Thesis ikdurfhetbijnanietzeggen AF...3’ Abstract(The’aimof’this’master’s’thesis’istoinvestigatehow’thediscussionaboutlanguage’ variationandgenderevolvedfromthe’beginning’of

Ghent University

Faculty of Arts and Philosophy

Language variation and gender throughout the 20th

century. A historiographical study

Thesis submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of “Master in de

Taal-‐en Letterkunde: Engels ” by (01002261) Daryen Vandeputte

Supervisor: Prof. dr. K. Willems 2015-‐2016

Co-‐supervisor: dr. L. De Cuypere

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3

Abstract

The aim of this master’s thesis is to investigate how the discussion about language

variation and gender evolved from the beginning of the twentieth century until the

present day. To this end, five older sources published in the first part of the twentieth

century are analysed and compared with one another: Om kvinnospråk och andra ämnen

(About women’s speech and other topics) (Cederschiöld, 1900), Otto Jespersen’s chapter

thirteen “The Woman” of Language, Its Nature, Origin and Development (1922), A.F.

Chamberlain’s Women’s Languages (1912), Men’s and Women’s Language by the hand of

P.H. Furfey (1944) and Louis Gauchat’s L’unité phonétique dans le patois d’une commune

(1905). These sources are, moreover, contrasted with relevant comparable studies

published since the second half of the twentieth century, in particular since 1975, the

year in which Robin Lakoff published Language and Woman’s Place, and, in doing so, put

the gender-‐issue definitively on the map of linguistic variation research. The analysis

shows that in general, there are not many differences among the older publications. For

the most part, they lack empirical evidence to support their claims. These claims are,

moreover, often contradicted by contemporary research. This is true for all sources from

the first part of the 20th century that are analysed, except for the work of Gauchat

(1905). Throughout his work, the reader is provided with empirical data that support

the hypotheses of Gauchat and are based on empirical sociolinguistic research. As a

result, his findings are often in agreement with findings of present-‐day research. In

general, there are far less “absolute truths” on language variety and gender emerging

from present-‐day research than there were claimed to be in the first part of the

twentieth century. However, the work of Gauchat forms an exception to this conclusion.

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Preface

This study was developed in the context of achieving the degree of “Master of Arts in

Linguistics and Literature: English”. I would like to use this opportunity to briefly thank

a number of people for their support and assistance while writing this thesis.

I would like to start of by expressing my gratitude towards my supervisor and co-‐

supervisor, prof. dr. K. Willems and dr. L. De Cuypere, respectively. They have guided me

throughout the process of creating the thesis until the end. For their guidance, their

support, their help, their advice, their answers to my questions and especially their

patience, I am very grateful.

A very special thank you is in order for my aunt, who has helped me with the

layout and in doing so, she has saved me from a lot of frustrations.

I would also like to thank my family, who have had to put up with my mood

swings and nervous breakdowns, for their unconditional love and support. More

specifically, I would like to thank my sister, who was writing her thesis at the same time,

for her support when I needed it the most. On a final note, I would very much like to

thank some of my fellow students who took the time and effort to proofread parts of the

thesis. Their guidance and assistance have proven to be indispensable, without it I

would not have been able to write the thesis.

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Table of Contents

Abstract ............................................................................................................................................... 3 Preface ................................................................................................................................................ 4 Table of Contents ............................................................................................................................. 5 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................................... 6 2 Bio-‐bibliographical background ......................................................................................... 9 2.1 Johan Gustav Christoffer Cederschiöld (1849-‐1928) ......................................................... 9 2.2 Otto Jespersen (1860-‐1943) .......................................................................................................... 9 2.3 Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1865-‐1914) .................................................................... 10 2.4 Paul Hanly Furfey (1896-‐1992) ................................................................................................ 10 2.5 Louis Gauchat (1866-‐1942) ........................................................................................................ 11

3 Status Quaestionis ................................................................................................................. 12 4 Theoretical Background ...................................................................................................... 15 5 Methodology ............................................................................................................................ 18 6 Discussion and Results ........................................................................................................ 21 6.1 Pronuncation ..................................................................................................................................... 21 6.2 Vocabulary .......................................................................................................................................... 27 6.3 Courtesy/politeness ....................................................................................................................... 31 6.4 Primitive languages ........................................................................................................................ 38 6.5 “Women’s” Language ..................................................................................................................... 39 6.6 Conservative Language ................................................................................................................. 41 6.7 Oral Sources ....................................................................................................................................... 46 6.8 Speed of thought .............................................................................................................................. 48 6.9 Speed of utterances ........................................................................................................................ 50 6.10 Emotions vs. rationality in speech. ........................................................................................ 53 6.11 Taboo ................................................................................................................................................. 55 6.12 2nd/foreign language learning ................................................................................................. 58 6.13 Adverbs ............................................................................................................................................. 59 6.14 Non-‐verbal communication ...................................................................................................... 61 6.15 Pronouns .......................................................................................................................................... 62 6.16 Diphthongs ...................................................................................................................................... 63

7 Conclusion ................................................................................................................................ 67 8 Bibliography ............................................................................................................................ 70

(24492 words)

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1 Introduction

No two languages are the same, yet there is more than just variation between different

languages, there is also variation within one and the same language. Variation within the

same language is a phenomenon that occurs on a number of different levels, though

some of them might be more obvious than others. Sociolinguists discovered that there

are a number of factors that influence the way in which one speaks. It depends on what

social class one belongs to, the education one received, the neighbourhood a person

grew up in, his or her age and occupation, etc. All of these factors influence our speech,

and as a result, it can be found that two neighbours will not speak the exact same

language. One of those factors, and perhaps the most influential one when talking about

language variety, is gender. At some point, everybody has probably noticed that a man

and woman with similar social backgrounds do not speak exactly the same language.

Intuitively we assign women with a higher-‐pitched voice, and there are certain phrases

and expressions that would probably be regarded as strange when spoken by a man.

These are just two examples of a wide range of differences in the speech of men and

women. According to the Online Dictionary of Language Terminology (ODLT) a

genderlect is “a variety of speech (i.e. a register or a sociolect) that is specific to either

males or females” (“Genderlect”, 2015). Although this term was not coined by Deborah

Tannen herself, it only really gained acknowledgement after she used it for her

“Genderlect Theory”, which stated that men and women have a different way of making

conversation, with neither one being the right one, or superior over the other; they

simply are different (Tannen, 1990).

Although a number of publications can be found a little earlier on, the topic of

language variation and gender only really gained interest among linguists with the

publication of Robin Lakoff’s Language and Woman’s Place (1975), which is commonly

considered as the birth of the “gender-‐issue” in sociolinguistics. Nevertheless, scholars

were already addressing it in the beginning of the twentieth century. One of them,

perhaps the most famous among them, is the Danish linguist Otto Jespersen (1860-‐

1943). He devoted an entire chapter to language variation and gender in his Language,

its Nature, Development and Origin (1922). He is still considered the most well known

Scandinavian linguist who has done ground breaking research in the field of linguistics.

This chapter, entitled “The Woman”, is generally regarded as one of the first scholarly

7

texts on gender in the history of linguistics and is still the basis for a number of

contemporary debates. In 2013 Margaret Thomas called for a new interpretation of

Jespersen’s famous chapter (see Thomas 2013). However, Otto Jespersen was not the

only Scandinavian linguist dealing with the topic of language variation. The Swedish

linguist Johan Gustaf Christoffer Cederschiöld (1849-‐1928) already mentions an interest

in this topic of language variation and gender in his Om svenskan som skriftspråk (“About

Swedish as a written language) (1897), mainly discussing the difference between

spoken and written language, but also briefly mentioning some differences between

male and female speech. This led him to publish Om kvinnospråk och andra ämnen

(“About female speech and other topics”) in 1900, in which he discussed, amongst

others, differences between male and female speech.

The Scandinavians were not the only ones who took an early interest in the topic

of language variation and gender. Paul Hanly Furfey (1896-‐1992) was an American

sociologist who published the article “Men’s and Women’s Languages” in 1944. Since he

was more interested in the sociological aspects of language variation than in linguistic

aspects, some critics regard his work as being of minor value. In this thesis however, it

occupies a central position mainly due to the fact that Furfey has based himself on

Jespersen’s work on a number of occasions, which provides an excellent basis for

comparison. Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1865-‐1914) was a Canadian

anthropologist who also took an early interest in language variation and gender. Just like

Furfey, he did not have a linguistic background, yet his Women’s Languages was

published in the American Anthropologist in 1912. His work is especially interesting for

its bold statements. Among the Swiss sociolinguists, it is Louis Gauchat (1866-‐1942)

who is most well known. Gauchat studied the French language spoken in Charmey, a

small village in Switzerland. Although his aim was to find language differences related to

the age of the inhabitants, his work has proven valuable for my study since Gauchat

discusses some gender differences as well.

The aim of this study is to look at the evolution that took place in linguistics with

regard to language variation and gender from the beginning of the twentieth century

until the present day. The study mainly focuses on language variation related to gender,

more specifically the differences in language used by males and females. Other

sociolinguistic aspects such as ethnic origin, age or social class will not be dealt with,

although they are not unrelated to the subject of gender. In order to answer the question

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of how the topic of language variation and gender has evolved since the beginning of the

twentieth century, I will compare older sources and contrast them with contemporary

research that comes as close as possible to recreating similar questions that were posed

in the beginning of the twentieth century. Furthermore it is important to bear in mind

that the conclusions drawn in this study with regard to the sources of the first part of

the twentieth century may not be entirely representative of their time, since they make

up only a small selection of a probably much larger group of texts. The same can be said

of the sources of the end of the twentieth century; they were chosen because of their

acknowledged importance. Before I proceed with the analysis, some background

information about the authors of the first part of the 20th century is in order, and will be

provided in the following section.

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2 Bio-‐bibliographical background

2.1 Johan Gustav Christoffer Cederschiöld (1849-‐1928)

Johan Cederschiöld was born in Stockholm in 1849. After his philosophy studies he

became a teacher in Nordic languages in 1875. He was the principal of Gothenburg’s

elementary school for girls for 7 years, from 1882 until 1889. It is quite possible that it is

during this period of time that Cederschiöld became interested in the female language,

although no conclusive sources on this matter were found. He received the title of

professor in the Nordic languages in 1893 and taught at Göteborg’s University. From

1889 onwards, Cederschiöld was a co-‐worker of the Swedish Academy’s Ordbok öfver

svenska språket (“Dictionary of the Swedish language”). He also developed some rich and

significant linguistic achievements in a number of different fields, including studies of

the Icelandic saga’s (Bandamanna saga, 1874), a study conducted about dead words

(Döda Ord, 1893) and a study on sentences without a subject (Om s.k. subjektlösa satser i

svenskan, 1895). His most famous work for which he is most often remembered today is

Om svenskan som skriftspråk, published in 1897 and revised in 1902, but his interest in

language stretched to a variety of different linguistic subjects. From 1885 until 1888 he

was a member of the committee for investigation of education in private schools for

girls. He received a royal prize in 1902 by the Swedish Academy (Meijer et al. 1904).

2.2 Otto Jespersen (1860-‐1943)

Otto Jespersen, perhaps Scandinavia’s most famous linguist, was born in Denmark in

1860, a good ten years after Cederschiöld. In 1877 he attended the University of

Copenhagen to study law, yet decided in 1881 to focus completely on his languages until

he received his master’s degree in French in 1887, all the while supporting himself

through a part-‐time job as a schoolteacher. He was an English professor at the

University of Copenhagen from 1893 until 1925, during which he also wrote his most

famous book, Language, its Nature, Development and Origin, published in 1922. His

interest in languages is spread over a variety of topics, such as phonetics, grammar,

10

syntax and language development. In 1930, he chaired the first International Meeting on

Linguistic Research in Geneva (Falk 1992).

2.3 Alexander Francis Chamberlain (1865-‐1914)

Alexander Chamberlain was born in England in 1865 but was raised in America. He later

on moved to Ontario, studying modern languages at the University of Toronto, receiving

his B.A. degree in 1886. His main interests were in ethnology and anthropology; he

became a fellow in modern languages as well as in anthropology. In his anthropological

work, he paid particular attention to the linguistic side. He received his Ph.D. in 1892

and was appointed professor in anthropology in 1911. Chamberlain published regularly

in the American Anthropologist, which is also where his Women’s Languages (1912) can

be found. For nine years he was the editor of the “Journal of American Folk-‐Lore”, as

well as the “Journal of Religious Psychology”. He made a lot of contributions to the “New

International Encyclopaedia”, the “Encyclopaedia Britannica,” the “Encyclopaedia

Americana”, and the “Handbook of American Indians,” for example, placing a large

amount of accurate knowledge at the disposal of the general reader (Boas 1914).

2.4 Paul Hanly Furfey (1896-‐1992)

Paul Hanly Furfey was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1896. He was a man of

many interests from a very early age: after attending Boston College where he received

an A.B. at the age of 21, he specialized in Psychology at The Catholic University of

America. The following year he earned his master of arts degree at St. Mary’s University

and afterwards studied Theology for three more years at the Sulpician Seminary in

Washington, D.C. At the age of 26 he returned to the Catholic University of America in

order to receive his doctorate with Sociology as his major and Psychology and Biology as

minors. His dissertation was a study of preadolescent boys at St. Martin’s School for

Boys, thus combining a large number of his variety of interests: their language, cultural

and psychological behaviour and their biological wiring. He then travelled to Germany to

study medicine from 1931 to 1932. Besides his genuine interest in a number of different

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scientific fields, Furfey held a strong devotion for his faith, and he was ordained a priest

in 1922. It was his belief that science and religion were not mutually exclusive, and a lot

of his work was instigated by his religious beliefs. Furfey’s work can be divided into two

parts; most of his early work was strictly research oriented, such as The Gang Age

(1926) and The Growing Boy (1930). His latter work was more theological and ethical in

nature, he found that Christian values provided a framework in which existing social

problems were to be analysed, evaluated and corrected. Furthermore, Furfey was

passionately involved in social reality, being convinced that sociology could and should

serve the needs of people. His Men’s and Women’s Languages (1944) can also be situated

in this period (Morris 1993).

2.5 Louis Gauchat (1866-‐1942)

Louis Gauchat was a Swiss linguist. He studied in Zurich and Paris and worked with

Heinrich Morf on Le patois de Dompierre in 1891. He became a high school teacher in

Bern and Zurich and later on he was appointed the position of Associate Professor. From

1902 to 1907 he was a full professor in Bern. In 1899, he founded Glossaire the patois de

la Suisse Romande (Glossary of dialects of French-‐speaking Switzerland) together with

Jules Jeanjaquet and Ernest Tappolet. The aim of this institution was to publish

comprehensive studies of Switzerland’s French dialects. The first issue of the glossary

was published in 1924. Along with Albert Bachmann Gauchat founded

Phonogrammarchiv of the University of Zurich in 1913. From 1926 to 1928 he was

President of the University. Gauchat’s main focus was on the Swiss dialects, which is

shown in his work: L’unité phonétique dans le patois d’une commune (1905), Langue et

patois de la Suisse romande (1907), Les noms de lieux et de personnes de la Suisse

romande (1919). Within his works, he examined a number of different sociological

factors that could be found in the dialect, in particular age and gender (Wüest 1997).

