Chapter 9: Language, Identity And Ideology

Overview
Such questions deal with language ideology: the beliefs held by people in
a community regarding their conceptualization of the nature and function of
language. In other words, language ideology is the mediating link among social
structure, language variety, and forms of speech.
Language and gender are examined, a big topic on which thousands of books have been
written. This overview will examine the social and biological aspects of “gender” and “sex.” We
will then examine the relationship—if any—between grammatical gender and biological gender.
We will then ask if women and men speak differently—and if so, what these differences are and
whether they are the same across cultures. We will then examine some theories about language
and gender that have been proposed to explain how and why men and women speak
differently.

Objectives
At the end of the chapter, the students can:
1. describe the characteristics that supposedly mark women’s
language as special;
2. identify examples of men’s and women’s speech from several
cultures;
3. identify and compare the various theories of women’s language;
4. describe the relationship–if any–between grammatical gender
and biological gender; and,
5. determine the linguistic practices of LGBTQI communities and
individuals.

Lesson 1: Gender Vs. Sex, Grammatical Vs. Biological Gender

What to Expect?
At the end of the lesson, the students can:
1. differentiate gender from sex; and,
2. describe grammatical and biological gender.

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 Pre-discussion
Some words are used—or thought to be used—strictly by men, and others
by women. Write down five adjectives, five adverbs, and five phrases you think
are mostly used by men.
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Lesson Outline
Because sex roles vary from culture to culture, time, and place, how
males or females behave is predicated upon numerous cultural expectations,
biological options, and individual personalities. Thus, social scientists often
restrict the use of the term sex to a person’s biological physiology while using
gender to refer to someone’s social or cultural identity as a male or female.
However, the simplistic equations “sex = biology” and “gender = culture” are fraught
with many problems and inconsistencies (Ahearn, 2012). First, though it may seem natural and
obvious to place a person in either male or female categories, “intersexed” individuals are more
common than is often assumed. By some estimates, at least 1 percent of the human population
has some degree of anatomical or hormonal sexual ambiguity.
How such persons live their lives varies greatly. Some people may decide to undergo
anatomical or social reassignment through surgery, dress, or other means. The term transgender
is often used to describe the condition in which a person’s social gender identity does not match
the person’s assigned biological sexual identity. However, it should be pointed out that
transgenderness does not necessarily imply any preconceived sexual or romantic attraction a
person might have—heterosexual, homosexual, bisexual, or otherwise.

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 Sexual orientation is something different. It ranges from exclusive attraction to the
opposite sex to exclusive attraction to the same sex. Although “straight” is generally taken as
the default role, gay people—and most scientists—point out that sexual orientation is probably
not a lifestyle choice but rather the result of a complex interaction of genetic, hormonal, and
environmental influences. Therefore, we may need to add a third variable to the “sex = biology”
and “gender = culture” equations mentioned previously: “sexual identity.”
Even if you have never studied linguistics or a foreign language, you are probably aware
that many languages make distinctions that are based on biology. This is common in lexical
elements like pronouns (e.g., she, hers versus he, his) and nouns (e.g., Latina and Latino in
Spanish, or French chat for “male cat” and chatte for “female cat”). However, many languages
also make distinctions based on grammatical gender. Words fall into certain classes or
categories—generally exclusively—based on some property or feature assigned to them.
We should mention here that the origin of the word gender comes from the Latin genus
(class or sort). So, in linguistics, gender refers to a grammatical category based on certain
properties a word has, including—but hardly restricted to—the common masculine, feminine, and
neutral genders found in some Indo-European languages.
For example, George Lakoff titled his well-known book on cognition Women, Fire, and
Dangerous Things (1987), based on the four gender classes found in the Australian language
Dyirbal:
1. bayi (human males and animals)
2. balan (women, fire, dangerous things, water, fighting)
3. balam (nonflesh foods); and,
4. bala (all other nouns).
Although uncommon, some languages, such as Bantu in Africa, can have more than a
dozen gender classes. For example, Ganda has sixteen, Lozi has eighteen, and Venda has
twenty. The consequence of a word being in a particular gender category is that it must match
or co-occur with other grammatical categories, such as number or case. In Spanish, gender
agreement is required between nouns and definite articles (as in la muchacha, “the girl” versus
el muchacho, “the boy”), where feminine definite articles (la) must precede feminine nouns and
masculine definite articles (el) must precede masculine nouns.

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 Summary
This dichotomy suggests that “gender” is something built upon a set of
cultural and social practices that “amplify, simplify, and give meaning to
perceived or actual biological differences” (Ahearn, 2012).
Gender is a social construct that will vary from one society to the next or even from one
social group to another within a society or culture. Here, we are concerned with gender as a
status ascribed to certain individuals or groups by members of a particular culture or society.

Assessment/Enrichment
Explain this statement: “Gender is a status ascribed to individuals.”
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References

Jourdan, C., & Tuite, K. (Eds.). (2006). Language, culture, and society: Key topics in
linguistic anthropology (Vol. 23). Cambridge University Press.
http://196.189.45.87/bitstream/123456789/29011/1/18%20pdf.pdf

Salzmann, Z., Stanlaw, J., & Adachi, N. (2014). Language, culture, and society: An introduction to
linguistic anthropology. Westview Press.
https://dspace.ttu.edu.vn/bitstream/handle/123456789/3457/

Stanlaw, J., Adachi, N. & Salzmann, Z. (2017). Language, culture, and society: An introduction to
linguistic anthropology. New York: Routledge. https://b-
ok.asia/s/language%20culture%20society

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