Manual for Students
.pdfd. Both Labov and Trudgill also suggest that working-class speech has associations with masculinity – with a ‘roughness and toughness’ that is characteristic of working-class life. These are generally not desirable, feminine attributes for women – and, correspondingly, they are desirable, masculine attributes for men. (Discussions of these explanations, both pro and con, are numerous in the literature on language and gender; see especially Eckert, 1989; Labov, 1990; Romaine, 1994).
Supporting Data: Self-Evaluation of Speech in Norwich
Support for differing preferences of men and women with respect to overt & covert prestige can be found in Trudgill’s self-evaluation data for Norwich [ibid.]:
Øwe assume that speakers usually report themselves as using the forms which have positive connotations for them: the ones they are aiming to produce (at any rate, when they are directing attention to their speech, i.e. in more formal styles);
Øwomen reported themselves as using prestige variants (the yod /j/ in ‘tune’-words) more often than they actually did – presumably because they wish they did so, or think they ought to do so;
Ømen, on the other hand, significantly under-reported their use of the prestige form ([IK]) for /iyr/-words like ‘ear’, as opposed to vernacular forms (like [E:]);
ØPeter Trudgill concludes that women aim at a publicly-legitimised (i.e. overt) prestige norm; men aim at a norm with covert prestige;
Øspeakers using more prestige forms and those preferring vernacular forms are differently evaluated – though both are positively evaluated in some ways;
ØElyan (in Trudgill, 1988) performed an experiment contrasting RP speakers with speakers of British vernacular Englishes. RP speakers were rated higher on intelligence, fluency and self-confidence; vernacular speakers were seen as more charming, humorous and good-natured. To the extent that these stereo-types are shared by both sexes, men and women on the whole may be aiming for different images.
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Problems & Criticisms
The prestige-based and status-consciousness explanations have been criticised on a number of grounds:
ØThe concept of prestige itself is poorly-defined and possibly
circular.
ØThis view assumes that gender is an independent variable, and less important than status.
ØThis view emphasizes male behaviour as the norm, and treats female behaviour as deviant and needing to be explained.
ØIn emphasizing prestige and consensus models, it downplays the power differential between men and women [6] and the insights of conflict models.
ØThis view takes behaviour as sex-linked in an uncomplicated fashion instead of seeing gender as socially constructed, involving roles, norms and expectations, and potentially differing within sex-groups, as well as between them.
ØThere is no reason to expect simple, general or constant relations between gender (or sex) and sociolinguistic variation.
ØThis view ignores differences of gendered behaviour for variables that are stable, or at various stages of linguistic change in progress.
ØMethodological flaws are common in older studies: e.g. in the ways that women are assigned socioeconomic or occupational status; lack of awareness of gender dynamics in collecting speech data; and analysis of gender as involving a simple binary variable (=sex).
ØFinally, the data themselves turn out to be more complex: there are many cases where women have been found to use vernacular forms as often as men, or more often; both men and women have been found to lead in some sound changes; etc. Such cases suggest that a more sophisticated view of gendered variation is required.
6.8Language and Ethnicity
Words like ethnic groups, ethnicity and ethnic conflict have become common terms in the English language, and they keep cropping
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up in the press, in TV news, in political programmes and in casual conversations. Though the meaning of these terms frequently seems ambiguous and vague.
In social anthropology, ethnicity has been a main preoccupation since the late 1960s, and it remains a central focus for research in the 1990s. Through its dependence on long-term fieldwork, anthropology has the advantage of generating first-hand knowledge of social life at the level of everyday interaction. To a great extent, this is the locus where ethnicity is created and re-created.
Ethnicity emerges and is made relevant through ongoing social situations and encounters, and through people’s ways of coping with the demands and challenges of life. From its vantage-point right at the centre of local life, social anthropology is in a unique position to investigate these processes.Anthropological approaches also enable us to explore the ways in which ethnic relations are being defined and perceived by people; how they talk and think about their own group as well as other groups, and how particular world-views are being maintained or contested. The significance of ethnic membership to people can best be investigated through that detailed on-the-ground research which is the hallmark of anthropology. Finally, social anthropology, being a comparative discipline, studies both differences and similarities between ethnic phenomena. It thereby provides a nuanced and complex vision of ethnicity in the contemporary world [12, p. 1215 – 1230].
