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<div><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></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><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></div>
<div><font color="#000000"><br></font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Nichols, Patricia (1983). Linguistic
options and choices for Black women in the rural South. In
Barrie</font></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Thorne et al. (eds.), Language, gender and
society, 54-68. Cambridge, MA: Newbury House.</font></div>
<div><br></div>
<div>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:</div>
<div><br></div>
<div><font color="#000000">Hill, Jane (1987). Women's speech in
modern Mexicano. In Susan U. Philips et al. (eds.) 1987,
121-60.</font></div>
<div><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></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><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></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<div><br></div>
<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<br>
function in the standard language market using more standard language
than<br>
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<br>
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>
-----------------------------------------<span
></span>------------------------<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>
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