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3 Status Quaestionis

There seems to be a universal consensus that it was Robin Lakoff’s Language and

Woman’s Place (1975) that has put language variation with regard to gender definitively

on the linguistic map. It is true that since the 1970s there has been a sudden boost in the

publication of linguistic studies that dealt with gender as a factor for linguistic variation,

though that does not mean that it is a recent phenomenon. The interest in language

variation and gender dates back to at least the beginning of the twentieth century when

Cederschiöld’s work on this subject was published. Even though this may appear to be of

minor value since not many contemporary linguists are familiar with his work, he

already addressed a lot of contemporary ideas on the matter, making his work

particularly noteworthy. The same can be said for other linguists who wrote about

language variation and gender in the beginning of the twentieth century. While some

difficulties arise in trying to determine their influence on later research, this problem

does not occur when it comes to Otto Jespersen, who was investigating the relationship

between language and gender as well, around the same time. Jespersen is without a

doubt the best known linguist from the beginning of the twentieth century; his works

are frequently quoted by scholars around the world and they never cease to be the topic

of debate. It was just in 2013 that Margaret Thomas asks for a new reading of

Jespersen’s views on language and gender. Thomas states that the chapter 13 entitled

“The Woman” in Jespersen’s famous book Language, its Nature,Development and Origin

(1922) has served “as a touchstone for feminist narratives of the history of the

discussion of language and gender” (Thomas 2013: 378). She argues that it is interesting

to look at this text from a different angle, without however neglecting its previous

linguistic importance. Thomas feels that Jespersen’s “The Woman” deserves a reading

that takes into account the culture and time in which it was produced, and its influence

on present-‐day scholarship regarding language and gender:

Jespersen’s Chapter 13 is now read as the prime early example of conventional

stereotypes and preconceptions about women’s language that consider it inherently

defective relative to men’s language. As such, Jespersen’s text is introduced into accounts

of the history of language and gender studies in tones that range from detached

amusement to derision (Thomas 2013:379).

13

It was only about fifty years after the publication of Jespersen (1922) that

linguistics took a real interest in the topic, but there has been a steady flow of

publications on the matter ever since. It started with Robin Lakoff (1975), but a large

number of sociolinguists soon followed in her footsteps. One of them was Cheris Kramer,

who already in 1974 published an article in which she is concerned about how men and

women use the English language differently. She wants to know if there are differences

between the sexes in their linguistic competence and looks for systems of co-‐occurring,

sex-‐linked, linguistic signals in the United States (Kramer 1974). Differences with views

from the beginning of the century are already apparent: the focus is on the United States,

on the own culture, instead of on more primitive cultures, which is one thing that most

of the older sources have in common.

In 1975, Marjorie Swacker aimed to prove that the sex of the speaker is an

important sociolinguistic variable. She feels that "previous research on the matter failed

totally to consider the sex of the informants" and that "as a result, research with an eye

to speaker sex is shockingly meager" (Swacker 1975: 79). She then conducted her own

experiment using 34 informants with as little variation in background as possible, that

were asked to describe three pictures. She came to some conclusions that went against

the general intuitive opinion, such as that men spoke for considerably longer intervals

than women did. She finds that there clearly are sex-‐specific speech patterns (Swacker

1975).

In her Women, Men and Language: A Sociolinguistic Account of Gender Differences

in Language (1986), Coates contrasts and aims to explain the four approaches which

emerged since the publication of Lakoff (1975), namely deficit, dominance, difference

and dynamic approaches. These four approaches represent the perspective with which

linguists have looked at language and gender. She surveys the initial result of

sociolinguistic investigations of variation associated with the speaker’s gender. The

importance of her work is made clear due to a second and third edition in respectively

1993 and 2004. A final very important linguist with regard to language and gender is

Deborah Tannen. In You just don’t understand (1990) she argues in favour of the

difference approach. It is her belief that men and women belong to different subcultures,

and that they act accordingly. This is noticeable in their behaviour as well as in their

speech. She believes this is taught to us since childhood and results in men and women

communicating differently. The main aim of her work is to compare gender differences

14

in language to cultural differences and to compare conversational goals. This led her to

the conviction that men tend to use a “report” style, which means they try to

communicate factual information, as opposed to women tend to use a “rapport” style,

which means they show greater interest in relationships, not facts (Tannen 1990).

The foregoing survey of materials is of course not exhaustive; it is but a small

fraction of a large body of research on language variation and gender. However, the

sources we have mentioned cover a wide range of different topics within the field of

language variation and gender. What they have in common is that they attempt to give

scientific evidence for the existing general opinions about speech differences between

men and women. This is also what linguists attempted to do at the beginning and the

first part of the twentieth century. It could therefore prove useful to make a comparative

study between older and present-‐day studies in order to better understand the

development that took place between now and then.

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4 Theoretical Background

When talking about language variety in relation to gender, it must first be made

clear what is meant by “gender”. In today’s society, it could be interpreted in a number

of different ways, and very often the term is used interchangeably with “sex”. “Gender”

and “sex” however, are not synonyms and it is of great importance not to confuse the

two. Social sciences typically distinguish between a biologically constructed sex and a

socially constructed gender. They use the term “sex” to refer to biological distinctions

between males and females, and the term “gender” to refer to the psychological features

or attributes associated with the biological categories (e.g. Deaux, 1985, Unger, 1979,

Giddens, 1989). “Sex” thus refers to a biological concept, while “gender” denotes a

societal definition. There are various scientists who have argued against this distinction

since “it is not at all clear the degree to which the differences between males and

females are due to biological factors versus learned and cultural factors” (Lippa 2005:

4). For the purpose of the present study, I will follow the traditional view in which

“gender” denotes psychological, social and cultural differences, since the focus of this

thesis is not on what separates women from men, but on the evolution in the field of

sociolinguistics.

According to Chambers “the rise of sociolinguistics as an academic discipline in

the second half of the twentieth century marks one of the most significant developments

in the history of language study” and “with the rise of sociolinguistics, for the first time

in the history of language study there was a linguistic discipline that dealt with language

as a variant, continuous and quantitative. Sociolinguistics has developed as a linguistic

theory in which the linguistic constituents (…) are variables and their combinatorial

possibilities are constrained not only by co-‐occurring linguistic constituents but also by

co-‐occurring social circumstances” (Chambers 2010: 11). Within the field of

sociolinguistics, a number of different areas of study emerged. Amongst them is the

variationist sociolinguistics, in which this master’s thesis can be situated. Variationist

sociolinguists are interested in linguistic variation that is related to different sociological

factors, for instance age or education for example, or, in this case, gender.

The methodology favoured in most modern variationist sociolinguistic research

is the use of statistical programs. Tagliamonte refers to this as the ‘Principle of

Accountability’: it involves counting up the number of tokens of the variant under

16

investigation and comparing it to the number of times it could have occurred. It is not

simply counting how many times it is used since this is not very informative

(Tagliamonte 2012). It is important to know what the counts and the calculation of

distribution mean, in order to be able to interpret them correctly. It is critical to know

how a particular type of context compared to another influences a variant. With regard

to gender, one counts the times a variable occurs in a string of speech, since the

differences in language use between men and women tend to be of a quantitative rather

than a qualitative nature. Variationist sociolinguists agree on the fact that the way in

which one speaks is always related to context, and that gender-‐related variables are

more pronounced in same-‐sex groups than in mixed-‐sex groups. This is due to the fact

that people tend to accommodate to the style of the person they are speaking to

(Thomson, Murachver & Green, 2001).

As mentioned before, when talking about language variation and gender, it is

impossible to avoid Robin Lakoff, author of Language and Woman’s Place (1975).

According to Cuellar, it “has opened a new strand in linguistic studies” (2006: 137). Her

work can be seen as the starting point of the study of language variation and gender,

since it opened the doors for a number of linguists to start investigating this matter as

well. Language and Woman’s Place (1975) is regarded as an inspiration for many

different strategies with regard to studying language and gender. Furthermore, it is

praised for emphasizing a number of other social aspects besides gender as well, such as

class, power and social justice. However, she focuses mainly on the differences in

language between men and women and proposes that there are a number of ways in

which women’s speech can be distinguished from that of men. As opposed to sources

from the first part of the 20th century, Lakoff actually supports her claims, turning a

sheer opinion into a scientific fact. It comes as no surprise that her work has been

criticized by a large number of non-‐believers:

“From the point of view of today’s researchers, the major drawback in Lakoff’s work is its

lack of any empirical basis. Rather than collecting corpora of male and female speech,

Lakoff made claims based on her own intuitions and anecdotal observation of her peer’s

language use. Many of these claims have, not surprisingly, proved contentious. Yet,

despite criticisms of Lakoff’s methodology, the set of features she somewhat arbitrarily

selected as markers of women’s speech style continue to figure in research on sex

differences. Because of the importance of Language and Woman’s Place (LWP) at a time

17

when the field had yet to establish itself, many later researchers apparently felt obliged

to begin their own investigations with the so-‐called ‘Lakoff hypothesis’ (Cameron,

McAlinden &O’Leary 1988: 75).

Nevertheless, her work has put the topic of language variation and gender definitely on

the map, something that no one before her was able to do. It aided the acknowledgement

of the topic as a subdivision of sociolinguistics, and encouraged other scientists to

research the matter as well. Furthermore, she drew on earlier sources dating back from

the beginning of the twentieth century, proving that their work is still highly relevant as

well.

18

5 Methodology

This study attempts to formulate an answer to the question of how the discussion of

language variation with regard to gender had evolved since the beginning of the

twentieth century. In order to come to an answer, five works on language variety and

gender written in the first part of the 20th century have been analysed and then

compared and contrasted with relevant works from the end of the twentieth century.

The first step was to find sources from the beginning and first part of the

twentieth century related to the topic of language variety and gender. This has proven to

be relatively difficult since there was hardly any interest in the subject at that time, or at

least not enough to actually write it down. Through an extensive process of looking for

sources on the topic written in the first part of the 20th century and then reading them, I

then selected five works on the topic of language variation and gender that form the

basis of the present study, and are an accurate reflection of the mind-‐set of the

beginning of the twentieth century. That basis consists of Om kvinnospråk och andra

ämnen (About women’s speech and other topics) (1900) by the hand of Johan

Cederschiöld, Louis Gauchat’s “L'unité phonétique dans le patois d'une commune” (1905),

Women’s Languages (1912) from Alexander F. Chamberlain, Otto Jespersen’s chapter

thirteen “The Woman” from his Language, Its Nature, Origin and Development (1922)

and finally Paul Hanly Furfey’s Men’s and Women’s Language (1944).

Initially I opted to divide these five works into smaller groups based on the

nationality of the author in order to make an accurate comparison, but upon realising

that this division led to an unnecessary amount of repetitions and conclusion, I chose to

divide them according to the subjects that are dealt with, as can be seen in the table

below:

19

20

This table should be interpreted as follows: in the left-‐hand column are the subjects that

are mentioned by one or more authors in their work in the beginning and first part of

the 20th century. If the subject is also addressed by a contemporary author, this is

indicated in the corresponding boxes. Empty boxes signify that the subject is not

mentioned by that particular early 20th-‐century author. The numbers before the

contemporary authors are reference numbers that can be found in bold and in between

brackets throughout this thesis in order to maintain a clear overview.

The second step of the process was the actual analysis of the early 20th-‐century

works. Each of the sources was analysed and compared in a similar way. The first thing

to do was translate the works of Louis Gauchat and Johan Cederschiöld into English, and

then I engaged in a close reading of the five sources. I subqequently divided each work

according to the subjects dealt with in it. For each subject I determine the early 20th

century authors who address it, and when the same subject is raised by more than one

author, I compared the discussions to establish similarities and differences among the

authors.

The third step consists in comparing those findings from the beginning and first

part of the 20th century with studies that appeared at the end of the 20th century. For

each topic I looked for comparable contemporary sources, regardless of whether they

shared the same view of the earlier authors. After carefully reading them, they were

contrasted with the observations found in the earlier sources. In the process of selecting

comparable contemporary sources, I mainly looked at the compatibility of the texts, viz.

whether or not they came as close as possible to the topics introduced by the earlier

authors. In selecting relevant texts, I deliberately did not opt to use publications that

simply reiterate the observations found in the earlier sources. It is my goal to compare

these sources with contemporary studies in an objective way, and I did not want to

distort the outcome by deliberately using contemporary research with the same

findings, or conveniently leave out works that go against them, simply to get a foregone

result.

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6 Discussion and Results

6.1 Pronuncation

Men and women use language differently on a number of different levels. According to

Jespersen, one of those levels is with regard to phonetics. In his work, he gives a number

of examples proving that women have a different pronunciation than men in certain

cases. Jespersen mentions the beliefs that old grammarians attributed a more advanced

pronunciation to women, because they raised their vowels towards the direction of [i]

(Jespersen 1922). Based upon all his examples, Jespersen claims that it is the women

who pronounce certain sounds differently than men. It could be that he is implying that

men set the norm for pronunciation, and that women tend to deviate from it. For

example, Jespersen states that “ In France, about 1700, women were inclined to

pronounce e instead of a” (Jespersen 1922: 244). By using the word instead, rather than

whereas, Jespersen implies that it is not a matter of simply pronouncing something

differently, but that it is women who are not using the correct pronunciation.

What is striking in Jespersen’s work is that he seems to believe that such pronunciation

differences between the two sexes are not common in the English language. He states

that “in present day English there are said to be few differences in pronunciation

between the two sexes (…)”(Jespersen 1922: 245). He also points out that the few

differences that can be found in the English language between men and women are

isolated instances that lack deeper significance, e.g. women pronounce the word soft

with a short vowel while men pronounce it with a long vowel (Jespersen 1922).

Moreover, Jespersen claims that, from a phonetic point of view, those few speech

differences between men and women are negligible and that, in English, men and

women share the same language (Jespersen 1922).

Contemporary researchers seem to refute Jespersen’s theory that differences in

pronunciation between the two genders do not occur in the English language. William

Labov (1) and Peter Trudgill (2) conducted two of the most well known studies in

sociolinguistics today, in 1972 and 1975 respectively. Both studies have proven that

pronunciation differences can be found between men and women’s speech in English.

Labov found that women in careful speech use fewer stigmatized forms than men, as

well as that women are more sensitive to prestige patterns (Labov 1972). Trudgill came

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to the same conclusion by conducting a study in Norwich, namely that women’s speech

is more closely related to the standard language and thus carry a higher level of prestige,

and that they use these forms more frequently than men (Trudgill 1972).

In her work Women’s Speech: Separate But Unequal (1975), Kramer (3) considers the

evidence that proves that men and women talk differently. In doing so, she agrees with

the fact that women are more likely than men to use phonetic forms that are considered

correct. These are just three works in a vast body of literature that are all on the topic of

phonetic differences between men and women. Contemporary research has not only

shown that women and men do have differences in how they pronounce certain sounds,

but moreover that women tend to pronounce them in a way that is closer to the

standard language than men.

According to Furfey, differences in language usage between men and women

occur on different strata in a language, and thus can also be found on the phonetic level.

Furfey paraphrases a study by Waldemar Bogoras, according to which phonetic

differences between men and women can be found among the Chukchi, a Mongoloid

tribe in Siberia (Furfey 1944: 218). Bogoras found that “women tend to substitute ts for

ch and r, and tsts for rk and chh” (Furfey 1944: 218, cited from Bogoras 1911).