Ethnicity seems to be a new term: the term’s earliest dictionary entry appearance is in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1972. Its first usage is attributed to the American sociologist David Riesman in 1953. The word ethnic, however, is much older. The word is derived from the Greek ethnos (which in turn derived from the word ethnikos), which originally meant “heathen” or “pagan” [20, p. 119]. It was used in this sense in English from the mid-14th century until the mid-19th century, when it gradually began to refer to “racial” characteristics. In the United States, “ethnics” came to be used around the Second World War as a polite term referring to Jews, Italians, Irish and other people considered inferior to the dominant group of largely British descent. None of the founding fathers of sociology and social anthropology – with the partial exception of Max Weber – granted ethnicity much attention.
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Since the 1960s, ethnic groups and ethnicity have become household words in social anthropology, although, few of those who use the terms bother to define them.Anyway, all of the approaches to ethnicity agree that it has something to do with the classification of people and group relationships.
In everyday language, the word ethnicity still has a ring of minority issues and race relations, but in social anthropology, it refers to aspects of relationships between groups which consider themselves, and are regarded by others, as being culturally distinctive.Although it is true that the discourse concerning ethnicity tends to concern itself with subnational units or minorities of some kind or another, majorities and dominant people are no less “ethnic” than minorities.
Ethnicity, Race and Nation
A few words must be said initially about the relationship between ethnicity and race. The term race has deliberately been placed within inverted commas in order to stress that it has dubious descriptive value. Whereas it was for some time common to divide humanity into four main races, modern genetics tends not to speak of races, and this has two main reasons. First, there has always been so much interbreeding between human populations that it would be meaningless to talkof fixed boundaries between races. Secondly, the distribution of hereditary physical traits does not follow clear boundaries. In other words, there is often greater variation within a “racial” group than there is systematic variation between two groups.
Concepts of race can nevertheless be important to the extent that they inform people’s actions; at this level, race exists as a cultural construct, whether it has a biological reality or not. Racism, obviously, builds on the assumption that personality is somehow linked with hereditary characteristics which differ systematically between races, and in this way race may assume sociological importance even if it has no objective existence. Social scientists who study race relations in Great Britain and the United States need not themselves believe in the existence of race, since their object of study is the social and cultural relevance of the notion that race exists. If influential people in a society had developed a similar theory about the hereditary personality traits of redhaired people,
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and if that theory gained social and cultural significance, “redhead studies” would for similar reasons have become a field of academic research, even if the researchers themselves did not agree that redheads were different from others in a relevant way. In societies where they are important, ideas of race may therefore be studied as part of local discourses on ethnicity [12, p. 1215 – 1230].
The relationship between the terms ethnicity and nationality is nearly as complex as that between ethnicity and race. Like the words ethnic and race, the word nation has a long history [20], and has been used in a variety of different meanings in English. We shall refrain from discussing these meanings here, and will concentrate on the sense in which nation and nationalism are used analytically in academic discourse. Like ethnic ideologies, nationalism stresses the cultural similarity of its adherents, and by implication, it draws boundaries vis-a-vis others, who thereby become outsiders. The distinguishing mark of nationalism is by definition its relationship to the state. A nationalist holds that political boundaries should be coterminous with cultural boundaries, whereas many ethnic groups do not demand command over a state. When the political leaders of an ethnic movement place demands to this effect, the ethnic movement therefore by definition becomes a nationalist movement.
Ethnicity and Class
The term ethnicity refers to relationships between groups whose members consider themselves distinctive, and these groups may be ranked hierarchically within a society [12, p. 1215]. It is therefore necessary to distinguish clearly between ethnicity and social class.
