1.6. Male-female differences
Many Americans have now confronted the issue of language sexism. Concern for gender equality in American society encompasses language issues along with other sociopolitical concerns. In most studies of male-female differences the term “gender” is used in the meaning of “the complex of social, cultural and psychological phenomena affected to sex” (Mc Connel - Ginet 1988). The term “sex” refers simply to female and male physiology.
One of the general findings regarding male-female differences is that women tend to use more standard language features than men, whose speech tends to be more vernacular:
In one of the earliest studies of sex-based language variation, John Fischer (1958) showed that among the group of New England children girls tended to use more word-final –ing than boys.
Walt Wolfram (1969) demonstrated the greater use of standard variants by African American females than males.
The second finding is that women tend to adopt innovative language features much more quickly than men. In other words, women tend to lead in linguistic change.
- American english: Матеріали до вивчення курсу
- Contents
- 1.1. English as it exists today
- 1.2. Dialects vs variety/variation
- 1.3. English in america
- The languages of the usa and canada
- 1.3.1. Canadian English
- 1.3.2. Regional varieties of Canadian English
- 1.3.3. Regional varieties of English in the usa
- 1.4. Social variations of american english
- 1.5. Ethnic varieties of american english
- 1.5.1. Native American English
- 1.5.2. Spanish-influenced English
- 1.5.3. Black English
- 1.6. Male-female differences
- 1.6.1. Approaches to the Explanation of Cross-Sex Difference
- 1.6.2. Differences encoded in language
- 1.6.3. How to Avoid Sexist Language
- 1.7. British and american english: differences in pronunciation
- 1.7.1. Differences in Phonetic Inventory
- 1.7.2. Differences in Quality of the Phonemes
- 1.7.3. Phonotactic Differences
- Intervocalic /t/
- 1.7.4. Divergent Patterns of Phoneme Use in Sets of Words
- 1.7.5. Stress and Intonation
- 1.8. British english and american english: differences in morphology
- 1.8.1. Differences in the Verb
- 1.8.2. Differences in the Noun and Pronoun
- 1.8.3. Differences in the Preposition and the Adverbs
- Time Expressions:
- 1.9. British english and american english: differences in lexis
- British english and american english:
- BrE fulfil, instil may be interpreted as simplification. In AmE we find double “ll” in fulfill, instill, but both forms are used in AmE install(l), install(l)ment.
- BrE BrE
- Individual Words which Differ in Spelling
- Exercise 2
- Exercise 3
- Exercise 4
- Exercise 5
- Exercise 6
- Exercise 7
- Exercise 18
- Exercise 19
- 1. Eastern New England
- 2. Middle Atlantic
- 3. Southern
- 4. North Central
- 5. Southern Mountain
- Exercise 20
- Exercise 21
- List of Abbreviations
- Glossary