Stereotypes .

09
Before the emergence of the scientific investigation of gender-linked language
studies, there exist some ideological beliefs that were not supported by any empirical
evidence. Furthermore, Before the 1960s, people used their own perceptions and
assumptions in the distribution of the social practices between males and females. As
a result, such process gave birth to the notion of gender folk linguistic beliefs and
sexist behaviours against women arose. In this part, it is worth taking into
consideration another notion in relation to gender studies named that is stereotypes.
According to Oxford Advanced Learners Dictionary, a stereotype is defined as:
A fixed idea or image that many people have of particular type of person or thing,
but which is often not true in reality(yr & p). Every day we hear news, we meet
people and we see things. Our view of the world is affected by our thinking process,
assumptions and life experience. Stereotypes are the conceptual images that we draw
about other persons and things. In other words, gender stereotypes refer to the some
claimed beliefs that are often seen not true and not practically proved. As Mary
Talbot states:

Gender stereotypes are closely linked with and support

gender ideologies. If we view them as ideological
prescriptions for behavior, then actual individuals have to
respond to the stereotypical roles expected of them. Gender
stereotypes linked to gender ideology reproduce naturalized
gender differences. In doing so, they function to sustain
hegemonic male dominance and female subordination. (Cited
in Janet Holmes and Mayerhoff: ,2003, p472).

For Talbot, gender stereotypes are part of what is called folk linguistic beliefs. He
or she adds:
Stereotyping as a representational practice is at the center
of the notion of folk linguistics. Folk linguistics is a term
linguists sometimes use to refer to (generally) non-linguists'
beliefs about language (Cited in: ibid).

Gender stereotypes are a set of generalized ideological beliefs and

expectations which lead their holders to form bias opinions of the target group
members, which are often negative for about women. By stereotyping that target,
we attach a particular linguistic and non-linguistic behaviour, role and characteristic
to of an individual on the basis of these those ideological assumptions. These false
beliefs and stereotypes about mens powerfulness or dominance and womens
subordinate positions within society affect our attitudes towards them to some extent
and, consequently, discrimination against women might prevail and limit their social
roles. Ultimately, gender ideological stereotypes can be harmful when they become
universally true. For this reason, womens movements and resistance against these
treatments are reflections of the social injustice between the two genders.
Despite the fact that gender stereotypes are often not justified since they are
based on intuitive hypotheses, they are considered as the motivation behind many
researches in the field of language and gender studies. Eckert and McConnell-Ginet
(2003: 85) affirm that:

Stereotypes are the starting point of much research on

language and gender for a reason. First of all, any
research begins with a focus or a hypothesis, and foci
and hypotheses have to come from somewhere. If gender
stereotypes are part of our sociolinguistic life, they
need to be examinednot simply as possible facts about
language use, but as components of gender ideology.
(p.85)

As the above quotation indicates, stereotypes are of a paramount importance for

sociolinguists to examine, since they are shared and common between social groups.
They are their cup of tea since they are the centre of the beginning of language and
gender studies. Every theory was just a simple proposed hypothesis, and has been
investigated many times to be valid or true among all social groups over the world.
Gender stereotypes will remain indispensable for sociolinguists for the sake of analysing
gender differences on all levels in a more scientific way rather relying on personal
observations.
Communityies of Practice (CofP) .10
Investigating the linguistic performance of a single individual in one social
context cannot be relied on to understand language variation since it neglects the fact
that language varies from one context to another. The desire for looking at language
performance from different contextual views urged the researchers to look for a new
approach to address the phenomenon of language variation according to social
context. As a reaction of this, sociolinguists introduced a new term in the
sociolinguistic field, especially for the hope of developing new ideas in gender and
language studies. This approach is called community of practice (CofP) which
.slightly different from the notions of speech community and social network
The introduction of the CofP approach was first made by the
two educationalists Lave and Wenger (1991) for the purpose of the
social learning ienquiry. Later on, Eckert and McConnell-Ginet
(1992) have adopted and brought this approach into sociolinguistics
for the sake of language and gender studies. Following Lave and Wenger
1991, they defined a CofP as follows:

An aggregate of people who come together around mutual

engagement in an endeavor. Ways of doing things, ways of
talking, beliefs, values, power relations in short, practices
emerge in the course of this mutual endeavor. As a social
construct, a CofP is different from the traditional community,
primarily because it is defined simultaneously by its
membership and by the practice in which that membership
engages. (1992:,p.464)

Janet Holmes (2013, p.200) gives another point of view:

Communities of practice develop around the

activities which group members engage in
together, and their shared goals and attitudes.
We all belong to many communities of practice
which share particular goals and ways of
interacting family, sports team, work group,
hiking group, drama club, church choir and so
on.

As a matter of fact, a CofP is very controversial regarding its

basic characteristics that distinguish it from other similar concepts
such as speech community. A CofP is characterized by its
complexity and the dynamic behaviours of its members. More
precisely, what make it distinctive and unique is the notion of
practice that signals mutual involvement between its members in a
particular situation to deal with and understand a particular
problem. From a logical point of view, the members of a particular
CofP may interact differently in different social contexts within a
single community of practice and makes their linguistic performance
varies from one context to another. That is why Eckert and
McConnell-Ginet argued that the research of gender and language
should be investigated in much more details by taking into account
the social and linguistic practice of specific CofP. (Eckert and
McConnell-Ginet 1995: 469: cited in Coates, p218).
In CofP, the linguistic usage of its people cannot be fixed and
appropriate for all times and situations. Therefore, sociolinguists
believe that the choice of a language variety over another by a
speaker depends on its position in that community where he takes
part in a particular practice. Following the same line of thought,
Janet Holmes (2013) points out:

This approach highlights the extent to which

we use language to construct different identities
in different social interactions. Using this more
ethnographic approach, the researcher focuses
on the ways in which individuals perform
particular aspects of their social identity in
specific situations. (p.201).

By paying attention to the influence of the particularities of

the social context and situation, the CofP highlights that individuals
are in a position to come up with a wide range of different linguistic
behaviours as they involve themselves in a certain activity in the
communities where they participate and due to the reason that one
person may be a member of various groups with different types of
professions and relationships, his/her linguistic attitude will vary
according to the situation. Jennifer Coates (2004) adds more
clarifications:

A single individual participates in a variety of

communities of practice at any given time, and
over time: the family, a friendship group, an
athletic team, a church group. These
 communities may be all-female or all-male; they
may be dominated by women or men; they may
offer different forms of participation to women or
men; they may be organised on the presumption
that all members want (or will want)
heterosexual love relations. Whatever the nature
of ones participation in communities of practice,
ones experience of gender emerges in
participation as a gendered community member
with others in a variety of communities of
practice.
(Eckert and McConnell-Ginet 1995: 469).

Janet Holmes (ibid) states that CofP are is useful since

individuals use various linguistic resources in different ways to
construct and express multiple social identities. These identities falls
into two categories, one is on the macro-level social category such
as social class, gender and age. That is to say, a speaker would
rather use a language variety to define himself as a member of
upper class family rather than using the variety of the lower class
and a man would use linguistic forms appropriate to his gender
identity and masculinity rather than using females expressions and
a young speaker would express his social identity of belonging to
the modern generations whose language behaviours is different
from that of old ones. On the other hand furthermore, the micro-
level categories refer to the types of groups with different concerns
and goals or professions such as new gang member, or feisty friend
or youngest child in the family.