Differences in Language Use by Men and Women

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Differences in Language Use by Men and Women

In using a language, men and women have their own different ways. In an interaction, women tend to use linguistic devices that focus more on the affective functions than men do. Women communicate in such ways to increase their solidarity while men tend to communicate in such ways which focus on the masculinity and power. Stylistically men are less flexible than women. The language of men and women has a number of differences in some ways (Lakoff, 1975). This paper focuses on the differences in the language use by men and women which are noticed in terms of their intonation, use of vocabulary, pronunciation, syntactic pattern, non verbal utterance and social class.

To start with, biologically, women have high pitched voice whereas men have low pitched voice. This physical explanation is only a part of gender differences in voice pitch. However, the social and cultural explanation about voice pitch is different. Speaking in a low pitched voice is the indication of masculinity and speaking in a high pitched voice is the indication of gentleness and politeness. Men prefer to use falling intonation to show their level of confidence of what they are saying and at times power. Conversely, women prefer to use high pitched voice to signify their womanly behavior.

In order to express feelings or to state something, men and women use different sets of vocabulary. To describe things, women mostly tend to use adjectives, such as: adorable, sweet, lovely etc. to show more sensitivity to their surrounding than men. Furthermore, women are polite in using language and they use more words and gestures, but men tend to use direct words. While talking, unlike men, women take the thought of others into consideration rather than imposing their own claims or ideas. Swear words and expletives are mostly used by men. To express shock in everyday life, men tend to use more swear words than women. Alternatively, women pay more attention to grace their manners to express their feelings and emotions and they may believe that using swear words make others uncomfortable as well as give an impression of indecency. In addition, to indicate affection, women tend to use words like, ‘so sweet’, ‘oh dear’ etc more than men. Beside this, women tend to appreciate politeness by saying ‘sorry’, ‘please’ more often than men do. It is definite that in order to get emphatic effects, men and women choose different sets of vocabularies.

Men place a high value on vernacular speech to show their power and masculinity, whereas women tend to use the forms which are considered as correct. In term of pronunciation, in English speaking communities, men have the tendency of dropping /h/ and /r/ sounds which is similar to the vernacular form. On the other side, women have lesser tendency of dropping these sounds. According to the context of Bangladesh, men have the tendency of using vernacular sound, whereas, women tend to use the standardized sound in their speech. This indicates that women focus more on the correct form of grammar by using clear utterances. Next, the syntactic pattern used by men and women differ from each other. While asking for help, women use more indirect and polite form of sentence with respect, whereas men use more direct and simple language, for example, a woman might say, “I was wondering if you can help me”. On the contrary, a man might say, “Please, help me in solving this matter”. From this example, it is understood that men tend to ask something directly, while women tend to be more indirect and polite.

In term of non verbal utterances, women use more gestures than men in a conversation. Men and women tend to have different styles while expressing their thoughts. By moving hands, fingers, face and other parts of the body women signify on their psychological state, emotion and feelings.

Next, the level of class reflects in the linguistic usage of men and women. In most of the societies, the use of vernacular form is very common among the men. However, women tend to use standard speech in their conversation. Men express positive to the vernacular form of language more than the female. Other than this, Labov (1981) points out that the highest status of group in society usually adopts a formal style. Women have a tendency to use language to show their social status than men do. In societies, women are considered as the subordinate groups, for which they try to secure their position in the society through their use of standard language. Socially, while men are rated on their power and position, women are rated primarily on how they appear and consequently their use of language seems more important. From the data of Trudgill(1983), it is known that, the percentage of standard form used by the women of middle class is closer to the men of one class higher than them rather than to that of men from their own social class.

To sum up, this paper has showed the differences between the use of language of men and women from some aspects like, vocabulary, as they are brought up in different ways since their childhood. And the differences I roles in the society has also an affect. Language, as a tool of human communication, will be improving day by day, and this needs the effort of both men and women. Women, with more participation into the academic field, business, social life, and so on, there will be other changes in the future. The changes in the language can show the improvement in women’s social status.

References

Holmes, Janet. (2013). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (FourthEdition). Routledge.
Xiufang, Xia. (2013) Theory and Practice in Language Studies, Vol. 3, No. 8, pp. 1485-1489, August 2013
Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and Women’s Place. New York: Harper&Row Publishers, Inc.
Labov, W. (1981). What Can Be Learned about Change in Progress from Synchronic Descriptions? Variation Omnibus. Edmonton: Linguistic Research Inc.

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