Furthermore, he found that men were more prone to drop intervocalic consonants,

especially in the Kolyma district (Furfey 1944: 220). Because of the phonetic differences,

it may appear that men and women of that tribe speak a different language. However,

Furfey warns us to be careful when using the term ‘women’s language’, since it is not a

completely different language. The findings of certain differences on the phonetic level

contribute to his assumption that we are not dealing with two distinct languages,

namely a ‘men’s language’ and a ‘women’s language’, but rather with two variations of

the same language.

Chamberlain bases himself on research by Ehrenreich for commenting on the

differences in phonetics. Ehrenreich found proof of a “women’s language” among the

Caraya. He claims that women will insert a k in intervocalic position, whereas men of

that tribe will not. As an example, he gives the word “rain”, which, if spoken by a man, is

biu, but if spoken by a women, it would be biku (Chamberlain 1912:580, paraphrased

from Ehrenreich 1894). Another difference that Ehrenreich found is that the initial k of

the women is dropped by the men (Chamberlain 1912, paraphrased from Ehrenreich

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1894). This may seem trivial, but it is in fact of chief importance. A man is supposed to

use the proper language attributed to men, otherwise he can be seen “as a woman”.

Both Furfey and Chamberlain agree that there are differences in language usage

between men and women on the phonetic level. Moreover, they have based themselves

on two different studies, one on the Caraya language in Brasil, and one on the Chukchi in

Siberia, and they draw the same conclusion: to some extent intervocalic consonants are

dropped by men. Chamberlain only mentions dropping an intervocalic k, while Furfey

notices a dropping of intervocalic consonants, “principally n and t “(Furfey 1944: 219).

Contemporary studies have also come to the conclusion that differences in

language use between men and women manifest themselves on the phonetic level.

Phonetic differences are usually restricted to specific communities in a specific

geographical area, such as the black population Hillsboro, North Carolina, in which it

was found that women use fewer stigmatized forms than men and prefer to use the

prestige form with regard to pronunciation (Anshen 1969) (4), or a phonetic study of

certain vowels in Detroit speech, in which it was found that women of the lower-‐middle-‐

class fronted those specific vowels more than men did (Fasold 1968) (5). Most studies

that took into account phonetic differences also seem to agree that women tend to use

the more “correct” form, i.e. the standard norm (7)Levine & Crockett 1966; (6)Wolfram

1969). It appears that Furfey and Chamberlain were right to claim that phonetic

differences can be found between men and women’s speech.

Perhaps the most detailed account on pronunciation comes from the Swiss

author Louis Gauchat. In his work, Gauchat focuses on phonetic variation regarding the

age of the speakers, claiming that younger generations behave and speak differently

from older ones, in their behaviour as well as in their speech (Gauchat 1905). However,

Gauchat found that certain distinctions in pronunciation were the result of not only a

difference in age, but also because of a difference in gender, as is discussed below.

Gauchat found, for example, that the sound /ɬ/ is found in isolation as well as in

conjunction with the consonants /p/, /b/, and /χ/. While other scientists believe that

the cluster /χɬ/ is a voiceless palatalized /l/, Gauchat claims to hear a remnant of the /c/

before the/ɬ/, which is indeed partially unvoiced and a confirmation of his position is

the fact that the modern reduction of /χɬ/ is /χ/, just as /pɬ/ and /bɬ/ are reduced to

/pχ/ and /by/. Gauchat argues that this evolution from /ɬ/ to /y/ occurs not only

throughout northern France, but also in the dialects of French-‐speaking Switzerland. In

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Charmey, the village in which he conducted his study, the evolution was also noticed

despite frantic, unsuccessful efforts made by schoolteachers to eradicate the patois /y/.

Gauchat came to the conclusion that the younger generation, aged 1 to 30, exclusively

says /y/, while the older generations still pronounced /ɬ/. In his process, he also found

differences between genders. He noted that in the middle generation (aged 31 to 60), of

those who were between the age of 30 and 40, there was a fluctuation between the two

pronunciations, but only among the women, who sometimes said /y/ (Gauchat 1905).

Since gender differences were not Gauchat’s main concern, he does not elaborate

any further on his findings, which makes it hard to draw any conclusions beyond stating

that phonetic differences between the two genders do seem to occur. It is hard to make

any predictions on whether this is an isolated case in which women are quicker to adapt

to changes in pronunciation, or whether it is a general pattern. There could be physical

factors involved that would make it easier for women to pronounce /y/ instead of /ɬ/

than men, or it could be related to age and the fact that the pronunciation change is first

noted among the youngest generation, which is usually raised by the women. Either

way, it is not possible to come to any sort of conclusion based on this example alone.

Another phonetic change that Gauchat noticed, was that the sound /θ/ very easily

shifts to /h/, as the result of a sloppily executed movement of articulation. The tip of the

tongue that should be placed between the teeth now stops mid-‐way to let air pass

through (Gauchat 1905). Of course, not all /θ/ will be changed to /h/, and a lot depends

on the following vowels:

If /θou/ has been quicker to become /hou/ than /θa/ has to become /ha/, this may be

due to vowel quality: /ou/ is articulated farther back than /a/ and the distance from /θ/

to /o/ is thus greater. The movement of /θo/ expends a bit more energy than that of

/θa/. (Gauchat 1905: 34) (Here and elsewhere, translations from French are mine, DV)1

Here, Gauchat notices again that in general, older generations tend to maintain

/θ/, while the youngest generation of those aged between 1 and 30 are moving toward

/h/. Furthermore, Gauchat discovered that the pronunciation of /h/ was “particularly

present among girls” (Gauchat 1905: 35). He was intrigued by this discovery, which

1 Si /θou/ a plus vite passé à /hou/ que /θ/ à /ha/, cela peut tenir à la nature des deux voyelles: /ou/ se pronounce plus en arrière que /a/ et la distance de /θ/ à /o/ est par consequent plus grand. Le movement /θo/ coûte un peu plus d’énergie que /θa/.

25

explains why he decided to investigate the matter more thoroughly. He interviewed

boys and girls of different ages separately, and noticed that while both of them

unconsciously used the sound /h/ instead of /θ/, and that when they had to repeat

themselves, they used /θ/, without realizing that they ever said /h/ in the first place,

this phenomenon occurred more often with girls than with boys (Gauchat 1905).

It seems that the same tendency that was discovered with regard to the /ɬ/

applies to this type of phonetic change as well, namely that women seem to adapt to

phonetic change more quickly than men do. While Gauchat generally did not make many

comments on phonetic change related to gender, in this case he states “women are more

willing to accept this innovation” (Gauchat 1905: 35). 2

Gauchat never explicitly states that women are in fact quicker to adapt to

phonetic change, so caution in making general conclusions is in order. However, based

on the two examples above, one could carefully argue for a tendency towards this claim.

It also becomes more likely that this sort of phonetic change is not solely related to

gender, but related to age as well. As in the previous example, the oldest generation

hardly shows any signs of phonetic change, while it mainly occurs in the youngest

generation, and traces of it can be found first among women of the middle generation.

This leads to the assumption that phonetic change is introduced by younger speakers,

and is then increasingly adopted among older speaker, of which women seem to take the

lead.

Gauchat notices again that there is a difference in pronunciation among the

generations, this time he focuses on the vowel /a°/, which is is almost completely extinct

from the Charmey dialect, except among the oldest people. He claims that /a°/ is only

found in the speech of generation I, those aged between 61 and 90, and that, among that

generation, women seem to drop the sound more easily than men. As a result, the

pronunciation of /a°/ will most likely be found among the oldest men:

2 Les femmes sont plus disposées à accepter cette nouveauté que les hommes.

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The pronunciation /ā/ for /a°/ is well established today in Charmey, one has to speak

with the very oldest persons to hear /a°/, and it has but a rudimentary °, produced by an

articulatory movement having almost no corresponding sound (Gauchat 1905: 36).3

This example of phonetic change again seems to support the tendency that was found in

the two previous examples, namely that men much longer use the conservative,

prevailing sounds while women are quicker to adapt to phonetic change. A careful first

conclusion could be drawn that men prefer conservatism in their speech, while women

tend to adapt to phonetic change more easily and willingly than men.

More recent studies seem to have come to the same conclusion. In his Notes on

Language and Sex (1975) the Norse linguist Magne Oftedal (8) comments on differences

in speech between men and women from all over the world, as well as from his own

local dialect. On the whole he found that women tended to be more careful in their

speech, but what is more interesting here is his finding that women tend to be more

linguistically advanced than men and that men always tend to be a generation behind

with regard to linguistic development. Another Scandinavian study claimed that “it is

almost a rule that the members of a family divide into three groups linguistically: the

father in one, the sons in one, and the mother and daughters in a third” ((9) Steinsholt

1964: 31). A lot can be deduced from this statement, a first and main observation is that

there is a division between men and women, thus implying that there are in fact

differences as to how they speak. But the divide between fathers and sons is not

extended to mothers and daughters, who are regarded as belonging to the same

category. This implies that there is an age-‐related difference as well among the men that

is not to be found among the women. Steinsholt attributes this to the fact that women

tend to adapt their language throughout their lives, men stop changing their language

when they reach the age of thirty (Steinsholt 1964). It seems that the tendencies that

were found in Gauchat’s work also apply to present-‐day Scandinavian dialects, who also

seem to find a link between age and gender with regard to phonetic differences between

men and women.

Two observations are in order. The first one is that the topic of pronunciation is

addressed by all authors from the first part of the 20th century, except for Gustav

3 La prononciation ā pour a° est aujourd’hui bien établie à Charmey; il faut s’adresser aux tont vieux pour entendre encore a°, avec un ° déjà rudimentaire, c’est-‐à-‐dire produit par un mouvement des organes auquel ne correspond presque aucun son.

27

Cederschiöld. While he acknowledges that there are differences in language use between

men and women, he does not comment on whether those differences are situated in the

field of phonetics as well (Cederschiöld 1900). A second observation is that the four

authors that do mention pronunciation as a relevant factor, share the view that

differences in pronunciation between the two sexes can be found, although there is

some debate on whether or not it occurs in every culture.

6.2 Vocabulary

Jespersen expresses his view on differences between men and women’s vocabulary very

clearly: “the vocabulary of a woman as a rule is much less extensive than that of a man”

(1922: 248). This can be linked to his belief that women are more conservative in their

language than men, and that they simply keep the language as it is, while the innovations

to language are ascribed to men. Men have a tendency to invent new words or

expressions, whereas women stick to what they know and shun the use of innovative

terms (Jespersen 1922).

It seems that one way of outing this language conservatism is through a restricted

range of vocabulary. While men do not back away from using distinct technical terms or

rare expressions, women tend to stick to the more normal and comprehensible words:

“women as a rule follow the main road of language, where man is often inclined to turn

aside into a narrow footpath or even to strike out a new path for himself” (Jespersen

1922:248). This leads to a more extensive vocabulary among men, allowing them to

express the same meaning in different ways, while women have fewer ways of

expressing the same thing. Jespersen seems to attribute this to the education women

received, which was “less comprehensive and technical than that of men” (Jespersen

1922: 248), although he does accept other explanations as well. Another side-‐effect that

Jespersen mentions with regard to vocabulary differences, is that those who enjoy books

written in foreign languages appear to have greater difficulty with books written by

male authors, simply because men are fond of using new words and technical terms, to a

much greater extend than female authors (Jespersen 1922).

Contemporary research does not seem to agree with the claim made by Jespersen

and argues that it is difficult to draw clear-‐cut conclusions. A number of studies have

claimed that gender differences are consistently found in vocabulary growth in children

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less than two years ((10)Nelson 1973; (11)Reznick & Goldfield 1992). Nelson (1973)

studied the acquisition of the first words of 18 children between the age of one and two

and in the Reznick & Goldfield (1992) study, 24 children were given word

comprehension tests every two months between the age of 14 and 22 months. Both

studies come to the conclusion that differences in the vocabulary of boys and girls can

be observed, and that girls seem to have a more extensive vocabulary range than boys.

However, other studies have shown that in time, these differences seem to disappear

again (Maccoby & Jacklin 1974). They base themselves on a number of different large-‐

sample studies that tested children between the age of two-‐and-‐a-‐half and nine years

old. All come to the conclusion that girls and boys reach the same level of overall

linguistic ability. Maccoby & Jacklin (1974) (12) suggest that distinct phases can be

discovered in the development of verbal skills of boys and girls. They examine a variety

of different studies, and based upon these they state that “more recent studies tend not

to show superiority for girls in spontaneous vocalization or in picture vocabulary after

the understanding of speech has begun” (Maccoby & Jacklin 1974: 84). According to the

authors, if girls have an early advantage in language development, it does not last very

long: at the age of three, boys seem to have caught up. “Until adolescence,” Maccoby &

Jacklin (1974: 85) say, “boys and girls perform very similarly”.

Another study provides evidence about gender differences in early vocabulary

growth ((13) Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer & Lyons 1991). It examines the role of

speech exposure among very small children. The study is based on data obtained from

22 children between the ages of 14 and 26 months. It is found that the gender

differences that were noticed reflected true differences in vocabulary size, which

reflected early capacity differences. Unlike previous research, they divided their subjects

into two categories, those between the age of 14 and 20 months, and those between the

age of 20 and 24 months. Gender effects in the acquisition of new words were “already

declining in the latter category” (Huttenlocher, Haight, Bryk, Seltzer & Lyons 1991: 245).

Contemporary research thus states that differences in vocabulary size or growth

between the two genders occur only in the first two years of their lives but then decline

rapidly. Though it is never explicitly stated, it can be assumed that as a result of this

decline, they believe that the size of a man’s vocabulary is the same as that of a woman.

Both Furfey and Chamberlain have based themselves on the same study by

Bréton, Carib Dictionary, published in 1664. The language of the Carib in the Lesser

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Antilles was a very popular one, since it was believed to have some of the most striking

differences in the usage of language between men and women. The differences in

language use can be accounted for by looking at the history of the region. It was once

inhabited by the Arawak, until the Carib invaded the region and conquered them. They

slaughtered the male population, but intermarried the women. This led to marriages in

which the men spoke Carib and the women spoke Arawak.

Furfey bases himself on previous research that states that although one would

expect the successive generation would speak some sort of mixture of the two, it

remained traditional for the women to speak a language considerably different from the

pure Carib of the men. Furfey argues for a cautious approach to this subject, since it has

been found by Jespersen for example, that sex differences occur in only one-‐tenth of the

vocabulary. Furfey is not denying that there are differences in the vocabulary of the

Carib language, but that they might have been exaggerated (Furfey 1944: 220).

While Furfey focuses on the validity of previous sources, Chamberlain chooses a

different approach. He wants to examine how the “women’s language” in the Lesser

Antilles came into being; he is looking to find an alternative for the intermarriage as the

sole reason that a women’s language developed. He bases himself on a study conducted

by Sapper in 1897, which claims that the differences in speech between men and women

have some sort of social-‐economic factor of differentiation of occupation and labour as

their course. According to Sapper, this is “leading naturally to such diverse appellations

of one and the same thing” (Chamberlain 1912: 579). Chamberlain does seem to agree

with the conclusion that Furfey found as well, namely that the differences in vocabulary

between men and women in the Carib language might have been exaggerated: “the bulk

of women’s words as compared with the mass of the language spoken in common by the

two sexes is not so great as some have supposed, relying on the statement of earlier

writers concerning the Caribs of the West Indies” (Chamberlain 1912: 580).