Theories of social class always refer to systems of social ranking and distribution of power. Ethnicity, on the contrary, does not necessarily refer to rank; ethnic relations may well be egalitarian in this regard. Still, many poly-ethnic societies are ranked according to ethnic membership. The criteria for such ranking are nevertheless different from class ranking: they refer to imputed cultural differences or races, not to property or achieved statuses.
There may be a high correlation between ethnicity and class, which means that there is a high likelihood that persons belonging to specific
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ethnic groups also belong to specific social classes. There can be a significant interrelationship between class and ethnicity, both class and ethnicity can be criteria for rank, and ethnic membership can be an important factor for class membership. Both class differences and ethnic differences can be pervasive features of societies, but they are not one and the same thing and must be distinguished from one another analytically.
Thus, when we talk of ethnicity, we indicate that groups and identities have developed in mutual contact rather than in isolation. But what is the nature of such groups?
When A. Kroeber and F. Kluckholm investigated the various meanings of culture in the early 1950, they found about three hundred different definitions. Most of those who write on ethnicity do not bother to define the term, though the extant number of definitions is already high
– and it is growing. Instead of going through the various definitions of ethnicity here, we will point out significant differences between theoretical perspectives as we go along.As a starting-point, let us examine the recent development of the term as it is being used by social anthropologists.
The word combination ethnic group has come to mean “people”. But what is “people”? In a study of ethnic relations in Thailand, Michael Moerman [12, p. 1215 – 1230] asks himself: “Who are the Lue?” The Lue were the ethnic group his research focused on, but when he tried to describe who they were – in which ways they were distinctive from other ethnic groups – he quickly ran into trouble. His problem, a very common one in contemporary social anthropology, concerned the boundaries of the group. After listing a number of criteria commonly used by anthropologists to demarcate cultural groups, such as language, political organisation and territorial contiguity, he states: “Since language, culture, political organization, etc., do not correlate completely, the units delimited by one criterion do not coincide with the units delimited by another” [ibid.]. When he asked individual Lue what were their typical characteristics, they would mention cultural traits which they in fact shared with other, neighbouring groups. They lived in close interaction with other groups in the area; they had no exclusive livelihood, no exclusive language, no exclusive customs, no exclusive religion. Why was it appropriate to describe them as an ethnic group? After posing these problems, Moerman was forced to conclude that “[s]omeone is
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Lue by virtue of believing and calling himself Lue and of acting in ways that validate his Lueness” [ibid., p. 1219]. Being unable to argue that this Lueness can be defined with reference to objective cultural features or clear-cut boundaries, Moerman defines it as an emic category of ascription. This way of delineating ethnic groups has become very influential in social anthropology.
Ethnicity is an aspect of social relationship between agents who consider themselves as being culturally distinctive from members of other groups with whom they have a minimum of regular interaction. It can thus also be defined as a social identity (based on a contrast vis-a-vis others) characterised by metaphoric or fictive kinship. When cultural differences regularly make a difference in interaction between members of groups, the social relationship has an ethnic element. Ethnicity refers both to aspects of gain and loss in interaction, and to aspects of meaning in the creation of identity. In this way, it has a political, organisational aspect as well as a symbolic one. Ethnic groups tend to have myths of common origin, and they nearly always have ideologies encouraging endogamy, which may nevertheless be of highly varying practical importance.
Kinds of Ethnic Relations
(a)Urban Ethnic Minorities. This category would include, among others, non-European immigrants in European cities and Hispanics in the United States, as well as migrants to industrial towns in Africa and elsewhere. Research on immigrants has focused on problems of adaptation, on ethnic discrimination from the host society, racism, and issues relating to identity management and cultural change.Anthropologists who have investigated urbanisation in Africa have focused on change and continuity in political organisation and social identity following migration to totally new settings. Although they have political interests, these ethnic groups rarely demand political independence or statehood, and they are as a rule integrated into a capitalist system of production and consumption [12, p. 1216].
