Talk:Language and gender

Genderlects within languages other than English

I don't have references handy, but I know there are some languages where differences between men's and women's speech is highly grammaticalized -- first person pronouns marked for gender, different verb inflections or suppletive verb stems for speakers or subjects' gender, etc. At some point we should add information about this; at present the article focuses just on English. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Jim Henry (talk • contribs) 00:58, 15 November 2009 (UTC)

bla........ this is wat i think of the wikipedia resources... -_- —Preceding unsigned comment added by 75.50.121.140 (talk) 11:38, 17 December 2009 (UTC)

A starting point is this german wikipedia article about "gender neutral speech": https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geschlechtergerechte_Sprache#Strategien_des_geschlechtergerechten_Formulierens or this one about a form of feminist prescriptivist speech in german: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendern — Preceding unsigned comment added by 2A0A:A543:E2F3:0:802C:9154:F033:31BF (talk) 12:50, 5 February 2023 (UTC)

'See also' links

I have removed two links from the section 'See also'. Sociolect is already linked within the text. EME.SAL is a redirect to Sumerian language, an extinct language believed to have had gender-linked varieties. Since many, many languages have such varieties, the link seems to give undue weight to that language. Cnilep (talk) 19:20, 12 March 2010 (UTC)

"Sex is a fact"

A user has twice added, to different sections of this article, the assertion "sex is a fact; gender is an idea", citing Tannen 1996 as a source. While this simple binary may have been accepted by scholars a generation ago, even by the time of Tannen's book it was controversial. Judith Butler's Gender Trouble had significant influence on language and gender studies, and the categories were being questioned even a bit earlier (see for example Philips, Steele, and Tanz's Language, Gender, and Sex in Comparative Perspective (1987) for critical treatments of social and biological scholarship, though not of the two terms). While some scholars (including Tannen) assert that biological sex is natural but "socially elaborated", others (such as Butler) assert that there is no natural category – sex itself is socially constructed. I think it is misleading to suggest that popular usage and scholarly consensus are simple and fixed. They are not. Cnilep (talk) 06:36, 5 April 2012 (UTC)

Added maintenance tags

The article needs a more formal tone, and citations for its numerous unverified claims. Ongepotchket (talk) 17:54, 5 January 2013 (UTC)

Merger proposal

I propose that Genderlect theory be merged into Language and gender. I think that the content in the Genderlect theory article can easily be explained in the context of Language and gender, and the Language and gender article is of a reasonable size that the merging of Genderlect theory will not cause any problems as far as article size or undue weight is concerned. Andrewaskew (talk) 04:02, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

I support that.·ʍaunus·snunɐw· 04:11, 10 April 2013 (UTC)

• Given that Deborah Tannen's work on language and gender is already covered at Language and gender, I would certainly support redirecting Genderlect theory there. Given that the latter page cites only a single, self-published source and appears to be a close paraphrase of that source, though, I'm not sure if anything warrants merging. Cnilep (talk) 04:46, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
  • Actually, it appears that the earliest version of the page was a single line copied from Intercultural communication with an incomplete citation to a published source. Later edits have removed the quotation from that source and replaced it with a close paraphrase of a web page (possibly someone's sociolinguistics homework project?), and a long quotation, without proper citation, from this blog. I'd say just redirect without merging the content. Cnilep (talk) 05:03, 10 April 2013 (UTC)
    • Given the lack of verfiable content at Genderlect theory, I have redirected that title to Language and gender without merging anything. Cnilep (talk) 01:52, 16 April 2013 (UTC)
      • Me and a partner started the genderlect theory page as a class project, but I misunderstood how to use wikipedia and now realize that I should have put it together in the sandbox. Now I know! Instead, for the project, we are going to try and add to what is on this page. Thank you!Bmanswag63738247382648274 (talk) 20:52, 23 April 2013 (UTC)

Story Telling

I added another paragraph to this page dealing with how men and women tell stories differently and how it fits in with language and gender — Preceding unsigned comment added by Bcasey09 (talk • contribs) 19:09, 26 April 2013 (UTC)

Ideas for Improvement

This article could be improved by adding more reliable references, especially in the section "Self Disclosure." Within this section, I'd recommend creating a subsection on "Computer Mediated Communication," and include more information on this growing phenomena. Since this article was created, many studies have been done on CMC and including this relevant information would make the content of the article more realistic with regards to modern language use. Furthermore, including this information would make the article more balanced. Lastly, the introduction mentions "related fields" to the topic of language and gender: I would suggest creating links to these related fields to make the article clearer and more precise.

Cnorton1 (talk) 03:01, 19 September 2014 (UTC)

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I just don't understand

Recently another editor added a section on heterosexual marriage. The section includes two citations, which is great. Unfortunately, the citations both have problems. The first (ref name=":0") uses a name, but has no content. That was presumably an error, but I'm not sure what the editor intended to point to.