Both authors seem to agree that there are words that are used only by women,

and words that are used only by men, but that those differences in lexicon have been

previously exaggerated. It would seem more a matter of specific affixes used by men or

women, than entirely different words. Chamberlain adds a list of words that differ in the

Caraya language, making a distinction between words that differ slightly, and words that

differ considerably.

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In a recent study, Talbot (2010) (14) argues that this type of sex differentiation is

“the earliest work on men, women and language attended to ‘sex differentiation’” (2010:

4). Talbot claims that those early studies mainly looked for affixes or pronouns that

were specific to one of the two genders, and they came to the conclusion that this type of

sex differentiation was only scarcely found in European languages. As Talbot does not

explicitly contradict the earlier findings, it can be concluded that she agrees with them.

Contemporary research has more often focused on sex-‐preferential vocabulary

(i.e., vocabulary that is more common among one gender over the other, but can still be

found among the speech of the other gender) than on sex-‐exclusive vocabulary (i.e.,

words that are exclusively used by one gender). One area in which sex-‐exclusive lexical

differences can be found is with regard to pronouns. The Japanese pronoun system is

structured very differently from most others. The speaker has to take into account the

level of formality and the status of the addressee in order to decide what pronoun to use.

While there are formal pronouns that can be used by either sex, on the more informal

level, there are pronouns that are used exclusively by women, and others that are

traditionally used by men. A woman is obligated to use the ‘female” pronoun form, and a

man is prohibited from using them (Talbot, 2010). However, according to Talbot,

Linguistic sex differentiation can become a location of social struggle within a society,

not just the struggle of one individual. Japanese men’s and women’s forms are ceasing to

be sex-‐exclusive, that is, forms used exclusively by one sex (2010: 7).

Talbot seems to agree with the fact that sex-‐exclusive differences are few, and she opts

to focus on sex-‐preferential differences in her work; a distinction that was first

introduced by Ann Bodine. As opposed to sex-‐exclusive difference, sex-‐preferential

differences are not absolute differences, but a matter of degree. Moreover, Talbot argues

that, while sex-‐exclusive differences are highly uncommon in European languages, sex-‐

preferential differences are not, though they are culture-‐specific (Talbot 2010). While it

might seem that sex-‐preferential differences are of minor importance, this is not the

case. It is an important part of learning how to behave properly in a certain culture.

According to Talbot “failure to acquire appropriate forms and their usage can have

serious, even devasting consequences for the individuals concerned” (2010: 6).

Contemporary studies thus seem to agree nor disagree with the findings of

Furfey and Chamberlain with regard to vocabulary. While Furfey and Chamberlain

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disagree on the number of sex-‐exclusive words, or their degree of difference, both

linguists agree on the fact that sex-‐exclusive words do exist. Contemporary studies on

the other hand, argue that sex-‐exclusive words are extremely rare, as opposed to sex-‐

preferential differences, which are common in European languages, although they are

culture-‐specific. It seems that whether or not we are dealing with sex-‐exclusive or sex-‐

preferential differences, the fact remains that from the beginning of the twentieth

century it was already noted that there were differences in vocabulary between men

and women, and this tendency is found in present-‐day studies as well, although a

difference in degree can be noted. This point of view can be found in Jespersen’s work as

well, and it is probably most strongly expressed there. Jespersen is a firm believer of

vocabulary differences between men and women and claims this is so because women

lack a higher education, resulting in a wider vocabulary range among men.

Contemporary researchers do not fully agree with this conclusion, but this might also be

due to the fact that the current education system has undergone important changes.

6.3 Courtesy/politeness

Among the many stereotypes that exist in the world, one of them is the assumption that

women are sweet, fragile, kind, innocent human beings. An independent and strong

woman is often perceived as a threat and seen as less feminine. While certain women

definitely fit the profile that is created through the stereotype, there are just as many

who do not. According to Cederschiöld, a typical trait of the female language is the urge

to please and present themselves in an amicable manner, and to speak appropriately,

using the right tone and with courtesy. Cederschiöld believes that women consciously

make a lot more effort than men to put courtesy in their expressions, which often leads

to them “sounding finicky”(Cederschiöld 1900; 20).

Problems thus arise when a woman is forced to deviate from this type of speech,

when she has to no other choice than to say something inappropriate:

Her care to remain within the polite and appropriate boundaries enables her, when she

is forced to convey a less pleasant message, to express it as gentle and concealed as

possible. Now, if such a thing is directed towards another lady, she will immediately

understand it, but uncertainties arise when it is direct at a man’s sluggish intelligence.

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However it often happens that a woman believes to find such things in a man’s speech as

well, while he just means what he says, nothing more (Cederschiöld 1900: 21) (Here and

elsewhere, the translations from Swedish are mine, DV)4.

According to Cederschiöld (1900), when a woman is forced to say something that is not

so pleasant, she will try to make it sound as appropriate as she possible can, by covering

up the ugly parts or leaving out certain things. She believes that men will apply the same

tactic, however, a man does not resort to such practices; he rather simply says what he

means.

Contemporary research has not come to a unanimous conclusion regarding this

matter. Many claims have been made that women are indeed more polite in their

language, mainly because women feel unsure about themselves and because they are

said to gain their status through how they appear, rather than through what they do

((18) Trudgill 1972; (19) Lakoff 1975). Trudgill came to this conclusion based on the

results from his study in 1971, in which an urban dialect survey was carried out in

Norwich in 1968 with a random sample of 60 people. Although the main focus was on

correlating phonetic variables with factors such as social class and age, the relationship

between linguistic phenomena and sex was also studied. Based on the survey, Trudgill

came to the conclusion that women are indeed more polite in their speech than men

(Trudgill 1972). Robin Lakoff (1975) came to the same conclusion, though she has no

empirical data to support her claims other than her own observations. She examines her

own speech and that of her surroundings, and uses her intuition to analyse it. She

acknowledges that there are more error-‐proof data-‐gathering techniques, but counters

this by stating that any procedure of gathering data has an introspective character, since

it must be analysed by the gatherer. Secondly, any type of data-‐gathering is always a

sample of a larger group. She does not claim that the results in her work are final and

argues that her paper is one possible approach towards the problem (Lakoff 1975).

A number of studies conducted in Japan came to the conclusion that Japanese

women are indeed more polite in their language, due to the Japanese culture in which

4 Hennes omsorg att hålla sig inom artighetens och det passandes gränser förmår henne att, när hon blir tvungen att göra ett mindre behagligt meddelande, framföra det på ett så skonsamt och förblommeradt sätt som möjligt. Om nu en sådan vink riktas till ett annat fruntimmer, plägar detta genast förstå meningen, men osäkrare är, om en karls trögare intelligens uppfattar den. Däremot händer det ofta, att en kvinna tror sig I en mans tal finna sådana förstuckna vinkar eller pikar, ehuru han menar blott det, han sagt, och intet annat.

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women’s status is more overtly institutionalized ((20) Martin 1964; Miller 1967; Uyeno

1971). However, Keenan (1974) (21) has provided evidence that politeness is not a

universal characteristic of the female language. According to Keenan, who conducted a

study in a Malagasy village, women were perceived as being less polite than men. She

found that women had a habit of regularly violating the norms of non-‐confrontation and

indirectness (Keenan 1974).

Based on contemporary studies discussed above, the fact that women are more

polite because they have lower status, one could argue that the women in the Malagasy

village have a higher status than men, since they violate the norms by speaking in a

confrontational and direct manner. However, there is no evidence to support this claim.

Moreover, it can be argued that since the men do obey the norms, they actually have a

higher status than the women.

No conclusive answer can thus be given to the question of which gender is more

polite in their speech. However it could be argued that in most cultures, women will

tend to be more polite, but for some other cultures, although few, the opposite is true.

Language use of a religious nature and vulgar language can also be situated in the

domain of courtesy and politeness. According to Chamberlain, one of the reasons that

men and women speak differently has to do with the fact that “religious and animistic

concepts in woman’s sphere of thought may also have had some influence (…)” and that

“taboos of naming also have a role in the production of the speech-‐diversities in

question” (Chamberlain 1912: 579). Chamberlain does not go into greater detail on the

matter; it is therefore impossible to comment on these statements with absolute

certainty.

If the statement is read carefully, it can be noticed that Chamberlain does not

state that women are more religious in their speech. Though not stated explicitly, it can

be deduced that Chamberlain implies that women in general are more religious than

men, and that this somehow is reflected in their speech. Although Chamberlain does not

comment on this, it can be assumed that he means that women are more concerned with

speaking righteous and avoiding curse words, adapting their speech fitting accordingly

to that of a proper women. From this, it can then be deduced that men do not have this

tendency, and that they have no problem using vulgar language.

If we compare this with Furfey’s view on the matter, a similar image can be seen:

34

It is probably at least true that there are certain expressions, such as “Oh, dear!” and

“How perfectly sweet!” which sound distinctly feminine to our ears, and other, including

a number of salty and unprintable phrases, which sound equally masculine (Furfey 1944:

221).

Furfey does not link this type of female vocabulary to religion, but he does want to make

his readers aware that there are certain types of phrases that, although maybe not

exclusively, seem to be attributed to female speech. Likewise, there are expressions that

seem to be associated with masculine speech. Although he does not give explicit

examples, since they are “salty and unprintable” (Furfey 1944: 221), it can be assumed

that he means vulgar speech and curse words.

It seems that Furfey and Chamberlain are in agreement on this topic, namely that

women tend to avoid curse words and vulgar language, while men see no harm in this

kind of language use and have no problem enriching their vocabulary with such phrases.

This is in line with Cederschiöld’s view on the matter, that women tend to be as polite in

their speech as they possibly can (Cederschiöld 1900).

Contemporary research seems to confirm this view to a certain extent. Lakoff

(1975) (19) has found that both genders use expletives differently. Women have a

tendency to tone down their expletives, by using phrases such as oh dear or fudge, while

men seem to have no problem with using stronger expletives such as shit or damn.

Lakoff claims that men are allowed stronger means of expression than women, which

results in a more dominant position (Lakoff 1975). Other research seems to confirm this

view as well. It was found that men have a tendency in general to swear more than

women ((22) Bailey and Timm 1976). The study was conducted in order to determine

differences in the use of strong expletives among men and women of different age

groups via a self-‐report questionnaire. 14 women and 15 men between the age of 19 and

61 from the university of Davis took part in the questionnaire. They were given 20

situations that were assumed to elicit reactions that contained an expletive. The authors’

findings matched the usual assumption that overall, women favour the use of weaker

expletives, while men do not shun away from using strong ones.

The use of strong or weak expletives is not the only interest of contemporary

research with regard to swearing: it was found, e.g., that men swear more in all-‐male

groups than in conversations with women. Coates (2003) (23) investigates own

35

recordings of narratives as well as recordings of others. She found that the stories that

contained a high number of taboo words (with which she means expletives) were

always told in all-‐male conversations. She also found that both men and women were

sensitive to the perceived cultural norms: while men in all-‐male conversations usually

have a high number of expletives in their stories, and women virtually have none when

talking to other females, in mixed-‐sex conversations male speakers use less expletives,

whereas female speakers use more. Bayard and Krishnayya (2001) (24) come to the

same conclusion. They conducted a study of the conversations of five male subjects

living in the same flat and of six female subjects who also share an apartment. The

subjects were students of the University of Otago and were aged between 21 and 23

years old. They were informed of the recordings, though they did not know when exactly

they would take place. They did not know the true aim of the study, in order to rule out

any possible hesitancy toward the input. These recordings show that men make more

use of expletives than women.

In accordance with Furfey’s view, McEnery (2004) (15) felt that the expletives

used by males were stronger, more offensive then those used by females. McEnery then

combined the results of two studies, the study of Millwood-‐Hargrave (2000) and the

findings of the British Board of Film Classification Guidelines, in order to determine

whether or not the male expletives are more offensive than the female ones. Based upon

these two studies, it was found that men tend to use stronger expletive forms than

women, while women make more use of milder swear forms (McEnery 2004). The

conclusion thus seems to be not as clear-‐cut. While there are some who believe that men

indeed swear more often than women, there are others who seem to think that it is a

matter of degree; men and women use the same amount of swear words, but men use

stronger expletives. Either way, throughout the twentieth century differences in

swearing between men and women can be found.

Upon comparing the use of vulgar language in the beginning of the 20th century

until now, it is important to determine whether the term itself has the same meaning

then as it does now. Hughes’ Swearing: A Social History of Foul Language, Oaths and

Profanity (1998) can help shed some light on this matter. Hughes argues that the term

vulgar language covers the same range through time, but that its content has changed

(Hughes 1998). In other words, throughout history people have been cursing, yet the

words they used to do so differed from time to time.

36

When Cederschiöld addresses the topic of expletives, not only does he state that a

woman will intentionally try to avoid the use of expletives as much as possible by

replacing them with other words, he extends the use of euphemisms by women to other

words as well:

How much she otherwise loves strong expressions, she shuns all such protestations that refer

to the evil powers. (…). But there are also more innocent words that are being carefully

avoided by women, of course especially by the educated ones. If they have to talk about

touchy subjects, they resort to the most careful and distant euphemisms. (Cederschiöld, 1900,

32-‐33).5

According to Cederschiöld, using expletives is a sign of masculinity. Very few women are

tempted to use swear words, but he mentions some exceptions to this general rule,

namely that there are women who would swear intentionally. “But”, Cederschiöld

writes, “the most of them can only be found in the independent class, which is called

‘manwives’, ‘the emancipated’ or ‘sportswomen’”(1900, 33-‐34).6 These women

deliberately choose to use swear words, because they believe it makes them modern and

stylish, according to Cederschiöld (1900: 34).

Jespersen too believes that there are certain words that women will deliberately

choose not to pronounce and instead resort to the use of euphemisms. Jespersen argues

that it is common for women in all countries to be shy to mention certain body parts or

natural functions in the same way that men do. While men prefer to use direct and rude

denominations, women invent euphemistic words and phrases so replace them,

according to Jespersen (1922). An involuntary side-‐effect of these euphemisms is that, in

time, they might become common and looked upon as plain and blunt names, which

leads to the original euphemism being replaced by a new euphemism (Jespersen 1922).

Like Cederschiöld, Jespersen believes that the use of expletives is a typical

characteristic of the male language: “Among the things women object to in language

5 “Hur mycket hon annars älskar starka uttryck, skyr hon alla sådana bedyranden, som syfta på de onda makterna. (…) Men också mycket oskyldigare ord undvikas sorgfälligt av kvinnorna, naturligtvis i synnerhet av de bildade. Måste de vidröra ömtåliga ämnen, taga de sin tillflykt till de försikstigaste och avlägsnaste eufemismer.” 6 “Undantag finnes det visserligen gott om i vår tid; men de flesta av dessa träffas antingen i den självständiga klass, som kallats “maninnorna”, “de emanciperade” o.d., eller och bland “sportkvinnorna”.”

37

must be specially mentioned anything that smacks of swearing” (Jespersen 1922: 246).

