Language and sex

Possible sex differences in language usage have recently attracted a lot of attention.

First, we need to sort out whether women really do speak differ­ently from men. People's impressions are not necessarily correct: it is often assumed, for example, that women talk more than men, whereas almost all research on the topic has demonstrated the oppo­site, that men talk more than women. Similarly, it is sometimes claimed that women use 'empty' adjectives, such as divine, charming, cute, yet this type of description is possibly more usually used by (pre­sumably male) writers in popular newspapers to describe women.

Furthermore, some characteristics which have been attributed to women turn out to be far more widespread. For example, women have been claimed to use tentative phrases such as kind of, sort of in place of straight statements: 'Bill is kind of short', instead of 'Bill is short'. They have also been accused of using question intonation in response to queries: 'About eight o'clock?' as a reply to: 'What time's dinner?' Yet this insecure style of conversation seems to be typical of 'power­less' people, those who are somewhat nervous and afraid of antagoniz­ing others. Powerless people come from either sex.

The most consistent difference found between men and women within the western world is a tendency for women to speak in a way

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that is closer to the prestige standard. In colloquial terms, they speak 'better' than men. No one is quite sure why this is so, and several explanations have been proposed, which may all be partially right. For example, women may be pressurized by society to behave in a 'lady­like' manner, and 'speaking nicely' may be part of this. Or because they are the main child-rearers, they may subconsciously speak in a way which will enable their children to progress socially. Or they may tend to have jobs which rely on communication, rather than on strength. All these factors, and others, appear to be relevant.

In recent years, particularly among employed women, the differ­ences between men's and women's speech appear to be diminishing. Such studies, then, provide further evidence of the importance of lan­guage in reflecting social attitudes and social changes.

Multilingual communities

'I speak Spanish to God, Italian to women, French to men, and German to my horse,' is a saying attributed to the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. As this quotation suggests, in some cultures a changed social situation is marked by a change in the actual language spoken, a phenomenon known as code-switching. Sociolinguistically, this is not very different from stylistic variation within a single language. Sociolinguists have therefore become interested in studying code-switching in bilingual and multilingual communities.

For example, in Sauris, a small community of north-eastern Italy, high in the Carnian Alps, a quite remarkable linguistic situation exists. The inhabitants use three different languages in the course of their everyday life: a German dialect, Italian and Friulian (a Romance dialect). Italian is the language of organized religion, and also that used in schools. Friulian is the language used by men in the local bars. And German is the language in the home. It is highly unusual to hear German outside the home, though it was observed on one occasion when a furious woman burst into a bar and upbraided her husband for not having returned home at the time he was expected!

A study of the ways in which these multiple languages are used is particularly important for language planning, a situation in which a government or education authority attempts to manipulate the lin­guistic situation in a particular direction. This is more likely to be suc­cessful if existing uses of a language are gradually extended, since the sudden imposition of a particular language by decree may well result

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in failure.

However, multilingual societies in which all the speakers are proficient in all the languages spoken are something of a rarity. Quite often, one language, or simplified language, is adopted as a common means of communication. This can happen either naturally, or as a result of language planning. A common language of this type is some­times known as a lingua franca. A couple of millennia ago, Latin spread around the Mediterranean countries in this way. In India today, English tends to be a lingua franca: Hindi speakers from the north are likely to communicate in English with people from the south who mostly speak one of the Dravidian languages. The artificial lan­guage, Esperanto, is sometimes proposed as a candidate for a world lingua franca.