Do men and women speak differently?

elsa o’brien lópez

Although differences in the language areas of boys and girls have been observed in babies, some differences in the way men and women do seem to be attributable to differences in their upbringing as part of different subcultures embedded in one same big culture.

Fortunately, using a gender neutral language has become a topic of interest in recent years. Proposals like the ones published by teacher and researcher Jemma Prior have greatly contributed to this topic with practical advice for teachers who want to teach inclusive language in their lessons.

However, it is less often that we wonder whether men and women themselves use language differently. If this were the case, could it have anything to do with the gender we seek to represent?

Do men and women really speak differently? From language deficiency to language efficiency

Linguists and academics have spent many decades discussing whether differences exist in the way that men and women use language and where these come from. Social advances in gender equality have determined to what extent each of these perspectives have been voiced and discussed.

Traditionally, women’s language was irrefutably claimed to be different from men’s. The male variety was taken as the standard and prestigious variety. Whether they attributed these differences in women’s way of speaking to nurture or nature, that is, to biology or to women’s second-rate role in society, all early theories admitted that this variation in the way of speaking existed. What is more, they all agreed with the fact that women’s speech was undesirable and that it should be corrected. Language would be perfected the more it resembled to the male way of using it.

Fortunately, feminist researchers such as Pamela Fishman shattered the existing paradigm when they claimed that women’s speech was in no way inferior to men’s because of their linguistic choices- in fact, a lot of the ways in which women used language, that had until then been considered a result of their insecurity, lack of character or education, were now studied in terms of their usefulness and functionality.

Fishman proved that women’s use of tag questions, double-voicing and back-channelling are simply ways of facilitating conversation, including their interlocutor and keeping the interaction going. Although all of these choices of language are desirable in any partaker in a conversation in order to make communication successful, they have been used traditionally in an attempt to prove women’s inferior communication skills.  In fact, Fishman went as far as labelling women as the ‘heavy-lifters’ of conversation.

This new perspective brought women’s speech a whole new status and it became a subject of interest in itself and not as a dialect of male speech. However, it still did not explain why men and women speak differently.

Why do men and women speak differently?

Although differences in the language areas of the brain of boys and girls have been observed in babies, some differences in the way men and women speak do seem to be attributable to differences in their upbringing as part of different subcultures embedded in one same big culture.

Don H. Zimmerman and Candace West suggested, for instance, that in cross-gender conversations men tend to interrupt women more often than it happens the other way around. This means that men get to hold the ‘conversational ground’ for longer and succeed in choosing topics of discussion that align with their interests more often than women do. 

On the other hand,  Maltz and Borker observed that praise extended to girls for being well-mannered, polite, patient and non-belligerent has, more often than not, resulted in achieving this kind of behaviour from them.

Joan Swann’s classroom research proved that girls participate less often and for shorter periods than boys and Sara and Dale observed that teachers unconsciously tend to nominate boys more often than girls.

Old-fashioned expressions like ‘boys will be boys’ can very often have the opposite effect. It will transmit to male children what is expected from them and that, to some extent, they are granted some leeway in their behaviour for the mere reason of being boys.

Does this mean our gender determines how we speak?

Despite the impact that these different early experiences might have in our upbringing and future behaviour, the common consensus nowadays is that the way we speak actually helps build our gender. That is, we do not just speak in a certain way because of who we are, but we also choose certain language uses because of who we want to be.

Both children and adults, in our desire to fit-in, will very often behave in the way that is socially expected from us according to our gender. We will align with the stereotype they wish to conform to.

Men can also be affected by strong gender stereotypes in language.

Some other differences between male and female speech, such as the richer use of adjectives by women, are deeply rooted in the social archaic- but pervasive -belief that men should not express their feelings, perceptions and thoughts to the great extent and depth that women are allowed to. Because of this, boys are generally less encouraged and often discouraged from using this kind of language when expressing themselves. 

What can we do to help deconstruct gender stereotypes?

Nowadays, many of the differences in language use described above are not only determined by gender but also highly subject to context, social status and age. However,  we will not be able to say differences between male and female speech have disappeared until the strong gender stereotypes that are behind them have.

The good news is that we can start taking steps to eradicate them at an individual and local level. We can do this by assessing our individual choices of language and by looking at others’ attending to their usefulness in a certain context rather than at the gender of the user.

When we start looking at language from the perspective of its functionality in society we will also be able to stop promoting or discouraging the use of certain kinds of language on the basis of sex or gender.

Media and institutions have a great responsibility in promoting a gender neutral education and culture for our youth. Teachers can start promoting bias-free language and attitudes in their classrooms and be on the lookout for their own hidden beliefs and reflexes.

The future citizens of the world, whether they are boys or girls, will need tools to interact successfully in many contexts and across many cultures. We will help them achieve these goals by training them in the use of the efficient communicative strategies based on the principles of efficiency and empathy regardless of their gender.

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