6.328 Sum: Sex and standardness

Thu Mar 2 08:10:49 UTC 1995

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LINGUIST List:  Vol-6-328. Thu 02 Mar 1995. ISSN: 1068-4875. Lines: 251

Subject: 6.328 Sum: Sex and standardness

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-------------------------Directory-------------------------------------

1)
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 95 22:29:09 +0000
From: "R.Hudson" (uclyrah at ucl.ac.uk)
Subject: Sum: sex and standardness

-------------------------Messages--------------------------------------
1)
Date: Wed, 01 Mar 95 22:29:09 +0000
From: "R.Hudson" (uclyrah at ucl.ac.uk)
Subject: Sum: sex and standardness

Summary of male/female differences in standardness

Some months ago I asked if anyone knew of any counterexamples
to the generalisation that females use more standard forms
than men. I got enough replies to justify a summary, but I'm
sorry it's taken so long to produce it.

Thanks to everyone who responded:

Abu Bakr Rafique Ahmad          Kirk Belnap
Monique Biemans                 Sue Blackwell
Tom Cravens                     Maik Gibson
Anthea Fraser Gupta             Janet Holmes
Zaidan Ali Jassem               Bill Labov
Raj Mesthrie                    Bruce Nevin
Kevin Rottet                    Bernard Spolsky

The general picture seems to be that we have to start with two
very important riders, both introduced by Labov in his 1990
paper, which seem to eliminate a host of counterexamples. But
that leaves a handful of isolated puzzling cases, which may or
may not be covered by this rider.

2. MAJOR RIDER A:

"The principle must be qualified by the observation that for
women to use standard norms that differ from everyday speech,
they must have access to those norms." (Labov 1990:213)
Therefore females don't use more standard forms in societies
where these forms are learned at school and where females have
less education than men. This is widely true in DIGLOSSIC
situations. The most widely reported language is **Arabic**,
but see below for mentions of Swahili and Bengali. [So what
about Swiss German?]

Cases reported:

2)
# In Syria, women are innovative, while in Palestine and the
Gulf they are conservative. (Jassem)

3)
# In Amman and Nablus women use the prestige form [q] less
than men. (Abd-el-Jawad)

Comments on these cases:

4)
# Labov (1990) "discussed the exceptional cases that turned up
in the Middle East and accepted Haeri's argument that they are
not exceptional." (Bill Labov, pc.)

5)
# "In studies that Muhammad Amara and I have been conducting
in Israeli Arab villages, Amara has found that education is a
critical factor. We find males often leading in standard
features, until education is held constant, when females lead.
For instance, in a study we are just analyzing of a divided
village, we find males in both parts of the village using the
standard [k] rather than the village vernacular [tch] more
than females. But on closer analysis, educational level turns
out to be the best predictor." (Bernard Spolsky, pc.)

6)
# "In any society where females have less equal access to the
education system, they (en masse) will be less likely to use
the standard than males. But that does not imply that given
the same level of education, they will be less standard."
(Anthea Gupta, pc., re Chatterji on *Bengali*.)

7)
# Mombasa: women use the more local language, *Swahili*, more
than men do, who use English more. (Fasold quoting Russell)

3. MAJOR RIDER B

"In the majority of linguistic changes, women use a higher
frequency of the incoming forms than men." (Labov 1990:206) I
have to admit here that, as a relative outsider, I don't
really understand the data and the issues, but this rider
presumably means that we should expect a host of apparent
counter-examples involving innovations.

4. APPARENT COUNTER-EXAMPLES

8)
# Norway: middle-aged men speak more standardly than women.
(Jahr)
   Is this because Norway is diglossic (in the relevant sense,
   with a highly valued local L and H learned only at school),
   with women having less education than men? Or because the
   relevant differences are all innovations?

9)
# Sweden: women use stigmatised tags more than men.
   Sue Blackwell reports a paper by Kerstin Nordenstam at AILA
   '90 which said this. I'm trying to trace Nordenstam.

10)
# Iran: Farsi in Teheran (Modaressi)
   According to Labov's summary (1990:212) Modaressi (1978)
   found in Teheran that "women used the local colloquial
   forms of the variables (an) and (aesh) more than men in all
   social classes"; so far as I know Farsi is not diglossic.
   If both these assumptions are correct, then the data
   reported run against the general trend. However, the facts
   are unclear. A similar study carried out in Teheran at
   about the same time (Jahangiri 1990) found that one of
   these reported variables showed no sex difference, and that
   11/12 other variables were as expected (women more standard
   than men).

