Past Qs:

- “Language is Gendered”, what does this imply? Explain with examples. (20 marks)

I. Language used to talk about men and women

a. Vocabulary
i. Insult term.
1. For men:
a. Insults attack intellectual capability, physical strength, and
masculinity – esp. A female relation.
2. For women:
a. Insults attack sexuality.
ii. Symmetry and Asymmetry
1. Symmetry:
a. If we have got two terms, one for males of a species and one
for females they both get equal usage and equal scope of use.
2. Example: Horses
a. Horse -> Adult Generic
b. Stallion -> Adult Male
c. Mare -> Adult Female
d. Foal -> Young Generic
e. Colt -> Young male
f. Filly -> Young female
3. Asymmetry:
a. The opposite is asymmetry where those two terms don’t get
equal usage and don’t have equal scope of use.
4. Example: Humans
a. Human -> Adult Generic
b. Man -> Adult Male, Human Generic
c. Woman -> Adult Female
d. Child -> Young Generic
e. Boy -> Young Male
f. Girl -> Young Female
iii. Titles
1. Men
a. Mr.
2. Women
a. Miss (ownership belongs to father) (associated with Marital
Status)
b. Mrs. (ownership belongs to husband) (associated with marital
status)
c. Ms. (marital-neutral status)
 iv. Unmarked and marked terms
1. Unmarked terms:
a. Terms without specific endings which could be used for both
males and females.
2. Marked terms:
a. Terms with specific endings indicating that the words are
exclusively used to talk about males or females.
3. It is different from symmetry/asymmetry where the words for male and
female versions of something are completely different.
4. In (un)marked terms, the base word is same, but the word is marked
male or female by the ending.
a. More women are choosing to be referred to by unmarked
terms.

Unmarked Marked
Waiter (general) Waitress (specific)
Actor Actress
Host Hostess
Comedian Comedienne
v. Semantic derogation
1. A word that is normally positive takes a negative connotation in specific
situations.

Semantic Derogation
Gentleman Lady (lady of the night –
prostitute), (Cleaning lady –
lower status)
Boy Girl (adult women – Not fully
mature). Don’t have authority or
status corresponding to a man
Bachelor Spinster (old woman who is not
married)
Bachelorette (New term)
b. Grammar
i. Pronouns
1. Gender Specific Third-Person pronouns: ‘He’, ‘She’, ‘They’

Examples
A teacher should create a lesson
plan for his lessons. If he does, he
will be prepared and organized.
A teacher should create a lesson
plan for his/her lessons. If he/she
does, he/she will be prepared
and organized.
A teacher should create a lesson
plan for their lessons.
Grammatically correct
Politically incorrect
Grammatically incorrect
Politically correct
Grammatically incorrect
Politically correct
 Teachers should create a lesson Grammatically Correct
plan for their lessons. If they do, Politically correct
they will be prepared and
organized.
2. Historically, majority of text uses third-person male pronoun.
c. Discourse
i. Texts (spoken and written)
ii. Multimodal Communication (text + images)
1. Ads. (Women shown in washing machine, washing detergent ads).
a. Implies that women’s place is to do household chores.
2. Example:
a. The Chef (juicer machine) does everything but cook – that's
what women are for! (Kenwood juicer machine ad)
II. How do men and women use language?
a. Verbosity
i. Whether Men and Women simply speak the same amount?
1. Research says that it is inconclusive.
2. Context dependent:
a. Certain context men, other context women.
b. Closely related to both Power Dynamic and Individual
Personality.
b. Turn-taking
i. Different strategies for allowing a listener to become a speaker and vice-versa?
1. Research says that it is inconclusive.
2. Context dependent:
a. Certain context men, other context women.
b. Closely related to both Power Dynamic and Individual
Personality.
c. Back-Channel support
i. How much a listener encourages a speaker to keep going by?
1. Slightly more back-channel support by women.
d. Mitigating
i. Strategies and words that are used in order to decrease the power of what is
being said.
ii. Types of mitigating:
1. Hedging:
a. Hesitation (‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, ‘um’)
2. Epistemic Modals:
a. Reducing Forcefulness (‘should’, ‘could’, ‘may’)
3. Other Mitigators:
a. “Possibly”, “Probably”
iii. Results are mixed and a function of power.
e. Rising Intonation
i. Adds a questioning tone or degree of uncertainty to a statement.
 ii. The Rising Intonation is much more frequently used by females.
iii. Particularly, female teenagers.
f. Newman et al. Study:
i. Women talk more about people, emotions, internal processes and thought
processes.
ii. Men talk more about external events and conversation topics typically
associated with men, such as sports.
III. Japanese Language Case Study
a. Male and Female Japanese dialect that assign clearly different grammatical patterns to
male language use and female language use.
i. Sentence ending.
ii. Questions – different grammatical structure to indicate structure.
iii. The Pronouns “You” and “I”.
IV. Gender Inclusive Language

Gender Exclusive Gender Inclusive

Man People
Mankind Humanity
Chairman Chairperson
Policeman Police Officer
Fireman Fire Fighter
Mailman Mail Carrier
Salesman Salesperson
a. A good manager knows his staff.
i. A good manager knows his or her staff.
ii. A good manager knows their staff.
iii. Good managers know their staff.
b. A nurse should be nice to her staff.
i. Nurses should be nice to their staff.
V. Insult Terms and Curse words
a. Men are insulted by insulting their female relatives/family members.