife vs woman and husband

(officially) Walt’s wife vs Margaret’s husband

This is indicative of relationship between the owner and the owned (Eakins, 1978)

The conventional placement of male before female in coordinate constructions husband and wife vs. wife and husband, host and hostess vs. hostess and host indicates a pattern of male precedence.

The prescriptive grammarians in the middle of 1600s indicated that the male gender should be always placed first because it is the worthier (Spender, 1980)

Labeling

Many examples of differential labeling, which are the evidence of unequal male-female power relations, are encoded in the English language.

The age span covered by such items as “boy-girl”/”man-woman” illustrates that semantic range of analogous lexical items is not always comparable for males and females. Older women are much more likely to be referred to as “girls” than older men as “boys”.

e.g. One would hardly say “I met this nice boy” to refer to 30-year-old-male.

e.g. TV announcers still refer to the NCAA “girls’ basketball tournament” but never “boys’ basketball tournament”.

In paired masculine-feminine lexical items the feminine member of pair often undergoes semantic derogation. The feminine member of the pair often acquires connotation of subservience or diminished importance.

e.g. mister – mistress

governor – governess

bachelor – spinster

In some cases the feminine item may acquire connotation of improper sexual behavior (e.g. mistress).