He further states that by using euphemisms and inventing new words to replace the

coarse and gross expressions, women have a tremendous influence on linguistic

development (Jespersen 1922). If we base ourselves on what Cederschiöld and

Jespersen wrote, if an expletive was used in the beginning of the twentieth century, it

was safe to assume that is was a man who pronounced the word.

When we look at contemporary research of the link between gender and the use

of expletives, we come across some interesting results. McEnery (15) seems to agree

with Cederschiöld and Jespersen by stating that swearing is still seen as typical

behaviour “more engaged in by male speakers” (2004: 34). However, there are also

contemporary studies that attempt to shed another light on the matter, by looking into

other variables that might influence the results, such as the age of the speakers, the sex

of the addressee or the formal or informal setting of the conversation. Not many studies

like this were conducted, but amongst them was Gomm’s study (16), which proved that

men were more likely to use expletives when they were talking to other men. When

talking to women or in mixed-‐group conversations, however, Gomm found that the use

and frequency of swearwords was significantly lower (Gomm 1981).

With regard to the formal or informal setting of the conversation, a study by

Svensson (17) showed that men tend to use a lot more expletives than women in

informal conversations, but she also found that more differences can be found in the use

of swearing depending on the context of the conversation than depending on the sex of

the speaker (Svensson 2004). The use of swearwords has thus more to do with whether

the conversation takes place in a formal or informal setting than with the speaker and

interlocutor being male or female.

Based on these studies, it is clear that the difference in use of expletives is not as

clear-‐cut as Jespersen or Cederschiöld claim it to be. However, it is important not to lose

sight of the fact that Cederschiöld and Jespersen wrote in the beginning of the twentieth

century, and that in the mean time a lot of changes have occurred socially and culturally.

Their claims may not uphold today, but that does not necessarily mean that what they

wrote was not applicable for (most) women of their time. There are other factors we

must take into account and the place of women nowadays is definitely different from

their days. And even though contemporary research tries to broaden our vision by

trying to do away with one-‐sided or unwarranted generalizations and stereotypes, the

38

idea that men tend to swear more than women do is still commonly held in literature.

6.4 Primitive languages

What immediately stands out in the works of Furfey and Chamberlain is that both

authors draw on the language of primitive people to make their statements about

differences in language use between males and females. Furfey states that his paper

“will discuss divergencies in the language usages of men and women, a phenomenon

which is barely discernible in the familiar languages of Europe, but which is not at all

uncommon among primitive peoples” (Furfey 1944: 218). Although Chamberlain does

not make an explicit statement on this matter, his position on the topic can be deduced

from the first line of his work: “the literature relating to “women’s languages” among

primitive peoples, and the theories as to their origin and significance, (…)” (Chamberlain

1912: 579). Both authors seem to agree that differences in language usage between

males and females is a phenomenon that occurs in primitive tribes and not, or in a lesser

way, in their own culture. It can also be further deduced that Chamberlain not only

believes that differences in language use do not occur in his own culture, but that it is

not a phenomenon that occurs in all the primitives culture either. On page 579 he states

that the Caraya have long been one of the few people among whom a women’s language

existed (Chamberlain 1912). Chamberlain thus regards differences in language usage as

a very rare phenomenon. Furfey on the other hand seems to be implying the opposite:

by saying that “it is not at all uncommon among primitive peoples” (Furfey 1944:218),

he could be arguing that one of the characteristics of the language of primitive people is

a difference in language use between men and women. It seems that Furfey and

Chamberlain agree on the fact that differences in language use between genders is a

phenomenon that is uncommon in their own culture, but while Furfey believes that is

occurs frequently in primitive cultures, Chamberlain is convinced that differences in

language use between gender seems to be an exception to a universal principle that men

and women speak in the same way.

It was exactly this belief that Robin Lakoff (25) wanted to dispel. With her

Language and Woman’s Place (1975) she has sparked the interest of many linguists in

the “gender-‐issue”. In her work, Lakoff discusses the existence of a “woman’s language”

39

and many linguists followed in her footsteps, trying to determine what the specific

differences are between men and women in their language use. Studies have been

conducted in cultures all over the world, proving that differences in language use

between genders occur practically everywhere and in every culture, though they might

vary in degree ((26)Bodine 1975; (27)Labov 1972).

It seems that the claims made by both Furfey and Chamberlain no longer hold up.

There is overwhelming evidence today that men and women do speak differently in

some ways, and it is more or less a global phenomenon. While the other early 20th-‐

century authors do not make any specific claims regarding primitive languages, their

thoughts on the matter can be deduced based on the examples they give or the claims

they make. Overall, Jespersen comments on the language used in the old Caribs and in

other foreign cultures, and thus leaning more towards Furfey’s view that language

differences with regard to gender is a phenomenon that occurs mainly in primitive

cultures. It must be noted however, that Jespersen sometimes includes German,

Scandinavian or French examples as well (Jespersen 1922). Cederschiöld and Gauchat

on the other hand, seem to implicitly disagree with this statement: both authors almost

exclusively give examples from their own culture, thus implicitly claiming that gender-‐

related language differences are not restricted to primitive tribes. This is made very

clear in Gauchat’s work, which is based upon empirical data collected in the Swiss village

of Charmey. It seems there is a discrepancy between the early-‐20th century authors with

regard to the occurrence of gender-‐related language differences.

6.5 “Women’s” Language

The term “Women’s Language” is frequently used by Chamberlain, thus implying that in

those primitive tribes that have differences between men and women in terms of their

language, the language of men can be seen as a completely different language than that

of women. Furfey on the other hand disagrees with this radical distinction and opts for a

more fine-‐grained use of the term. He claims that although the terms might have become

conventional, they should not be called as such. The reason for this is that there is no

proof; there is not a single tribe in which the men and women speak an entirely different

language. He does not say that there are no differences between men and women and

40

how they use language; he simply states that those differences involve not the language

as a whole, but rather certain specific features of the language, such as phonetics,

grammar or vocabulary (Furfey 1944: 218). Although Chamberlain seems to think that

women in certain tribes speak an entirely different language, in his work he only

discusses differences in vocabulary and pronunciation between the two sexes, leaving

the field of grammar untouched. Furfey on the other hand has divided his article into

different sections, each of them covering one aspect of language, such as phonetics,

grammar or vocabulary.

Cederschiöld never explicitly states that the differences between men and

women’s language use indicate the existence of two separate languages, yet he does not

shun away from using the term “woman’s language”. For example, he states that

The most characteristic and most general observed features of the woman's language are

the manifestations of the intensity, exclusivity, immediacy, suddenness and variability of

her feelings(1900: 18)7.

Jespersen does explicitly state what Cederschiöld seems to imply, namely that “there are

tribes in which men and women are said to speak totally different languages, or at any

rate distinct dialects” (Jespersen 1922: 238), although he later on points out that the

matter is worth looking into more thoroughly. He seems to have some doubts regarding

classifying the language of men and women as two separate ones, based on the fact that

their grammar remains the same (Jespersen 1922).

Furfey is joined by contemporary linguists who also believe that the term

“women’s language” should not be used, rather they prefer to speak about certain

differences that appear between men and women’s speech. While Furfey and

Chamberlain respectively entitled their work Men’s and Women’s Language and

Women’s Language, contemporary linguists generally opt to use less extreme

distinctions, such as Sex Differentiation and Language (Bodine 1975). Upon analysing the

contemporary studies that were used in this thesis, it is found that neither one of them

claims that men and women speak entirely different languages based on the differences

that were found. It can thus be assumed that contemporary linguists share Furfey’s view

that caution is at hand when using the term “women’s language”, since gender-‐related 7 De mest karaktäristiska och allmännast iakttagna dragen i kvinnans språk äro just yttringar av hennes känslas intensitet, exklusivitet, omedelbarhet, plötslighet och föränderlighet.”

41

language differences do not denote a separate language. It appears that we have a

taxonomical issue at hand: should these variations between men and women’s speech

be regarded as separate languages, or rather as dialects, or language varieties or styles.

Contemporary linguists seem to agree that they do not constitute separate languages,

though it would seem odd to regard them as dialects. Based on contemporary research,

the most accurate term to account for differences in language between men and women

could be language varieties.

6.6 Conservative Language

It seems that the same tendency that was discovered in point 6.1 with regard to

pronunciation applies to this type of phonetic change as well, namely that women seem

to adapt to phonetic change more quickly than men do. While Gauchat generally did not

make many comments on phonetic change related to gender, in this case he states

“women are more willing to accept this innovation” (Gauchat 1905: 35). 8

Gauchat never explicitly states that women are in fact quicker to adapt to

phonetic change, so caution in making general conclusions is in order. However, based

on the examples mentioned in point 6.1, one could carefully argue for a tendency

towards this claim. It also becomes more likely that this sort of phonetic change is not

solely related to gender, but related to age as well. As in the previous examples, the

oldest generation hardly shows any signs of phonetic change, while it mainly occurs in

the youngest generation, and traces of it can be found first among women of the middle

generation. This leads to the assumption that phonetic change is introduced by younger

speakers, and is then increasingly adopted among older speaker, of which women seem

to take the lead.

Gauchat concludes his work with a table indicating the degree of diversity in the

Charmey dialect, focusing on the three different generations. His goal is to indicate the

differences in pronunciation that he found among the three different generations; those

aged between one and thirty years old, those between thirty and sixty, and those who

have passed the age of sixty. In his commentary on these differences he indicated in the

table, he states that the table is more accurate for men than for women. If Gauchat had

visualized the speech of the women living in Charmey in a table, it would have shown a

different image: the women tended to use phonetic forms not corresponding to the men 8 Les femmes sont plus disposes à accepter cette nouveauté que les hommes

42

of the same age, but they used the phonetic forms that are specific for the next

generation, the younger generation (Gauchat 1905). Thus a sixty-‐year-‐old Charmey

woman’s speech will resemble the speech of a thirty-‐five-‐year-‐old more closely than a

the speech of a man of the same age.

In order to be able to explain this phenomenon, he investigates the matter more

thoroughly. He comes to the conclusion that, based on rhymes made by female poets,

“women were quick to embrace any linguistic change”(Gauchat 1905:51)9. Since he

makes no mention of men, Gauchat thus seems to confirm the hypothesis that men tend

to be more conservative in their speech while women are more prone to change. It could

therefore be argued as well that Gauchat is implying that women are the ones who

initiate language change.

According to contemporary research, there seems to be some room for debate.

While there are studies that indeed came to the conclusion that women were the ones

who initiate language change and men are more conservative in their speech, there are

also studies that found that men are the ones who initiate the change. Some of the most

well known studies with regard to language are the ones by Labov (1972, 1990) (29)

and Trudgill (1972) (30). Both of them found that it were the men who lead the

language change in Martha’s Vineyard, Philadelphia and Norwich respectively. However,

there are studies that claim the opposite and agree with Gauchat on the fact that women

initiate language change, such as Labov (1966) and Cedergren (1973) (31). In these

studies, respectively conducted in New York City and Panama, it is found that women

lead the sound change. The picture is thus not as clear-‐cut as Gauchat made it out to be.

The logical conclusion that can be drawn here is that sex differences with regard to

language may vary depending on the variable under investigation. While women will

initiate one type of sound change, men will be more prone to initiate others, depending

on the variable. Eckert (1989) (28) is warning her readers to be careful to make general

claims on the account of language as a variable of linguistic change. She argues that it

would be a mistake to believe that there is some sort of constant constraint associated

with gender: it is not the case that there is a type of system at hand that indicates that it

is the women that are more innovative than with regard to linguistic change (Eckert

1989). Both genders make linguistic changes; there is no underlying system that can

predict which gender will initiate which linguistic change. Eckert has expressed her 9 (…) les femmes accueillaient avec empressement tout nouveauté linguistique.

43

views on this matter very clearly. She states that

It is commonplace for sociolinguists to allow the gender categories that they use to

classify speakers (i.e., male vs. female) to guide their thinking about the effects of gender

in variation. In particular, men and women are perceived as categorically different,

indeed opposite and opposed, in their use of linguistic variables (Eckert 1989: 248).

Eckert acknowledges that there are differences in language between men and women,

yet she refuses to associate these differences solely to the gender variable. While gender

will play a role in language differences, it is not the only factor that should be taken into

account. Therefore, there is no constant constraint that is associated with gender. Men

and women do belong to two different categories biologically, but Eckert seems to opt to

perceive men and women not as categorically different from a linguistic point of view,

but rather as having differences in degree of language change (Eckert 1989). Language

change is a phenomenon that is almost impossible to perceive at the time it occurs, but

is almost exclusively determined long after the change has been completed. It is

therefore very difficult to pinpoint the exact moment when a change in language

occurred, let alone determine who started the change. In the opinion of Cederschiöld, it

is almost always men who induce change, whereas women tend to stick to existing

language forms:

Furthermore, in general the woman is very conservative in her language use, fearing

novelties and holding on to the original word order, of which she surely knows it is

traditional, clean and impeccable (…). It is therefore an old observation that women do

more than men to maintain language in its old form, and we often hear comments that this

or that country’s language is spoken “cleanest” by females within the country’s higher

class. (Cederschiöld 1900: 34) (DV).10

A number of things can be deduced from this statement. First of all, Cederschiöld draws

the attention to the fact that women are more conservative in their speech than men and

that they strive to avoid introducing new words or changes in the language as much as 10 “Eljest är kvinnan i allmänhet mucket konservativ i sitt sprākbruk, fruktar nyheter och håller sig helst inom det ordförråd, som hon säkert vet vara hävdvunnet, städat och oklanderligt. (…) Därför är det ock en gammal iakttagelse, att kvinnorna göra mera än männen för att bevara (konservera) språket i dess äldre skck, och man hör ofta anmärkningen, att de teller det landets språk talas “renast” av kvinnorna inom landets högre klasser.”

44

possible. Furthermore he claims that this type of speech is considered to be the

prestigious form that is associated with the higher classes. In other words, not only do

women favour the old forms, those forms are also generally considered to be the highest

ones in register. It can therefore be deduced that, according to Cederschiöld, when

women are responsible for changes in language, they will change the language towards

the prestige form.

Jespersen as well wonders which sex is the more conservative one and what the

general attitude of the two sexes towards language change is. Jespersen is trying to

determine whether or not a change can be ascribed exclusively or predominantly to

either sex or if both sexes equally participate in the changes (1922: 242). Without giving

any evidence on the matter, but simply by referring to it as “an answer that is very often

given” (1922: 242), Jespersen states that

(…) as a rule women are more conservative than men, and that they do nothing more than keep to the traditional language which they have learnt from their parents and hand on to

their children, while innovations are due to the initiative of men. (Jespersen 1922: 242)

Although Jespersen at first sight seems to agree with the traditional explanation which

states that women are more conservative in their language forms, he is cautious to make

sweeping generalizations about the matter. He draws the attention to the fact that this is

not true for every language in the world. As an example of this, Jespersen mentions that

Japanese women are less conservative than men because they generally are not as

influenced by the written language (1922: 243).

As a result, it can be concluded that Cederschiöld is entirely convinced that

women are more conservative in their language use than men. While Jespersen writes

that there is evidence that supports this statement, he also admits that there are cases

where it is not true. Until this day, the matter has not been completely solved, yet it was

not for a lack of trying. Amongst others, P. Eckert is one of the contemporary

sociolinguists who studied gender-‐related language conservatism. According to Eckert,

there is

a general misconception among writers who do not deal directly with variation that women's

speech is more conservative than men's. Indeed, women do tend to be more conservative

45

than men in their use of those vernacular forms that represent stable social variables. On the

other hand, the very earliest evidence on variation (Gauchat 1905) showed women leading in

sound change (…). But the picture is not quite as simple as this generalization suggests.

