LL-L "Sociolinguistics" 2008.02.07 (06) [E]

Fri Feb 8 01:14:08 UTC 2008

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L O W L A N D S - L  -  07 February 2008 - Volume 06
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From: Jacqueline Bungenberg de Jong <Dutchmatters at comcast.net>
Subject: LL-L "History" 2008.02.07 (01) [E]

Maybe this does not belong on this forum at all. Or maybe it should go under
linguistics or History of Language Ron????

A Dutch friend and I were talking about different ways in which women and
men express themselves. What boils down to a preference for different words
like "leuk" and "heus", may have existed already long ago. It could even
have gone to the extreme that men and women spoke a different language all
together. That of course is also part of our society, but at least we use
the same language.

It seemed to me that that would have been more prevalent when the tasks of
men and women in their society were far more different than they are today.
It could also be a subject for a Science Fiction novel.

Are there any indications that this is true, or just another figment of my
imagination?.

On the other hand there are people in the group with wide interests and a
vast and arcane knowledge. Maybe you can help me.

Jacqueline
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From: R. F. Hahn <sassisch at yahoo.com>
Subject: Sociolinguistics

Hi, Jacqueline!

The topic you brought up does fit very well, as long as we pursue it with a
Lowlands focus.

Gender differences (just like differences between other social groups) can
be observed in all languages. In the West they may have been stronger in the
past, but only one or two generations ago.

There are or at least used to be extremes, such as societies (especially in
Oceania), in which men and women speak different languages among themselves
and have a lingua franca between them. What this means in most cases is that
boys start being raised with the neutral language but having rudimentary
exposure to women's language before they move into the men's huts and
acquire the men's language.

In most cases, as among the Lowlands languages, there tend to be gender
differences in terms of lexical and idiomatic choices, syntactic structure
prevalence and intonation pattern differences. In studies about English
varieties, for instance, it has been observed that women tend to use
interrogative tags more than men (e.g., "It's cold today" v "It's cold
today, *isn't it*?") Men tend to use such construction more often when they
are being particularly polite, actually submissive. In other words, the
theory is that women's speech habits contain vestiges of submissive
expressions, as opposed to declarative or authoritative expressions. Put in
yet simpler terms, women tend to more often use expressions that ask for
confirmation.

Some time ago I read that in some European languages certain expressions,
especially equivalents of "Yes," "True" or "All right," are sometimes said
while *in*haling rather than exhaling. In English I only once in a while
hear it from non-native speakers. One study I remember reading focused on
Finnish and claimed that this speech habit was far more prevalent among
women than among men. Ever since then I've been listening for it. Most
recently I've heard it from women speaking Russian and Farsi for instance.
I've never heard it in Mandarin Chinese. I also realize that the same occurs
in Low Saxon and in German, at least in the north. The other day I heard it
in the speech of one of my sisters on the phone, and it occurred twice: once
when she was confirming a not-so-happy fact, and the other time when she
acknowledged something I said about something worrisome. Now that I've
become aware of it, I've noticed that I do it myself once in a while, even
in English ("Yeah ..." or "Sure ..."). I am not quite sure if women do it
more often than men, though, and I wonder if any of you have made any
relevant observations. Once a native English speaker told me that he finds
this habit not only foreign but also anywhere between weird and annoying,
depending on his mood. I've heard other people, especially North Americans,
making similar remarks about frequently used tag constructions.

Regards,
Reinhard/Ron

•

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