The second is a reference to Deborah Tannen's You Just Don't Understand. The problem there is, I don't think the book directly supports the content of the new section. Tannen does talk about marriage in the book, and the ideas expressed in this new section are generally in keeping with Tannen's arguments. But I don't think that this book talks about social construal of biological sex, nor specifically about the effects of gendered expectations on marriage as, say, distinct from other heterosexual relationships. I could be mis-remembering – I just quickly skimmed a couple of pages from the book – but unfortunately the citation doesn't tell me where to look to verify. It lists page 1990, but since the book is less than 400 pages long, I think this must be another error. Cnilep (talk) 05:08, 6 May 2016 (UTC)

Biased view presented in the "Listening and attentiveness" section

The final paragraph of the section titled "Listening and attentiveness" contains the following text, which clearly is biased and not an objective viewpoint:

"When men talk, women listen and agree. However men tend to misinterpret this agreement, which was intended in a spirit of connection, as a reflection of status and power. A man might conclude that a woman is indecisive or insecure as a result of her listening and attempts of acknowledgment. When in all actuality, a woman's reasons for behaving this way have nothing to do with her attitudes toward her knowledge, but are a result of her attitudes toward her relationships. The act of giving information frames the speaker with a higher status, while the act of listening frames the listener as lower. However, when women listen to men, they are not necessarily thinking in terms of status, but in terms of connection and support."

This information is being presented as fact and in absolute statements, which is misleading. It should be updated. --2601:643:8304:DBB0:20FD:71B5:B5E2:269B (talk) 12:28, 20 February 2019 (UTC)

Two or three main areas?

First, thank to User:Hanieh.g for attention and additions to this page.

That said, edits by Hanieh.g made at least one change that I'm not sure I can endorse. I'm not going to change the page content, because Hanieh.g is not wrong, but I'd like to hear what others think.

The page used to say, "research in this area can perhaps most usefully be divided into three main areas of study", these being roughly (1) gender-linked variation, (2) social norms that reproduce such linkage, and (3) the construction of gender. After the recent edits the page says, "research in this area can perhaps most usefully be divided into two main areas of study", these being roughly (A) genderlect, described roughly as (1)+(2) from above, and (B) sexism and gender bias.

Hanieh.g left an edit summary saying, "There was a missing part in categorization of this field." This is certainly true; there is much valuable work in language and gender that this article does not yet cover in sufficient detail. I wonder, though, whether this restatement adds to the coverage, or simply shifts it?

The edits add references to Jennifer Coates and Pia Pichler, and Sarah Gormley, which are welcome. At the same time, though, they remove references to Susan Speer, Deborah Tannen's textbook chapter (though her research is still referenced), and Penelope Brown, which seems counter productive.

Do others have opinions on these changes? Cnilep (talk) 06:11, 26 November 2019 (UTC)

Answer for categorization

First of all, thank you for your attention. In the first part, The field is being divided into two main categories. The first one is regarding the differences between gender usages, while the second one somehow challenged the first one, by saying that insisting on these differences reproduces bias and stereotype, while these differences have nothing to do with the biology of sexes. What you have mentioned are the subfields, not the two main category in this field. The second part of your discussion is about the reason I’ve deleted the part of politeness. I went to a full professor of sociolinguistics in my university and discussed this chapter with him. I wanted to make sure that these sources are out-dated. He agreed that nowadays those book are not up-to-date resources, and we both think that the information- which is from 50 years ago- is helping to reproduce and maintain the gender bias. As I mentioned, the pattern of “politeness” has nothing to do with the sex or gender itself, but it has social reasons. Thank you, and I hope I could answer your questions. Hanieh.g (talk) 01:37, 27 November 2019 (UTC)

Page Organization Overhaul

There seems to be not a logical flow to the page and several really long sections with extraneous information. The section "linguistic variation" is more about the history of the field of language and gender, and the second sub-heading of Children's television does not seem to fit. Is there a better way to organize the sections/sub-sections? Archiecrowley (talk) 17:10, 12 June 2021 (UTC)

Criticisms

I do not have the resources to make these edits myself but I hope someone will consider adding it. The postmodernist view that differences in language are mostly indicative of power dynamics seems to be taken as a given. The fact that the psychological tendencies of men and women are different in some areas seems to have largely been ignored. While I understand that this might be the popular theory in the fields concerned, I would certainly appreciate it if someone would add a section showing the criticisms of this view and elaborating on a more dynamic view, considering these differences to not just be based on power but other factors as well. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 112.134.163.115 (talk) 16:48, 30 July 2021 (UTC)

Wiki Education Foundation-supported course assignment

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