Enforcement of Gender Differences in Language

I've been thinking a lot about the role of lanuage and the way it enforces gender roles and internalized oppression, and I thought about the pervasiveness of gendered language. The two readings and experiments we read were really interesting, but it goes to show how much we don't notice. While the study shows the small differences in pronouns and parts of speech and language structure, it has a larger effect on the way women and men communicate and present themselves. While doing some more research, however, I read an interesting article in The Gaurdian talking about the faults in such studies. The article titled, "What Language Barrier?" re-examines the idea that men and women communicate in inherently different ways, and takes a second look at the idea that men and women are by nature different, as much science seems to point out.

Something I found to be particularly interesting, is the fact that more studies are done to deliberately study the differences in genders rather than similarities.  I think it is particularly fascinating, that our biases may influence the way we not only use language but the way we study and observe it in each gender. The article poses the question whether there is a difference between "If it does not reflect reality, why is the folk-belief that women talk more than men so persistent? The feminist Dale Spender once suggested an explanation: she said that people overestimate how much women talk because they think that, ideally, women would not talk at all. While that may be rather sweeping, it is true that belief in female loquacity is generally combined with disapproval of it. The statement "women talk more than men" tends to imply the judgment "women talk too much"... The folk-belief that women talk more than men persists because it provides a justification for an ingrained social prejudice." This is a different side of the lecture we had, but it really just goes to show how ingrained and internalized the gender divide is that it still takes place in the highest levels of institution, both in science and in our government.

I think it is because of this that I really loved that we talk about the conditioning of language, rather than the percieved natural differences of the genders. I think also in a lot of languages, where feminine and masculine words exist in a deeper and broader way, this is even more ingrained. In spanish, every adjective changes according to whether the noun it modifies is feminine or masculine. This also exists in english, with gender specific adjectives that we spoke about in class, like the word beautiful. The definition of beautiful is the same as handsome, but the connotations and the percieved femininity of the word beautiful somehow limits the adjective to feminine nouns. This raises the question: is there an unspoken femininity and masculinity in the english language?

We refer to lands, bombs, and liberty as shes, but we never seem to personify anything as a him. So if we personify everything as feminine, why is it that we refer to the human race as "man"? Another question to ask, does the femininity/masculinity of words even matter? Does that feed into our internalized opression or are we just overthinking things?

Language is a very powerful tool to express ourselves and communicate, but if we are encouraged differently to speak and communicate in different ways, then the gender divide would also clearly be present as a result. I don't see a clear solution, and the more I think about this, the entire issue seems insanely large. It's everywhere, because language is the way we communicate and is everywhere. So is there a solution? I'm not too sure. But I think we can begin, as we spoke about at the end of class, with by being more concious about the words we use and the way language shapes us, and ultimately how we can shape it.