(1989: 247-‐248).

Eckert (28) here claims that the general idea that women are more conservative in their

language use must be nuanced. She admits that women tend to be more conservative in

their speech, but on the other hand, earlier research has proven that women also tend to

take the lead in sound change. It is Eckert’s opinion that we must investigate the matter

further, since evidence can also be found for men initiating the change. To strengthen

her argument, she mentions Trudgill's (1972) and Labov's (1972) research, which

shows that men initiate most changes in Norwich and some changes in Martha’s

Vineyard (1972), respectively. According to Eckert, this is reason enough to assume that

sex differences may vary depending on which variable is being used (Eckert 1989).

Besides the fact that sometimes men take the lead in sound changes, Eckert also found

that “sex does not have the same effect on language use everywhere in the population”

(1989: 248). She argues that we must be careful not to draw hasty conclusions. She

claims that it is not only the sex of the speaker that accounts for the language patterns,

but that there are other social parameters at work as well (Eckert, 1989). In other

words, we should also look for other factors beside the single sex effect in statistical

analyses, and maybe even conduct separate analyses for each sex:

Not only is it a mistake to claim that women are more or less innovative than men, but at this

point in our research it is a mistake to claim any kind of constant constraint associated with

gender. It is, above all, this mistake that characterizes much current work on sex differences

in variation. (Eckert 1989:248).

While we must be cautious to draw any general conclusions, in the line of history we can

clearly see scepticism beginning to arise as we move more towards present-‐day

research. Whereas in the beginning of the twentieth century unwarranted claims were

easily accepted, towards the middle and end of the century there is more attention for

evidence that counters the claim that women are more conservative in their speech than

men. As a rule, claims are no longer accepted without being questioned, and further

proof is collected by means of sociolinguistic research.

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6.7 Oral Sources

When looking at the relationship between language and gender, one is directed to

studies in the field of variationist sociolinguistics. It is the aim of a variationist

sociolinguist to determine if a certain variable occurs more (often) in one social group

than in another one. The method proven most effective for this type of research is a

statistical analysis of data gathered from experiments with a representative sample of

the population. Even though this method only really gained followers in the 1950s and

1960s (e.g., Fischer 1958; Labov 1963; Wolfram 1969), earlier variationist studies who

did not usually employ statistical methods nonetheless already wanted to identify a

connection between a linguistic and a social variable (Grieve 2012). It is then very

interesting to ascertain that of the early 20th-‐century authors discussed in this thesis,

Gauchat is the only one that can provide empirical data to support his claims. Whether

this was a deliberate choice of the remaining authors is debatable, but Cederschiöld

gives a clear explanation on why he is only using oral sources. In his introduction he

states that

It is commonly known that, when women write something, and especially when what they

write is meant to be published, they alter the form of their speech as much as possible

towards the conventional and general rules of the common language. And those rules are

created after man’s own image. No, it is therefore in its unconstrained, confidential and direct

casual speech that the peculiarities of women’s speech must be studied. (Cederschiöld 1900:

10) (DV)11

Cederschiöld is giving the written alternative for the observer’s paradox, a term that was

first coined by William Labov, meaning that “the aim of linguistic research in the

community must be to find out how people talk when they are not being systematically

observed; yet we can only obtain this data by systematic observation”(1972: 209).

Cederschiöld is thus opting for the use of oral sources because he fears that the use of 11 “Ty vi veta väl, att när kvinnor skriva något, och i all synnerhet när det, som de skriva, är bestämt att tryckas, så lämpa de sin språkform så mucket som möjligt efter det vedertagna skriftspråkets vanliga och allmänna skick. Och detta skick har mannen skapat efter sitt beläte. Nej, det är framför allt i det otvungna, förtroliga, omedelbara umgängesspråket, som kvinnans språkliga egenheter böra studeras.”

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written sources would not be representative for the language use of the sociological

group of people he is interested in. It is likely that Jespersen, Furfey and Chamberlain

shared a similar view.

Since the others never explicitly state why they are not using written sources, it is

possible that there may be other explanations besides the fact that people have a

tendency to alter their speech in writing. Another reason could be that it would be

enormously time-‐consuming to conduct experiments to investigate the claims they

make. As opposed to contemporary research, where usually only one variable is being

examined and thus only one experiment needs to be conducted, early 20th-‐century

linguists make statements about a wide range of topics. Trying to prove them all by

conducting experiments would have taken them years, also given that the technological

devices we have at our disposal today were not yet available.

Even though Jespersen’s work is seen as the pioneer study with regard to

language variation and gender, contemporary scientists for the most part remain critical

of his work. In a recent study, Margaret Thomas (32) suggests that a new reading of

“The Woman” might be useful (Thomas 2013). Instead of discrediting Jespersen or

diminishing his importance, however, Thomas feels that “we need to acknowledge the

complexities of this text and seek to better understand both what it meant in the culture

and time that produced it, and its position in present-‐day reflection on language and

gender “(2013: 377). The “discrediting and diminishing” that Thomas mentions refers to

criticism Jespersen receives from contemporary scientists on the basis of the data he

uses to support his claims. Thomas states that Jespersen has a wide range of sources he

uses for his claims, but “still, the bulk of his illustrations derive from works of literature,

including texts by Cicero, Shakespeare, Molière (…)” (2013: 384). She then goes further

to say that

Jespersen also cites proverbs and freely provides examples of both women’s and men’s

language from his own observations, or perhaps of his own invention, leaving the generality

of those data unexplored. When Jespersen interprets or builds a conclusion out of his data

(and sometimes in the absence of any data at all), he relies not on the authority of empirical

evidence, but on appeals to what counted as common sense within the shared culture of the

author and his readership (Thomas 2013: 384).

In other words, while Jespersen makes his claims in carefully structured phrases, he

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lacks the necessary scientific evidence to support his claims and therefore, according to

Thomas, his claims lose a lot of their value and credibility.

It can thus be assumed that the general tendency at the beginning of the 20th

century was to make use of oral sources, since four out of five authors discussed in this

thesis provide no empirical evidence to support their claims. The only exception

amongst early 20th-‐century authors is Louis Gauchat, who made statements based upon

empirical data he collected in the Swiss town of Charmey. It seems that Gauchat was a

pioneer with regard to researching gender-‐related language differences.

6.8 Speed of thought

Just like women express their opinion in a more rapid pace than men, they also think faster.

The speed, with which she sometimes can move from one point of view to the other, becomes

downright giddy for a man’s ability of self-‐control. (…) Such rapid transfers in mood and the

consequent contradictions are probably the biggest reason that “women’s logic” in men’s

language has become more or less synonymous with a break in logic.

(Cederschiöld1900:25)12

Cederschiöld calls the rapidity with which women tend to think and speak a sort of

immediate impulse that is characteristic of women’s speech. According to him, this

‘immediateness” expresses itself in a number of ways, one of them being the fact that

women don’t tend to think before they speak. They don’t subject their speech to a

certain ‘screening’ before uttering it, as opposed to men, who prefer to do such a

screening, Cederschiöld (1900) claims. He does not elaborate on what kind of ‘screening’

men employ, but he links women’s lack of screening to the fact that women feel the urge

to express their feelings immediately. To illustrate what he means, Cederschiöld gives

the example of the difference between a man and a woman when they are asked to

recapitulate a phone conversation they took part in or they overheard. He comes to the

conclusion that women recall the conversation in a more direct way, by saying, e.g., “he

12 “Liksom kvinnan yttrar sin mening i raskare tempo än mannen, tänker hon också snabbare. Den fart, med vilken hon stundom kan kasta sig från en synpunkt till en annan, blir rent av svindlande för en karls fattningsgåva. (…) Dylika snabba övergångar i stämning och därav följande motsägelser bära sannolikt största skulden i agg “kvinnologik” på mannens språk kommit att bli ungefär liktydigt med brist på logik.”

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said, and then she said, and then he said”, whereas men show a tendency to give a more

contextual overview of what was said during the conversation, they are more indirect

(Cederschiöld 1900). Although Cederschiöld never explicitly states that women have a

tendency to use more pronouns, by saying that they do favour the direct approach when

it comes to recapitulating a conversation and in combination with the example that he

gives, it can be assumed that Cederschiöld believed that using pronouns was more

common in women’s language than in men’s language.

Jespersen seems to supports Cederschiöld’s view with regard to this matter. He

writes, “a woman’s thought is no sooner formed than uttered” (Jespersen 1922: 253). In

other words, as soon as a woman thinks something, she will say it. The similarity with

Cederschiöld here is undeniable, who used the term “immediateness” to describe this

phenomenon. Jespersen also admits that women are more skilled when it comes to the

use of pronouns. In his opinion, the frequency with which women use a personal

pronoun is a linguistic sign of the greater rapidity of female thought (Jespersen 1922:

252). This all seems to play in women’s favour, but Jespersen makes an addition to this

statement that some might consider offensive. Jespersen claims that it is only due to the

fact that women have smaller vocabularies (and thus fewer words to choose from),that

they show superior readiness in their speech, and that this is linked to the fact that

women in most respects show a tendency to be average, as opposed to men, who tend to

reach for extremes (1922: 253). While this at first sight may possibly seem sexist,

Jespersen wants to stress that it should not be regarded as a slur upon their sex, since

“men score the highest on the positive extremes, but also on the negative ones” (1922:

253).

While Jespersen seems to agree with Cederschiöld in stating that women think

faster than men and therefore use more pronouns, contemporary linguists seem to have

developed other opinions on the matter. In 2003, Argamon (33) decided to investigate

whether or not there was a difference in the use of pronouns between the sexes. This

work is particularly interesting, since it also makes the connection between the number

of nominals used by either sex and the number of pronouns. Argamon states that both

men and women have nearly identical frequencies of nominals, e.g. the use of words

such as table or book (2003). The equal number of nominals means that men and

women have the same frequencies of referring to people or things. Since the number of

nominals is equal for both sexes, it is then easy to determine if there is a difference in the

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number of pronouns used to refer to those nominals. Argamon concludes that “overall,

pronoun use is overwhelmingly more female than male (…)” (2003: 6). He believes that

this pattern holds for first, second and third-‐person pronouns, but that with regard to

the latter one must pay attention to the difference between the pronouns generally

marked for gender (i.e. he, she) and the impersonal pronoun (i.e. it). While females make

strikingly more use of the former, Argamon finds that there is an equal division between

the two sexes with regard to the latter:

Female writers more often use personal pronouns that make explicit the gender of the

‘thing’ being mentioned (third person singular personal pronouns), while males have a

tendency to prefer more generic pronouns. Both of these aspects might be seen as pointing

to a greater ‘personalization’ of the text by female authors (Argamon 2003: 8).

6.9 Speed of utterances

Linked to the previous topic, namely that women tend to think faster than men, and feel

the need to express their feelings immediately, is the claim that women also speak faster

than men. Cederschiöld writes, “Just like women express their opinion in a more rapid

pace than men, they also think faster” (Cederschiöld 1900: 25)13. Cederschiöld mentions

a number of different reasons for the more rapid pace that can be found in women’s

speech. One of the reasons, according to Cederschiöld, is because “she makes a rich and

powerful use of emotional emphasis”(1900: 22)14. The more extensive use of emotions

in women’s speech will be addressed in the next section of this paper. It is well-‐

established that emotional people are not exactly known for their calm and well-‐thought

out approach in conversations. Cederschiöld seems to have drawn the conclusion that

there is a correlation between emotionality in speech and the speed with which one

speaks. A second reason that, according to Cederschiöld, is proof that women speak in a

more rapid pace is the fact that women have a tendency to use direct language. This use

of direct language has the consequence that women have a tendency to see their speech

as a single unit and they do not divide it into different pieces, like men prefer to do. So a

13 “Liksom kvinnan yttrar sin mening i raskare tempo än mannen, tänker hon också snabbare.” 14 “Härmed sammanhänger, att fruntimmer, då de tala, g¨ra ett rikligt och kraftig bruk av känslobetoningen.”

51

woman presents her speech as a continuous flow of sounds, while males are more likely

to insert pauses in their speech, according to Cederschiöld (1900).

While Cederschiöld is giving reasons for the more rapid speed with which women

tend to speak, Jespersen approaches the matter from a different point of view by

explaining why men tend to speak more slowly than women. Jespersen talks about “the

superior readiness of speech of women” (1922: 253). With this statement, it is obvious

that he feels that women, more then men, are quicker in forming opinions and uttering

them. It seems that Jespersen does not see this as a positive trait, since he feels it is

connected to the fact that women have smaller vocabularies than men and that “women

do not reach the same extreme points as men, but are nearer the average in most

respects” (1922: 253).

Another reason that according to Jespersen can influence the pace of the speech

is how the clauses are formed.

If we compare long periods as constructed by men and by women, we shall in the former

find many more instances of intricate of involute structures with clause within clause, a

relative clause in the middle of a conditional clause of vice versa, with subordination and

sub-‐subordination, while the typical form of long feminine periods is that of co-‐ordination,

one sentece of clause being added to another on the same plane and the gradation

between the respective ideas beingmarked not grammatically, but emotioinally, by stress

and intonation, and in writing by underlining. In learned terminology we may say that men

are fond of hypotaxis and women of parataxis. (Jespersen 1922: 251).

It is much easier to utter clause after clause after clause, such as the woman prefers, than

to utter clause within clause within clause, which characterizes the male speech pattern,

according to Jespersen. As a result of this, too, it might be possible that women tend to

speak at a more rapid pace than men.

Many contemporary researchers have looked into this matter, and a lot of them

even based themselves on Jespersen’s work. Green and LeBihan (1996) (34) for

example, reinforce Jespersen’s opinion that “the first common notion of women’s speech

is that it is essentially ‘gossip’ or ‘prattle’”(1996: 33). “Jespersen”, Green and LeBihan

argue, “considered that women did not think before they spoke and were therefore less

competent at complex syntactic structures such as elaborate subordination”(1996: 33).

Therefore they support Jespersen in his conclusion that women make more use of

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paratactic structures, whereas men prefer to use hypotactic structures. This would show

that women opt for easy structures and avoid the complex subordination. To elaborate

the two concepts, Green and LeBihan (1996) give the following examples:

a) parataxis ‘I went down the road and went to the shops. I bought some fruit’

b) hypotaxis ‘While I was out down the road I went to the shops and bought some

fruit’.

From this, we infer that women who use more parataxis make less use of function words

such as while that express logical, argumentative etc. relationships. In other words,

parataxis is a language that lacks in expressive markers and thus lacks explicit coherence

(cf. Green and LeBihan 1996). By stating that women favour the paratactic (less

complicated) structures, Green and LeBihan implicitely also agree with Cederschiöld and

Jespersen that women tend to speak faster than men.

The study conducted by Green and LeBihan is not the only one to be found that

investigated the relationship between the sex of the speaker and the pace with which

one speaks. In 2004, a study was conducted to look at the speaking rates of American

and New Zealand varieties of English. While the initial goal of the study was to see

whether or not there was a difference between the speaking rates of those who spoke

New Zealand English and those who spoke American English (which there is: results

showed faster speaking rate for the New Zealand English group), they also looked at

gender differences and found that there were no differences what so ever, for either

variation of English. (Michael P. Robb, Margaret A. Maclagan, and Yang Chen 2004) (35).