Bibliography (with apologies for gaps)

Abd-el-Jawad, Hassan. 1987. Cross-dialectal variation in
Arabic: competing prestigious forms. Language in Society
16:359-68.

Abu-Haidar, Farida. 1987. The treatment of the reflexes of /q/
and /k/ in the Muslim dialect of Baghdad. Zeitschrift fuer
algemeine Lautlehre 17: 41-57.

--. 1988. Speech variation in the Muslim dialect of Baghdad.
Zeitschrift fuer algemeine Lautlehre 19: 74-80.

--. 1989. Are Iraqi women more prestige conscious than men?
Sex differentiation in Baghdadi Arabic. Language in Society
18: 471-81.

Abd-el-Jawad, Hassan R. 1981. Phonological and social
variation in Arabic in Amman. University of Pennsylvania
dissertation.

1986. The emergence of an urban dialect in the Jordanian urban
centers. International Jnl for the Sociology of Language 61,
53-63.

--. 1987. Cross-dialectal variation in Arabic: competing
prestigious forms. Language in Society 16: 359-68.

Bakir, Murthada. 1986. Sex differences in the approximation to
Standard Arabic: a case study. Anthropological Linguistics 28:
3-9.

   LLBA abstract: Reported is a study that investigated the
   hypothesis that women who are socially insecure tend to use
   more forms that carry higher status connotations than do
   men. Data were drawn from Iraqi speakers of Arabic and
   explored the issue of whether men and women would exhibit
   significant differences in their approximation to Standard
   Arabic, and if so, what might lie behind the differences.
   Conversations between young adult educate M and F Iraqis
   were recorded and analyzed. Examination of the use of /k/,
   the passive and the 'an complementizer showed a distinct
   pattern of sex differentiation in usage. Men showed a
   greater tendency to approximate Standard Arabic than did
   women in all instances. Apparently, to women, use of
   Standard Arabic features is a marker of men's speech.

Chambers, J. 1982. English World Wide 13,2.

Fasold, R. 1990. Sociolinguistics of Language. Blackwell. (p.
92-102)

Haeri, Niloofar. 1987. Male/female differences in speech: An
alternative interpretation. In Denning, K. et al. (ed.),
Variation in Language: NWAV-XV, Stanford: Dept of Linguistics,
Stanford University, 173-182.

--. 1991. Sociolinguistic variation in Cairene Arabic:
Palatalization and the qaf in the speech of men and women.
University of Pennsylvania dissertation.

Jahangiri, Nader. 1980. A sociolinguistic study of Persian in
Teheran. London University PhD.

Jahr, Ernst Hakon. 1992. Middle-aged male syntax.
International Jnl of the Sociology of Language, 94: 123-134.

Jassem, Zaidan Ali. 1993. Impact of the Arab-Israeli Wars on
Language and Social Change in the Arab World: The case of
Syrian Arabic. Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara.

Jassem, Zaidan Ali. 1994. Lectures in English and Arabic
Sociolinguistics, 2 vols. Kuala Lumpur: Pustaka Antara.

Labov, W. 1990. The intersection of sex and social class in
the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and
Change, 2: 205-254.
   "Until recently, there were no cases reported where men
   appeared to favour the prestige form more than women." (p.
   212)

Milroy, L. 1994. ? English World Wide 15,1.

Modaressi, Yahya. 1978. A sociolinguistic investigation of
Modern Persian. University of Kansas dissertation.

Moonwoman, B. 1989. Another look at the role of female
speakers in sound change. BLS 15, 238-47.

Russell, Joan. 1982. Networks and sociolinguistic variation in
an African urban setting. In Romaine, S. (ed.) Sociolinguistic
Variation in Speech Communities, London: Arnold, 125-40.

Thomas, Beth. 1989. ?  In Cameron and Coates, Women in their
Speech Communities. Longman

:x

Dick Hudson
Dept of Phonetics and Linguistics,
University College London,
Gower Street,
London WC1E 6BT
uclyrah at ucl.ac.uk

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