性别与社会语言学

Concerning this topic, I find that when women communicate with others, they tend to speak more politely and more indirectly than men. As for women, they usually want to show respect for others by using questions. While men are more straightforward to control the actions of others. This phenomenon reminds me that it was women's inferior status that led them to "act like a lady".In our daily life, we can also hear such words as” girls are girls" and "boys are boys". So it's common and reasonable for boys to speak in more tough and curse words. In contrast, women use more less powerful curse words. For instance, men often say"Damn,shit". While women say "Oh, dear". And often when men and women are in a conversation, men seem to have a sense of fuzziness while women often speak in details. That means women tend to be more talktive than men. Just take myself as an example. Last time when I chatted with my friend by msn, each time I just said very much on the topic, but he just replied "Ok","That's it" and so on. So it is common for men to be more silent in situations that require them to express emotion.I think they just want to be cool.Imagine that when a couple come to a new house of their friends, the wife may comment that "Wow,what a beautiful home!" But the husband just responded vaguely. In this aspect, it seems that women tend to be more active than men in the daily communication. So men often express themselves in body language while women do not.Men and women have a lot of differences in talking and speaking. There are three major differences I notice in my daily life.Firstly, they pronounce differently. Women pronounce more in place. They pronounce the words especially the vowels in the words clearly. But men always pronounce not well. When they need to open their mouths totally, they just open half of them. So we find that in the listening texts, we always get more information when female is talking.Second, their pitches are different. Women’s pith is much higher. I think the vocal structures are not alike for men and women. If we observe carefully, we can find that people will get annoyed and impatient when they talk to a woman for a long time. Her continuing high pitch tortures us. On the contrary, men’s low voice gives us a comfortable feeling.Third, they express indifferent ways. Female like using complex sentences while male like using phrases or short words to express. Men do not get use to saying things by long and complex sentences. They use key words to express. Actually, many long and complicated sentences has little meaning. But women never know that!In a word, men and women have many differences in talking and speaking. I think the root cause is they are two totally different kinds of creatures.From the lecture, I have learned that men and women speak differently in the following aspects:Phonologically: In many accents of American English, it has been found that women’s vowels are more peripheral– more front, more back, higher, or lower than men’s.Lexically: Men tend to use taboo words more often than women Grammatically: Women are more frequent in using multiple negation in Detroit.However, I have something to complement.•Women speak and listen faster than men. Women in a group can even all talk at the same time and make it work!•Women speak in a softer voice and use pitch and inflection to emphasize points. Men speak in a louder voice and use volume to emphasize a point.•Women sound more emotional in normal conversation because they normally use 5 tones. Men sound more monotonous when speaking because they normally use only 3tones.•Women stick to one topic for a long time until all present have added their comments and feelings on that subject before moving to the next subject. Men want to express their own opinion and not hear the opinion of others. Men want to have the final word, especially with women.•In decision making, women seek the input of all the other women present and make decisions based on the consensus of all present. Men try to make the final ruling, no matter what others think.•In decision making, women prefer a group decision. Men want to show their high status by making their own decisions without input from others.•Women reveal their feelings, private lives and relationships eas ily. Men hardly ever do! That would show their weaknesses and lower their status as a dominate male (in their mind).•Men don't spend as much time and interest on anything not physical, especially abstract concepts dealing with 'feelings' and emotions.•Women want to talk about their feelings to improve their relationship with the listener. Men talk to emphasize their high status and dominance to all present. •Women want to discuss and explore all aspects of a topic and spend more time on it than men like.•Women try to strengthen relationships with others by discussing their problems. Women ask more questions about what others think. •Women make indirect accusations, i.e. "Why do you often do that?" Men make direct accusations, i.e. "You always do that!"•Women like to relate but men rather debate.•Women interrupt all others less and allow others to interrupt them. Men interrupt others more and allow fewer interruptions, especially from women.•Women are more cooperative when talking. Men are more c ompetitive with talk and try to raise their status and establish dominance.•Women show concern and try to establish empathy and support for others. Men try to fix things and give advice to others.•Men are opinionated and want to resolve problems quickl y, often not studying the situation.•Men try to be an authority on everything and therefore ask fewer questions.We generally do not know how to interact with another human being or how to judge them and talk about them unless we can attribute a gender to them. So it is obvious that gender plays an essential role in people’s daily talk. Once a famous saying points out: women are not born, they are made. And I think so are men. The character difference of man and woman are partly created by and reflect by the way they talk. For example, people handle infants more gently when they believe them to be female while more playfully when they believe them to be male. With different treatment boys and girls eventually learn to be different, talking differently. Furthermore, although there are physical differences between boys’ and girls’ vocal tract, boys tend to consciously or unconsciously lower their pitch of speak while girls raise. In terms of adult, the different social role man and woman played and different social expectations towards them may be partly the reason why they talk differently. Moreover, women and men have different way of attracting people, and different psychological inclination towards many social issues; these also lead to their different way of talk. In Japanese society where men and women have distinct social status, different gender directly have different “right” way of expressing “delicious” “myself” “money” etc. In a more general sense, lexically, men tend to use taboo words more often than woman, and according to sociolinguist’s research, woman tend to be more grammatically correct than man. I think there are some stereotypical characteristics of men&women’s linguistic behavior in the public sphere, for example woman should speak conciliatory and tentative while man speaks more assertive and competitive. I cannot tell whether these stereotypes’ existence is good or not, but I do expect people, woman especially, can speak more freely and bravely in the society.Gender refers to sex as either a biological or socially constructed category.In some languages, gender refers to agrammatical distinction that allows words to be divided into categories such asmasculine, feminine, or neuter on thebasis of inflectional and agreementproperties, not limited to nouns withinherent (biological) gender.In German, for example, most nouns ending in -el are masculine (e.g., Schlüssel, key),most nouns ending in -e are feminine(Tasse, cup) and most nouns ending in-chen are neuter (e.g., Mädchen, maid), and both articles and adjectives agree ingender with the nouns they modify. [*More examples: the moon (der Mond) , the sun (die Sonne);tableware餐具: spoon (der Löffel）, fork（die Gabel）and knife （das Messer）]In English, grammatical gender is limited to the distinction between he, she, and it in pronouns, and a small set of nouns thatreflect the gender of the person referred to, for example actor: actress, waiter:waitress, chairman: chairwoman or the gender stereotypically associated with the noun (e.g., mailman).At the end of the 20th century, many gender-related terms were replaced bygender-neutral forms (e.g., actor for both men and woman, server instead of waiter and waitress, chairperson or chairinstead of chairman and chairwoman,mail carrier instead of mailman) in anumber of English speaking communities. Genderlect refers to the speech of men and women and by extension to such varieties as homosexual register in communitieswhere such varieties exist or arerecognized.III.Men and women speak differently1.Pp.36-37: female and male varieties of language2.Phonologically: In many accents of AmericanEnglish, it has been found that women’s vowelsare more peripheral (外围的) – more front, more back, higher, or lower than men’s. (Trudgill, 84) 3.Lexically: Men tend to use taboo words moreoften than women4.Grammatically: Multiple negation (See below)5.Figures (Trudgill, 91-92)。