While the results of this study do not exactly match the claims that Cederschiöld

and Jespersen make, there are other studies that refute those claims entirely. A study

conducted by Yuan, Liberman and Cieri (2006) (36) came up with some very interesting

results. They claim that the opposite from what Cederschiöld and Jespersen write is

actually true, with men speaking at a more rapid pace than women:

The difference between them is, however, very small, only about 4 to 5 words or

characters per minute (2%), though it is statistically significant. It might be due to things

that we would not normally think of as speech-‐rate parameters, such as differences in

word-‐frequency distributions. (Yuan, Liberman &Cieri 2006: 3)

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Compared to the beginning of the twentieth century, there is a lot more variation in

opinions to be found in contemporary research. Nobody seems to be absolutely sure on

what the right answer is and everyone seems to agree that further research on the

matter is an absolute condition in order to give a definitive answer to the question.

6.10 Emotions vs. rationality in speech.

It is generally believed that women are emotional creatures, as opposed to men who are

considered the more rational sex. Cederschiöld believes that this is also expressed in

their speech: “But the main thing is though, that women feel the need to immediately

express their feelings in their first, original power. If she can do that, than she is not

easily stopped by shyness” (1900: 19)15. Cederschiöld also writes: “The most

characteristic and most general observed features of the woman's language are the

manifestations of the intensity, exclusivity, immediacy, suddenness and variability of her

feelings” (1900: 18)16. According to Cederschiöld, each female feels the need to express

what she is feeling, and to express that immediately whenever she is feeling it. He claims

that there aren’t many things out there that a woman will not express, because she is not

shy. This is also the reason why there are not many modifying or reluctant expressions

to be found in her speech. Women feel the need to lose themselves in the heat of the

moment and express themselves in strong utterances and this is why they prefer

absolute expressions: “Men on the other hand examine expressions from a more general

point of view, and often have difficulties seeing things as one-‐sided and personal as

women do” (Cederschiöld 1900: 27)17. The urge to express everything immediately

poses problems when women find themselves in situations where they cannot give in to

that urge. Cederschiöld gives the example of discussion in parliament, where everyone

has to wait for their turn before they can speak. He claims that those discussions are

much more difficult for women, because they cannot speak immediately and have to try

and remember their feelings and words: 15 “Men huvudsaken är nog, att kvinnan behöver genast och omedelbart giva uttryck åt sin känsl i dess första, ursprungliga kraft. Får hon göra det, så hindrar blygheten föga. 16 De mest karaktäristiska och allmännast iakttagna dragen i kvinnans språk äro just yttringar av hennes känslas intensitet, exklusivitet, omedelbarhet, plötslighet och föränderlighet.” 17 “Mannen däremot tar ofta kvinnans uttalande “efter orden”, granskar uttrycken från allmännare synpunkter och har svårt att se saken så ensidigt och personligt, som kvinnan gjort.”

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(…) When she finally gets the word, she runs the risk of discovering that the mood she was in

when she wanted the word has weakened and blurred or even completely disappeared, and

thus she does not say what she originally wanted to say (Cederschiöld 1900: 19)18.

The fact that women tend to be more emotional in their speech is something that

Jespersen claims to have noticed as well, although he never states it in so many words

and he does not spend much attention on the topic. While Cederschiöld focused on the

emotional state of the woman, Jespersen chose to look more closely to the rational state

of the man by stating that

Woman is linguistically quicker than man: quicker to learn, quicker to hear, and quicker to

answer. A man is slower: he hesitates, he chews the cud to make sure of the taste of words,

and thereby comes to discover similarities with and differences from other words, both in

sound and in sense, thus preparing himself for the appropriate use of the fittest noun or

adjective (Jespersen 1922: 249).

In other words, Jespersen finds a man to be more rational because he is slower. A man

does not feel the urge to express everything immediately; rather he takes his time to

look for the right words. He wants the words to express what he wants to say to

perfection, and also make sure that what he is saying has an aesthetic value. His aim is to

produce something that will please his listeners, with regard to content as well as sound.

This is in sharp contrast with the emotionality with which women tend to speak. Women

don’t leave room to analyse their feelings or the words they use to express their feelings,

and that is why they are labelled as emotional beings which is reflected in their speech.

Men on the other hand choose to take their time before they speak so they can analyse

the situation and react to it accordingly, making them much more rational than the

opposite sex.

We can conclude that both Cederschiöld and Jespersen believe that the woman is

not only a more emotional being, she also expresses her emotions more than the

opposite sex. In this modern day and age, this is still the general opinion of many people,

including scholars, and it comes as no surprise, then, that a large number of scientists 18 “(…) att hon riskerar att, när hon slutligen får ordet, finna den stämning, som förmådde henne att begära ordet, redan försvagad och grumlad eller t.o.m. alldeles försvunnen, så att hon icke kommer att säga det, som hon ursprungligen hade velat säga.”

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have investigated in the matter. Burke, Weir & Harrison (1976) (37) for example, found

that in marriage, women attach greater importance to expressing their feelings and are

therefore more willing to admit that they are feeling tense. Since they value the

importance of communication, they make greater efforts to explain what they are feeling

as well. Another study that researched the expression of emotions in marriage showed

that women, more often than men, express their emotions verbally, and more

specifically negative emotions. A man, on the other hand, make use of the

“stonewalling”-‐technique, in which he minimizes eye contact and tries not to listen to

what is being said when he finds himself in a marital dispute (Levenson, Carstensen &

Gottman 1994) (38). This is also supported by more recent studies, such as the one by

Vogel, Wester, Heesacker & Madon (2003) (39) who come to the same conclusion that

men have a tendency to withdraw instead of expressing what they are feeling. It seems

that Cederschiöld and Jespersen were right all along in stating that women are more

emotional, and men are more rational in their speech.

6.11 Taboo

In order to properly discuss the topic of taboo, it must first be determined what the term

denotes, and whether the term has undergone changes between the beginning of the

twentieth century and now. Jespersen defines taboo, and more specifically verbal taboo

as follows:

Under certain circumstances, at certain times, in certain places, the use of one or more

definite words is interdicted, because it is superstitiously believed to entail certain evil

consequences, such as exasperate demons and the like (Jespersen 1922: 239).

According to the Oxford Dictionary, the term taboo is “a cultural or religious custom that

does not allow people to do, use, or talk about a particular thing as people find it

offensive or embarrassing” (“Taboo”, 2015). If we compare the two definitions, it can be

concluded that while the reasoning behind it may be different, the outcome remains the

same: words that are considered taboo are words that should not be used. It can

therefor be assumed that the meaning of the word taboo has not changed since the

beginning of the twentieth century.

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As a result of this verbal taboo, one has to resort to figurative paraphrases,

obsolete terms or a disguise of the real word into a more innocent term in order to

replace the forbidden word (Jespersen 1922). Jespersen bases himself upon speech

among primitive tribes to determine that verbal taboo was a common practice among

the women. He finds that women in the old Caribs made frequent use of this verbal

taboo; they are for example never allowed to learn words that are related to the

warpath, which are being described as “extraordinarily difficult” (Jespersen 1922: 239).

Women are strictly interdicted of using such words so much that observers are tempted

to call their language a separate language. This is not restricted to the old Caribs, but

occurs among a number of primitive tribes among the globe. Consequences for breaking

this rule are severe: “if a woman were to contravene this rule she would be indicted for

sorcery and put to death” (Jespersen 1922: 240). In none of his findings does Jespersen

mention that men were not being permitted to speak certain words, so it can be

assumed that verbal taboo according to Jespersen was something that was restricted to

the speech of women.

One of the contemporary linguists who comments on taboo in relation to gender

is R. Dixon (40). In his section on avoidance styles, he states that “Most (perhaps all)

Australian tribes have or had a special ‘avoidance’ speech style which must be used in

the presence of a taboo relative; bilingual informants frequently describe this as

‘mother-‐in-‐law language’” (Dixon 1980: 58). Dixon here uses the term ‘avoidance

speech’ to refer to taboo words. Dixon specifically studied the relations between a

woman and her father-‐in-‐law, and a man and his mother-‐in-‐law, denoting similar

avoidance patterns, and in certain tribes this even extends to the wife’s mother’s

brother, or it can include cross-‐cousins. In these types of relationships, one has to follow

the rules of the avoidance speech, in order not to be looked down upon and covered in

shame (Dixon 1980). Dixon does not seem to make a specific distinction between men

and women: avoidance speech occurs with both genders, and depends on their

relationship to the person that is being spoken to. Dixon furthermore warns the reader

that this ‘mother-‐in-‐law language’ is “not a separate language, but just a separate

linguistic style, employing the same phonology and grammar as the everyday style but

with some lexical differences” (Dixon 1980: 61). Dixon elaborates further on this matter

and makes mention of and extreme example, the Dyirbal-‐speaking tribes, in which every

single lexical word has a different form in the avoidance and the everyday style.

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Although Dixon implicitly agrees with Jespersen that there is something that can be

called verbal taboo by discussing avoidance styles in which certain words should be

avoided depending on the relationship and the gender of the person one is speaking to,

Dixon however does not comment that there is a difference in these avoidance styles

between men and women: avoidance styles are known to both genders, and no

comments were being made on one of them being more extreme then another.

Another contemporary linguist who comments on taboo in relation to gender is

Fatima Sadiqi (41), who defines linguistic taboo as “characterized by the irrational

rejection of a specific set of words” (2003: 78). In her study, she did research on

language in the Moroccan culture, and found that “some of the strongest linguistic

taboos apply to words associated with women” (Sadiqi 2003: 78). Sadiqi seems to

support Jespersen’s statement that women, at least in the Moroccan culture, are

forbidden to use certain words. She mentions that there are certain words that

Moroccan women tend to avoid, such as ‘ghost’ or ‘ghosts’, but that they also tend to

favour the uttering of the number five, because they believe that it drives evil away

(Sadiqi 2003). Again, a line can be drawn with Jespersen’s statements that superstition

is involved, however, here we find that women not only avoid certain words because

they attract evil, but also explicitly use others words in order to drive evil away. Just as

Jespersen found, this study of language in the Moroccan culture claims that taboo is used

as a means of social control, which can result in sanctions if violated. Sadiqi does not

explicitly state that only women avoid certain words, but she does state that

The proliferation of taboos associated with women in Morocco is linked to the ‘silence’

that surrounds them at a more general level. In the overall Moroccan culture, female

voices lack discursive authority because of the burden of the taboo, which characterizes

women as listeners, rather than speakers; their voice is cawra ‘taboo’ (Sadiqi 2003: 79).

Based on this statement, it is clear that in the Moroccan culture linguistic or verbal taboo

is strongly associated with women. Moreover, it seems to be linked to a greater cultural

phenomenon among the Moroccan people that women should be silent. It is important

to bear in mind here that although this is typical for the Moroccan culture, this does not

imply that it is a global phenomenon. It seems that contemporary sources are in

agreement on the fact that linguistic taboo or avoidance styles do exist, yet with regard

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to gender, taboo words being more a male or female practice, it is likely that this is very

culture-‐dependent and that further research is necessary to make more general claims

6.12 2nd/foreign language learning

In the section he titled “Competing Languages”, Jespersen also notices differences in

languages between men and women in countries where there is a struggle for language

supremacy:

A difference between the language spoken by men and that spoken by women is seen in

many countries where two languages are struggling for supremacy in a peaceful way –

this without any question of one nation exterminating the other or the male part of it

(Jespersen 1922: 241).

According to Jespersen, when men and women are faced with having to integrate in

another country, men interact more with the native population than women.

As a result, men integrate more easily into the new culture and they have more

opportunities to learn the language than women, who usually remain indoors. He has

found evidence of this among German and Scandinavian immigrants in America, where

men have more contact with the English-‐speaking population and more opportunities to

learn the language (Jespersen 1922). Jespersen seems to imply that men acquire foreign

or second languages more quickly than women, not because they are more intelligent

than women but simply because they interact more with the native people. It seems that

there are other factors besides gender that have a part in speech differences between

men and women. There seem to be greater cultural reasons, such as the fact that women

tend to stay indoors and have not got as much contact with foreign languages as men do,

or because they live in a place where men end to dominate the public sphere.

On the matter of second language learning with regard to gender, contemporary sources

seem to be divided, depending on which aspect of second language acquisition was

investigated. Some believe that women are better at learning a second language

((42)Burstall 1975; (43)Nyikos 1990), while others share Jespersen’s view that men are

superior in this regard (Boyle 1987)(44). Bacon (1992)(45) on the other hand has

found no evidence of either gender being superior in second language acquisition.

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The contemporary work of Ellis (1994) (46) comments on second language acquisition

related to gender. He states that there are two major principles in sociolinguistic

research related to sex differences: on the one hand that women use more standard

forms than men, and on the other that, with regard to linguistic change, women use the

changed forms more frequently than men. This led him to assume that with regard to

second language acquisition, women might be better at learning new languages than

men, since they are more open to new linguistic forms (Ellis 1994). He comes to the

speculative conclusion that women have greater success in learning a second language

in classroom settings because they have more positive attitudes towards learning.

However, he states that

Sex (or gender) is, of course, likely to interact with other variables in determining L2

proficiency. It will not always be the case, therefore, that females outperform males.

Asian men in Britain generally attain higher levels of proficiency in L2 English than do

Asian women for the simple reason that their jobs bring them into contact with the

majority English-‐speaking group, while women are often ‘enclosed’ in the home. Sex

interacts with such factors as age, ethnicity, and, in particular, social class (Ellis 1994:

204).

Ellis thus agrees with Jespersen’s claim that men acquire a second language more easily,

because they have more opportunities to learn it, while women remain indoors, and that

this leads to differences between the languages spoken by men and women. Again, there

seems to be other factors in play as well, and no conclusive answer can be given.

6.13 Adverbs

A final topic that Jespersen discusses is with regard to the use of adverbs: “while there

are a few adjectives, such as pretty and nice, that might be mentioned as used more

extensively by women than by men, there are greater differences with regard to

adverbs” (Jespersen 1922: 249). The distinction Jespersen claims between men and

women and their use of adverbs is not a quantitative distinction: Jespersen never

mentions a greater use of adverbs in either one of the genders. Rather Jespersen

believes the distinction is a qualitative one: certain adverbs are used more or exclusively

60

by women. Jespersen makes reference to two examples: adverbs of intensity and the

intensive so. According to Jespersen, women make more use of adverbs of intensity than

men do, because they are fond of the use of hyperboles. As a result, women often tend to

disregard their proper meaning, for example awfully pretty, is a phrase that is most

likely to be spoken by a woman, where awfully does not carry its traditional meaning of

unpleasant, but is used to intensify the adjective, resulting in the meaning of very pretty.

Jespersen also mentions the adverb quite, in the sense of ‘very’, to be used more

frequently by women than by men (Jespersen 1922). With regard to the more frequent

use of the intensive so by women, in conjunction with an adjective, such as ‘he is so

charming’, Jespersen explains this as follows:

The explanation of this characteristic female usage is, I think, that women much more

often than men break off without finishing their sentences, because they start talking

without having thought out what they are going to say (Jespersen 1922: 250).

