Networks, Change and Gender Flashcards
Social Networks
- density
– how many people you know
-multiplexity
– people you know in different settings
Gender differences for Ballymacarrette
Men: work locally
-More non standardless
Women: work in shops outside the neighborhood
- More standard lang.use
Hammer and Clonard
- most people word outside the community
- little difference (both use standard)
-NOTE: Clonard (networks are less dense and multiplex)
Epiphenomenal
- things are correlated with the affect, but isn’t quite the reason
Who uses the Standard Variant the most?
- Women from Ballymacarrette
(greatest interaction with the outside world)
Why are there difference in languages use
- socialization
-gender expectations
-expectations is to connect within the whole community
-same positions; behave the same linguistically
Younger Women in Clonard…
- use less standard variation of the language in normal settings
- the young women have a cohesive group (work together and socialize together)
the “Typical” pattern
- bunch of studies of variation have a similar finding
- women tend to use Standard Variant more than men
Why do women use the Standard Variant more?
- NOT biology; is a social factor (pressure from above)
- difference in Status; compensatory in a sense
-strategic technique
Differences between Male and Female
- socialized for different roles
- NOT due to biological differences.
LEARNED difference
False Dichotomies (Debbie Cameron)
- Argues the use of Masc. and Fem terms are detrimental to Fem
- “men and women are radically different and non-overlapping”
False Dichotomies (why they exist)
- fabricate to make distinctions between categories
- we look for and invent them
- Nurture not nature
Are there any ill effects on women?
- sexism
- seclusion
-continues to support expectations that there IS a difference
Socialization
- societal norms are taught
- there a greater pressure for women to adhere to societal norms
dichotomies examples
- masc. vs fem (????)
- singular vs plural
- (+) vs (-)
*** they all do a bad job of describing the reality of the system
Componential analysis
an object has certain qualities that distinguish it from another similar thing
- analyzing semantic features of nouns
-binary comparisons of small features to distinguish words
ex: chair vs stool
- Chair [+furniture for sitting] [+legs] [+back]
- Stool [+furniture for sitting] [+legs] [-back]
componential analysis
- male vs female
man [+ male]
Woman [- male]
**artificial indoctrination of negative connotation with fem.
Grammatical Gender
- not universal
- don’t always correspond to biological differences (girl = neuter in GER.)
“Neutral” Gender
- people, friend, candidate, surgeon
- they/them
issues between (3)
- problems with
1. Grammatical gender
2. Natural gender
3. Common gender
issues with: Grammatical gender
- is there a link between grammatical gender and sex?
- certain words that are masc in a language are given more “strong” adjectives and/or nouns
- other words that are fem. are “softer”
**ex of using language to keep women in their place in society
Gender in language (issues/consequences)
- unfavorable towards women
-note: descriptive grammars were/are mostly written by men
Androcentric Generics
- the use of “he” as an inclusive term to refer to both men and women
- “mankind” “man-made” “manpower”
Issues with Androcentric generics
- women feel excluded
- men become the default in minds
- there is a clear distinction in the perceived abilities of men/women
Alternative (improvements) to androcentric
- pluralize
- “they”
- “one”
- possessive pronouns (the writer’s book)
- rewrite to be inclusive
language reform
- social change = lang. change
- social proceeds lexical change
