LANGUAGE AND SEX

It is known from linguistic research that in many societies the speech of men and women differs. In some cases the
differences are quite small and are not generally noticed. In other cases, the differences may be quite large, overtly
noted and perhaps even actively taught to young children. Generally speaking we cannot explain differences of this
kind in terms of social distance. In most societies men and women communicate freely with one another, and there
appear to be few social barriers likely to influence the density of communication between the sexes. The classic
example of linguistic sex differentiation comes from the West Indies. It was often reported that, when Europeans
first arrived to the Lesser Antilles and made contact with the Caribe Indians who lived there, they discovered that the
men and the women spoke different languages. Men had many great expressions peculiar to them, which women
understood but never pronounce themselves. On the other hand, the women had words and phrases which men
never use, or they would be laughed to scorn. Thus, it happens that in their conversations it often seems as if
women had another language than the men. However, they did not spoke different languages; they spoke different
varieties of the same language, with only lexical differences. The Indians believed that the differences of language
were the result of the mixing of two language groups in the invasion.
Otto Jespersen suggests that sex differentiation, in some cases, can be the result of the phenomenon of taboo.
Taboo (and the fear of bad luck) may have a powerful influence on the growth of separate sex vocabularies. If taboos
become associated with particular objects or activities, such as women are not permitted to use the original name of
things, then new words and phrases are created, and sex differentiation of vocabulary items will result.
However, taboo is not a good explanation for sex dialects. Firstly because it is not clear how differences can be
generalized to the whole community; and secondly, in many other cases we are not dealing with taboo. In many
cases these differences are the result of kinship and gender system (as in English we distinguish between the sexes
of the close relations we want to address brother, mother, sister, father, etc.)So, many languages also have
different terms according to the sex of the speaker doing the referring or addressing. This is simply recognition of the
fact that the relationship brother-sister is different from the relationship brother-brother.
Sex differences in English
The differences are generally smaller, less obvious and more subconscious. Most of the words and phrases that
seem to be sex-bound are exclamations and this supposes that there is some kind of taboo involved here (for
example is more acceptable a man who swears than a woman who does)
However, most differences are phonetic and phonological and taboo cannot be used as an explanation. Amongst RP
speakers, for example, there is a greater tendency for women to have a glottal stop in the consonant clusters of the
word-type simply. Grammatical differences may also be involved: in general, women use forms which are closer
to Standard English forms than men. But, why is that women are considered to use better forms than men?
Sociologically, women in our society are more status-conscious than men. For this reason they are more sensitive to
the social significance of social-class related linguistic variables (Such of multiple negation). Secondly, it seems that
working class speech, like certain other aspects of working-class culture, has connotations or associations with
masculinity which may lead men to be more favorably disposed to non-standard linguistic forms than women. This,
in turn, may be because working-class speech is associated with the toughness.
Given the fact that there are linguistic variables which are involved in this sex differentiation, in a speech community,
in co-variations with social class (higher class forms being more statusful or correct than lower-class forms), then,
there are social pressures on speakers to acquire prestige. These pressures will be grater in women because of their
great status-consciousness. On the other hand there will be pressure to continue using less prestigious non-standard
variants as a signal of strong group solidarity and personal identity. These pressures will be stronger in men because
of concepts of masculinity.

Men and women are socially different. Society lays down different social roles and expects different behavior
patterns from the two groups. Womens speech is more correct because more correct behavior is expected from
them. It seems that the larger and more inflexible the differences between the social roles for men and women in a
particular community are, the larger and more rigid the linguistic differences tend to be. While geographical, ethnic
and social-class varieties are partly the result of social distance, sex varieties are the result of social difference.
Covert prestige: for example the prestige men find in the non-standard English in relation to their masculinity. It is
called covert prestige because attitudes of this type are not usually overtly expressed. Society evaluates different
characteristics in the two sexes; covert prestige exerts a more powerful influence on men and normal prestige on
women.
Linguistic changes are led by men and women follow along later. It seems that women are more conservative than
men. However, this only applies to linguistic changes which are operation away from the prestige standard. Sex
varieties are the result of different social attitudes and behaviors of men and women and, to these attitudes
consequently corresponds a certain kind of language which acts as a social symbol.
Men and women speak as they do because they feel a particular kind of language to be appropriate to their sex. This
kind of appropriateness is reinforced by various social pressures.