According to Jespersen, the same case can be made for the intensive such: if it is used in

a sentence, one would expect a following complement clause introduced by that, but

since it is difficult to find something fitting to say when you are making it up as you go

along, the inexpressible remains unexpressed. Since men do not have the tendency to

think while they are speaking, but think first and then speak, the use of intensifiers such

as so and such does not occur that much in their speech.

It seems that contemporary research agrees with Jespersen claims. Studies have

shown that women often make more use of intensifiers ((47)Farb 1973; Ritchie Key

1972). Ritchie Key (48) attributes the more extensive use of intensifiers by females such

as so, such, quite, vastly, to the fact that women are more sensitive to indicators of lower

status than males, and therefore they are less likely to use syntactic features with such

connotations.

While contemporary research thus seems to agree with Jespersen on the fact that

women do in fact make more use of intensifiers, they give a different explanation for it.

Jespersen claims that this is a result of women’s tendency to not think before they speak,

while Key associates the more extensive use with the fact that women are more

sensitive to indicators of lower status. Either way, it appears that women use more

61

adverbs of intensity in their speech than men do, a phenomenon that was already

discovered in the beginning of the twentieth century.

6.14 Non-‐verbal communication

We can say a lot by talking, but we say a lot more by not talking. A large part of daily

communications is not established through verbal communication but through non-‐

verbal communication, such as body languages, gestures, eye contact, posture, smiling,

etc. In Cederschiöld’s opinion, women make more use of these non-‐verbal

communication methods than men do:

The immediateness with which women like to express their emotions, also results in the

fact that the main tool of expression, words and phrases, are not ideal for her so she

successfully employs other tools, which are more suited to express her feelings directly

and concretely, namely looks, glances and gestures on the one hand, and crying, laughing,

snorting etc. on the other (Cederschiöld 1900: 11)19.

According to Cederschiöld, because women are more emotional in their speech, they

also need to make more use of non-‐verbal tools in order to express those emotions. In

his opinion, women say a whole lot more with a look than with words. He believes that it

is possible for women to have entire conversations with each other, without either one

of them uttering a single world, while men are completely oblivious to the message that

is conveyed between them (Cederschiöld 1900).

Nonverbal aspects of communication between genders has been a topic of great

interest among contemporary researchers and they seem to agree with Cederschiöld

that women are more skilled and make more use of non-‐verbal communication methods

than men do. Frieze (1974) (49) notices that enhanced non-‐verbal communication

among women is associated with linking and warmth. While men want to display

dominance and status, women want to indicate greater emotional warmth nonverbally.

19 Den omedelbarhet, hvarmed kvinnan gärna vill gifva sin känsla luft, gör också, att umgängesspråkets förnämsta uttrycksmedel, orden och satserna, icke passa henne så bra och icke så framgångsrikt af henne användas som vissa andra språkliga medel, hvilka direktare och så att säga konkretare uttrycka känslor, nämligen dels blickar, miner och åtbörder, dels gråt, skrik, skratt, fnysningar m.m.

62

She claims that higher status individuals show less direct eye contact, that women on

the other hand show more social eye contact, and that women also tend to smile more

than men do. Furthermore, she a states that women are more receptive towards other

people’s non-‐verbal cues, which is in line with what Cederschiöld has put forward. Other

studies have provided evidence as well that women tend to smile more and make more

eye contact, as a means of communication ((51) Argyle & Ingham 1972; (52)Silveira

1972; Exline, Gray & Shuette 1965). Exline, Gray & Shuette (1965) (50) for example, aim

to discover the role of gender in the willingness to engage in eye contact as a means of

communication. One male and one female graduate student interviewed 40 male and 40

female students. The interviewers were instructed to gaze steadily at their interviewee

while asking personal questions. As a result, they found that female students, compared

to the male student and regardless of the sex of the interviewer, made more eye contact,

and that they showed more affection and were more inclusion oriented.

6.15 Pronouns

This section will elaborate on Furfey’s view on pronoun differences in the speech of men

and women, a topic that is already mentioned briefly in point 6.8 on speed of thought.

Furfey mentions that there are certain paradigms that are dependant of the sex of the

speaker, such as in the Thai language, in which there are differences in the first person

personal pronoun and in certain polite particles (Furfey 1944: 220). An even more

complicated example of this instance can be found among the Yuchi, an Indian tribe in

Georgia, who have “a complicated system of personal pronouns whose correct use

depends on the sex of the speaker, the sex of the person spoken of, and the relationship

between them” (Furfey 1944: 220). In both cases there seem to be different pronouns

for men and women. While modern French, English or Swedish for instance do not have

this distinction, these differences in pronouns depending on the sex of the speaker are

still found today in some languages, such as Japanese. Contemporary studies have

shown that the Japanese have a variety of first and second person singular pronouns

which can not be used at random, but their usage is bound to specific rules (Ide 1990)

(53). Their usage is related to the gender of the speaker and the level of formality of the

conversation. Based on a table in which the different pronouns for men and women are

listed, Ide states that

63

Two kinds of differences are noted here. First, a difference in levels of formality can be

observed. The level of formaliy of watasi is formal for men, but plain for women and that

of anata is formal for men, but plain or formal for women. This means that women are

required to use more formal forms. (…) Second, we notice pronouns of deprecatory level,

ore, omae and kisama, in men’s speech but non in women’s speech. There is no

deprecatory word in women’s speech (Ide 1990: 73-‐74).

Ide reaches this conclusion based on a study in which 256 men and 271 women were

asked questions to in Tokyo. All were parents of students from Japan’s Women’s

University. They were aged between 40 and 70 years old; most of the men were

businessmen and most of the women were housewives, in order to obtain a sample

representing the typical middle-‐class. Each informant was asked three questions, which

were then analysed in view of linguistic rules of politeness and social rules (e.g., the type

of addressee). Politeness in this case meant the perceived distance between two

subjects. This distance appears greatest when a subject is very careful towards another

subject, and shortest when the subject feels uninhibited (Ide 1990).

The study shows not only that men and women in the Japanese language use

different pronouns, but that men have a wider variety of choices in their pronouns than

women. The pronoun use is also linked to the level of formality, in which it is noted that

for women, there is no deprecatory level expressing disproval or criticism. It thus

appears that contemporary research agrees with Furfey that in some languages there

are differences in pronoun use related to gender.

6.16 Diphthongs

While Gauchat (1905) previously only focused on the age of his informants and only

casually mentions differences in gender without further commenting on them, he seems

to make an exception with regard to diphthongs. When he investigates the diphthong

/ao/, he states that it’s appearance is very inconsistent among all generations and that

its counter-‐form /å/ is still intact among the older speakers (Gauchat 1905). Moreover,

Gauchat states that “as always, women sett off more easily on the path of

64

diphthongization than to men” (Gauchat 1905: 44)20. While he previously restricted

himself to commenting solely on the age of his informants upon investigating the

relationship with language variety, he now expands his study and seems to take in

gender as a variable for phonetic change as well. Though he bases himself upon

examples in isolation, he makes the very general claim that women render faster to

diphthongs than men do. He claims that if one should compare the pronunciation of a

man and a woman that are the same age, the latter will have clear diphthongization,

while the former will have a mixture (Gauchat 1905). Gauchat links this back to his

original focus, the age-‐variable, by explaining why the youngest generation in his view

also have a greater number of diphthongs in their pronunciation. According to Gauchat,

children learn the language mainly from their mothers, hence it is called a mother

tongue. The father has to work and the children hardly ever see him, so the task of

raising them depends on the mother. Children are thus more prone to take over their

mother’s language than their father’s : “since a language is learned in the home and not

out in the fields, it is clear that children will follow the example set by their mothers”

(Gauchat 1905: 45)21.

In this section, Gauchat seems to bring together two variables that influence

phonetic change, namely age and gender. By stating that women make more use of

diphthongs than men and that they pass on their language to the next generation, they

have a greater influence on how that generation will speak, or specific to this case, the

degree of diphthongization. Contemporary studies seem to be divided on this subject.

Some authors seem to agree with Gauchat that women are more sensitive to

diphthongization, such as Thomas (2013) (54), who refers to variable realizations of

/ai/ among African American English speakers in Chicago, and to what degree it is

monophthongized:

(…) speaker gender is found to play a sizeable and significant role in predicting

monophthongization. Females produced tokens with greater diphthongization than

males, meaning their realizations of /ai/ are more similar to canonical /ai/ in SAE (i.e.

Standard American English, my addition). Women also show greater variation and

20 Comme toujours, les femmes se mettent plus facilement sur la voie de la diphtongaison que les hommes. 21 Comme la langue s’apprend autour du foyer, non aux champs, il est clair que les enfants suivront plutôt l’exemple des femmes.

65

dynamicity across distinct phonetic and conversational environments than men (Thomas

2013: 450).

Thomas takes into account certain sociolinguistic factors other than ethnicity and

geographic location as well. It was found that women more commonly used diphthongs,

whereas men tended to favour the use of monophthongs. Whether this means that

women have a more standard speech is not an issue investigated by Thomas, but her

findings definitely lean towards this assumption.

In a study regarding the changing pronunciation of the diphthong /ɛɪ/ in Dutch,

namely that there is a tendency towards the lowering of the diphthong, it was tested

whether this avant-‐garde use of the diphthong was more widespread among women,

who are believed to be the one who initiate sound changes rather than men (van

Heuven, V.J., van Bezooijen, R., Edelman, L. 2002) (55). Van Heuven, van Bezooijen &

Edelman (2002) recorded 16 male and 16 female Dutch-‐speaking guests in a television

talkshow to test their hypothesis. Their age ranged between the ages of 28 and 52, and

for each speaker they recorded approximately six minutes of sponteaneous, non-‐

rehearsed speech. Then they selected for each speaker ten instances of the target

diphthong /ɛɪ/, as well as five instances of /i/ and /a/.

Based on the sociolinguistic data, they come to the conclusion that this new,

lowered variant of /ɛɪ/ is found more among the speech of women than among the

speech of men. They also state that while both genders have conservative as well as

progressive speakers, it is the women who have led the sound change. Since this study

was focused on one single diphthong, it would be too presumptious to assume that this

is true for all diphthongs and for all dialects, but it is definitly an indicator that the topic

of diphthongization and gender is worth looking into.

However, there are studies that do not agree with Gauchat’s point of view. A

study (56) by Collins that was conducted in Galway claims that diphthongs are used by

all speakers of the Claddagh community, and that age nor gender is a factor in the

different usage:

However, a study of S HE as spoken by the residents of the Claddagh community in

Galway has shown that diphthongs are in fact being used by all speakers from three

different generations. (…). And while age and sex have been suggested as a way of

66

explaining sound change, neither of these factors was seen to be a reason for the move

towards diphthongization in the Claddagh S HE speakers (as cited in Kallen, 1997,p.154).

Contemporary studies have not come to a consentient conclusion regarding the matter

of diphthongization and gender, and it seems largely dependent on which dialect is

being studied. There seems to be no universal claim as to one of the genders having a

higher degree of diphthongization than the other.

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7 Conclusion

In general, it seems safe to say that there are a considerable number of

differences between the first part of the twentieth century and present-‐day

scholarship with regard to language variation and gender. What almost

immediately stands out among the early sources is the lack of empirical data to

support the various claims. It seems to be more exception than rule that claims

are supported by empirical evidence rather than based upon hearsay, common

prejudice or the author’s own, but often unsubstantiated intuitions. As a result,

many claims are highly dubious and should be treated with great scepticism.

A second major point that authors from the first part of the twentieth

century have in common is the wide variety of topics they address. Especially in

the beginning of the twentieth century it can be noticed that no subject seems to

be left out. Based on the table on page 19, it is clear that Cederschiöld and

Jespersen address a much higher number of subjects than their peers. Moreover,

with the exception of the subjects of non-‐verbal communication, adverbs, 2nd-‐

and foreign language learning and taboo, both of them address the same subjects.

This tendency is also seen with Furfey and Chamberlain: both of them discuss

identical subjects, with the exception of pronouns, which are only addressed by

Furfey. It comes as no surprise then that, due to the fact that overall, early 20th-‐

century authors lack empirical evidence, they often do not agree with one

another.

There is however one major exception to these general observations,

namely the investigations by Gauchat. Although his study was published in 1905,

he seems to be far ahead of his time compared to contemporary scholars.

Gauchat’s study distances itself from other early 20th-‐century texts in that it not

only focuses on one specific subject, namely the role of age in the difference in

pronunciation, but also on one specific area, i.e. the the Suisse Romande village of

Charmey. Moreover, he provides empirical and precise data to support his claims.

In doing so, his investigations differ greatly from what other linguists of the time

were doing. In every respect, Gauchat seems to be more of a present-‐day scholar

than a linguist from the early 1900s.

68

By comparing the studies from the first part of the twentieth century with

contemporary research, we were able to establish differences as well as

similarities. As opposed to authors from the first part of the twentieth century,

present-‐day scholars tend to focus on only one aspect of language variation at a

time. This results not only in a higher number of different studies on the same

subject, but also in a higher number of different outcomes. It has proven rare to

find two contemporary studies on the same subject that agree with each other in

every respect, let alone with claims made in the first part of the twentieth

century. This can partly be attributed to the fact that gender is not the only

variable that plays a part in language variation. Other factors such as the culture

or the language under investigation play an important part as well. One tendency

that contemporary authors do seem to have in common is that they are much

more cautious to draw general conclusions. While they may make statements on

a certain subject in this or that language, they are careful not to overgeneralize,

something that was common in the first part of the twentieth century.

One of the biggest discrepancies between the first part of the twentieth

century and now is the increase in studies on language variety and gender. It has

proven to be rather difficult to find sources dating back to the beginning of the

twentieth century regarding this matter, while there is plenty to choose from

among contemporary research, especially since the publication of Lakoff’s

Language and The Woman’s Place (1975). Perhaps her work genuinely sparked

the interest of linguists to investigate the matter, or perhaps this interest was

already present in the beginning of the twentieth century, yet few people

considered it necessary to write down their thoughts on the matter. Although the

reason for the increase in studies on language variety with regard to gender

cannot be stated with certainty, its existence is undeniable.

Content-‐wise it seems that contemporary research most often disagrees

with the claims made in the first part of the twentieth century, or they at least

offer a nuanced view on the subject that is being investigated. One characteristic

of early 20th-‐century research is a tendency to jump to conclusions based on poor

evidence. Present-‐day research counters this tendency by conducting large, in-‐

depth studies that carry scientific value. By using large samples of data rather

than some overheard conversation, they are able to give a more nuanced view on

69

the subject and they often come to a different conclusion than the corresponding

studies from the first part of the twentieth century. This also increases the

validity of contemporary research: while it is difficult to establish how much

truth there is to the claims that were made in the first part of the twentieth

century and these works should thus be approached with caution, the validity of

contemporary research is not up for discussion. Again, the work of Gauchat forms

an exception to this; based upon a carefully conducted study, his statements can

be assumed to be true.

To sum up, if we look at the evolution that took place in the discussion

with regard to language variation and gender, generally speaking contemporary

researchers turn out to be a lot more sceptical towards general claims than in the

beginning of the twentieth century and they much more rely, as a rule, on

empirical sociolinguistic research findings than was customary at the beginning

of the twentieth century, with the exception of Gauchat’s study.

70

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