(b)Indigenous People. This word is a blanket term for aboriginal inhabitants of a territory, who are politically relatively powerless and who
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are only partially integrated into the dominant nation-state. Indigenous peoples are associated with a non-industrial mode of production and a stateless political system [ibid.]. The Basques of the Bay of Biscay and the Welsh of Great Britain are not considered indigenous populations, although they are certainly as indigenous, technically speaking, as the Sami of northern Scandinavia or the Jívaro of the Amazon basin. The concept “indigenous people” is thus not an accurate analytical one, but rather one drawing on broad family resemblances and contemporary political issues.
(c) Proto-Nations (Ethnonationalist Movements). These groups, the most famous of ethnic groups in the news media of the 1990s, include Kurds, Sikhs, Palestinians and Sri Lankan Tamils, and their number is growing. By definition, these groups have political leaders who claim that they are entitled to their own nation-state and should not be ruled by others. These groups, short of having a nation-state, may be said to have more substantial characteristics in common with nations than with either urban minorities or indigenous peoples. They are always territorially based; they are differentiated according to class and educational achievement, and they are large groups. In accordance with common terminology, these groups may be described as nations without a state. Anthropologists have studied such movements in a number of societies, including Euzkadi or Basque Country (Heiberg, 1989), Brittany (McDonald, 1989) and Québec (Handler, 1988).
(d) Ethnic Groups in Plural Societies. The term plural society usually designates colonially created states with culturally heterogeneous populations (Furnivall, 1948; Smith, 1965). Typical plural societies would be Kenya, Indonesia and Jamaica. The groups that make up the plural society, although they are compelled to participate in uniform political and economic systems, are regarded as (and regard themselves as) highly distinctive in other matters. In plural societies, secessionism is usually not an option, and ethnicity tends to be articulated as group competition.
SUMMARY
– The chapter explored the link between the notions of style, gender, ethnicity and language as the basic means of human communication.
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Broadly speaking, the study of language and gender / ethnicity has included two very different things: (1) how language reveals, embodies and sustains attitudes to gender / ethnicity; (2) how language users speak or write in (different and distinctive) ways that reflect their sex.
–The first of these is partly historic and bound up with the study of the position of men and women in society. It includes such things as the claim that language is used to control, dominate or patronize. This may be an objective study insofar as it measures or records what happens. But it may also be subjective in that such things as patronizing are determined by the feelings of the supposed victim of such behaviour.
–The second area of study recalls many discussions of the relative influence of nature and nurture, or of heredity and environment. Of this we can note two things immediately: (2) education or social conditioning can influence gender attitudes in speaking and writing (for example, to make speech more or less politically correct), but (2) there are objective differences between the language of men and that of women (considered in the mass), and no education or social conditioning can wholly erase these differences.
PRACTICE
ØStudy the examples of Stylistic Choice (degree of formality / technicality). Give 5 – 7 examples of your own.
Vocabulary: “gave out” vs “distributed”
Syntax: increased use of the passive with increased formality Pronunciation: house vs ‘ouse; swimming versus swimmin’
ØExplain what you understand by the term “sexist language”. How far do you think this term is still applicable to ways in which people use language in society today? In your answer you should refer both to examples and to relevant research.
ØDescribe some of the differences between the language used by male and by female speakers in social interaction. Explain why these differences might occur.
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ØGender Spotting:
Here are extracts from six texts published in the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries. Can you identify the sex of the writer in each case? Prove you choice.
Text A
I deny not, but that it is of greatest concernment in the Church and Commonwealth, to have a vigilant eye how books demean themselves as well as men; and thereafter to confine, imprison, and do sharpest justice on themas malefactors. For books are not absolutelydead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. Iknow they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon’s teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God’s image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up on purpose to a life beyond life. ’Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolutions of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
I think the author is a woman |
I think the author is a man |
Text B
From this time my head ran upon strange things, and I may truly say I was not myself; to have such a gentleman talk to me of being in love with me, and of my being such a charming creature, as he told me I was; these were things I knew not how to bear, my vanity was elevated to the last degree. It is true I had my head full of pride, but, knowing nothing of the wickedness of the times, I had not one thought of my own safety or of my virtue about me; and had my young master offered it at first sight, he might have taken any liberty he thought fit with me; but he did not see his advantage, which was my happiness for that time. After this attack it
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