Gender and Age

Gender and Age

To examine how the languages used in society, we can observe the users of the language itself. One way to identify it is by concerning on individual variable, which is more looking at the gender and age classification. As Holmes (2013) says, the linguistic forms that are used by women are men are different. This difference happens because there is a force of gender categorization in society that makes people behave based on their gender as it is said by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (as cited in Wardaugh, 2006, p. 316), as well as the way people speak. Even though men and women share the same language, the language features they occurred will not the same. It may some only occur in the way women talk or in men only. The visible dissimilarity is the way they pronounce something. In his book, Holmes (2013) gives an example how women and men in the Gros Ventre American Indian pronounce word “bread”, women say it as [kja’tsa] while men say it as [dƷa’tsa]. In addition to that, Salihu (2014) also gives an explanation on gender address pattern which symbolized their social position and relations in their speech community, for instance, in Hausa society men’s first name mostly are Muhammad and for women’s first name is Aisha. This indicates the sexist of language, how language gives an effect of masculine or feminine to the people who say it.

Some people may also say that women use more polite forms than men. This statement is supported by Coulmas (1997) as he says, “females tend toward the careful end of the continuum and males toward the casual end.” Although this statement opposites to Wardaugh (2006) who thinks that this kind of thinking is biased, he claimed, “men’s speech provides the norm against which women’s speech is judged.” But the facts say so. Linguistic differences in society reflect social status or power difference and it becomes matter for both men and women. As women concern more on their social status, to keep themselves valued by society, they prefer to use standard form more often than men. It also can be said that there is a gender-exclusive speech forms occurs in society which signal gender-exclusive social roles. Somehow, there is also changing in language as gender roles change. Most of time, as the role of men who should work for his family, men tend to have more chances in influencing the language used in working circumstances. Increasingly, as more women involve in the workforce, initially, they learn to use men’s form; as it can be seen in Japanese society.

In Holmes’s (2013) book it is stated that people around the world, both men and women actually use the same form of speech, what makes it different is just the matter of the quantities or frequencies. This case more focus on gender-preferential which means though men and women use the same form of speech, one gender always shows a greater preference. Women prefer to use more of standard forms, in opposite, men tend to use vernacular forms more often. Share the same idea with Holmes, Coulmas (1997) exclaimes that even though the experts normally recognize men have accorded higher status and greater power than women, it is women who prefer to use higher status variants of language, even as men seem to use more localized variants.

There are actually four main factors why women choose to use standard form more often than men; it relates to their social class, their primer roles in society, women’s status as a minor group, and their own gender identity (Holmes, 2013). Standard form, usually, indicates high social status, so that women try to claim this status by using standard form when they talk to other people; it’s like the way to hide their lack of social status in society and increase the value of themselves in some context. Another factor is that, there is force from society which assumes that women should have better behavior than men since they are the model for their children’s speech. Though it is not really applicable, since the language used by mothers to their children mostly are informal; and happens in a relax situation. The next is about subordination; women are considered as a minor group so they need to be polite, speak carefully and politely. This happens because in the past, men are seen to have greater status and power while women are weak and can only do activities in the family (Jinyu, 2014). Women want to be valued by society so that they protect themselves by using standard forms and avoiding offence to other people. That is why standard forms always associated with female values and femininity. When women try to carry macho connotations, society may recognize them as ‘loose morals’ women.

Male have a tendency to reduce the formality of the context because their bonding is strong. Even when they speak to strangers, if both parties are male, they will more comfortable to speak using vernacular