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<div>WAY TO GO JACK! I alwasy thought Patricia Nichols had a great
argument, countering "linguistic insecurity" etc. I always
have all my students read her (besides it's Gullah, which I know
about).</div>
<div><br></div>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font color="#000000">Penny Eckert
suggests that our models of standard and vernacular are pretty
monolithic. One implication is that the social meaning of particular
variants may not be adequately captured with reference to their
position on a scale of standard to non-standard. To see this we need
to examine variants with an eye to their location in particular
historically and socially situated speech economies and repetoires (as
Eckert does in her recent book and elsewhere).</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
color="#000000"><br></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font color="#000000">Backing up a bit.
With respect to explanations for women's apparently greater use of
standard variants, one might also consider work by Nichols (and
Milroy) which links such findings to patterns of employment and the
gendered division of labor:</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font
color="#000000"><br></font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font color="#000000">Nichols, Patricia
(1983). Linguistic options and choices for Black women in the rural
South. In Barrie</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font color="#000000">Thorne et al.
(eds.), Language, gender and society, 54-68. Cambridge, MA: Newbury
House.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>Finally, with respect to the notion that
there is greater linguistic differentiation among women than among
men. There may be examples where this goes the other way around -
cases in which women seem quite constrained in their use of linguistic
variants in comparison with men. A couple of examples
are:</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font color="#000000">Hill, Jane (1987).
Women's speech in modern Mexicano. In Susan U. Philips et al. (eds.)
1987, 121-60.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font color="#000000">Philips, Susan U.,
et al. (1987), eds. Language, gender and sex in comparative
perspective. Cam-bridge<br>
& New York: Cambridge University Press.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><font color="#000000">Sidnell, Jack
(1999) Gender and pronominal variation in an Indo-Guyanese
creole-speaking community.<i> Language in Society</i> 28(3):
367-399.</font></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite><br>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>I don't disagree with the explanations
that have been offered so far for<br>
women's greater use of standard speech. But I wouldn't go too far
down<br>
this road without considering the many cases in which women's speech
is<br>
not more standard than men's. Trudgill's data were unusual in the<br>
consistent male lead in sound change; other studies have found women
to<br>
lead in many changes. The question of how non-standard these sound
changes<br>
are is another problem - we've developed pretty monolithic models
of<br>
"standard" and "vernacular". Nonetheless, the
generalization that women<br>
use more standard erases the considerable differences among women -
and<br>
indeed, these differences are greater than those among men. The
real</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>generalization is that there is greater
linguistic differentiation among</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>women than among men. So the question is
not "do women use more standard</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>language?" but "which women use
more standard?" Labov and I have both</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>found evidence of a crossover in a
variety of variables, with women who</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>function in the standard language market
using more standard language than</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>men in the standard market, and women who
function in the vernacular<br>
market using more vernacular than men in the vernacular market.<br>
<br>
See:<br>
<br>
ECKERT, PENELOPE. 1990. The whole woman: Sex and gender differences
in<br>
variation. Language Variation and Change, 1.245-67.<br>
<br>
LABOV, WILLIAM. 1991. The intersection of sex and social class in
the<br>
course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change,
2.205-51.<br>
<br>
The examples are phonological, but I have found the same pattern in
the<br>
use of negative concord among adolescents. One hypothesis that
Sally<br>
McConnell-Ginet and I proposed is that women have to work harder
to<br>
construct themselves as "authentic" participants in any
market.<br>
<br>
ECKERT, PENELOPE and MCCONNELL-GINET, SALLY. 1995. Constructing
meaning,<br>
constructing selves: Snapshots of language, gender and class from
Belten<br>
High. Gender articulated: Language and the culturally constructed
self,<br>
ed. by Mary Bucholtz and Kira Hall, 469-507. London: Routledge.<br>
<br>
This is not to deny that statistically, women's grammar (if not
their</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>phonology) is more standard than men's,
and I think the explanation is<br>
complex. I agree that depending on the situation, nonstandard grammar
can<br>
be associated with toughness or defiance, both of which are tolerated
or<br>
valued more in males than females. It also is associated with lack
of</blockquote>
<blockquote type="cite" cite>education and, once again depending on
the situation, with ignorance,<br>
which is more face threatening to females. A nice account of this is
in:<br>
<br>
DEUCHAR, MARGARET. 1989. A pragmatic account of women's use of
standard<br>
speech. Women in Their Speech Communities, ed. by Jennifer Coates
and<br>
Deborah Cameron, 27-32. London and New York: Longman.<br>
<br>
-----------------------------------------------------------------<br>
Penelope
Eckert <span
></span
> <span
></span> phone:
(650)725-1564<br>
Professor, Department of
Linguistics
fax: (650)723-5666<br>
Director, Program in Feminist Studies<br>
Stanford University<br>
Stanford CA 94305-2150</blockquote>
</blockquote>
<div><br></div>
<div>-- <br>
--<br>
Candy Goodwin<br>
Anthropology<br>
UCLA<br>
Los Angeles CA 90095-1553<br>
mgoodwin@anthro.ucla.edu</div>
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