For my Linguistics class (LING 111) at the University of Michigan with Ezra Keshet, I wrote a midterm paper about sexism in language. I found this particularly interesting as a young writer identifying as female.
Do women really speak better than men? I asked.
My findings were remarkable.
Due to a history that encouraged females to be proper, women have been known to speak better than men. To understand this bias, society must understand the origin of the myth. Feminist approaches of modern thinkers exhibit why my myth is not only incorrect but why many find it degrading. This myth stems from women’s reliance on society to deem what is acceptable. Women are taught how to behave from a young age, but the era where only women are held accountable for their actions has finished, and men should take pride in their speech just as much as women should. Though women have been historically credited with being more linguistically proper than men, no fact deems that women speak better than men.
The history of gendered language is important for a case study on the myth. During previous centuries, from a young age, girls were taught to care for a family, keeping their husbands happy and their kids educated. The latter is crucial for the development of gendered language because for years before women were sent to school and higher-level education attendance was typical, mothers taught their children in their homes. For women to teach the methodology a proper life to their children, they were held to a standard of understanding. Little Women is a perfect example of the sexist modes of life that existed and encouraged women to be stellar mothers and wives. The female characters find pride in the works they read and speak with the utmost orthodox speech. Early Talmudic Sages claimed women were only allowed to learn the Bible to bring up a new generation of learned Jews. This required women to be knowledgeable in Jewish works, and therefore, their recitation became seamless. Even in this decade, girls have been subjugated to reading Miss Manners, works of Judith Martin on etiquette for young women. She details proper ways to address letters and sign invitations, telling women how to utilize their speech. Notably, Women are also sometimes required to be silent in situations in which men may speak.” However, recently, these pushes have been challenged as passionate individuals have written works fighting the stereotype.
Feminist approaches to linguistics demean sexist myths about women and properness and further enforce that gender standards are an idea of the past. For example, Lakoff claims that discrepancies within language between women and men connote a “social discrepancy in the positions of men and women in our society [that] is reflected in linguistic disparities. The linguist, through linguistic analysis, can help to pinpoint where these disparities lie and can suggest ways of telling when improvements have been made.” Language’s role is apparent in gender equality as Susan Kemper from the University of Kansas cites a study in which responses to women’s politeness was tested, and “These ratings revealed that women are expected to speak more politely than men, regardless of the sex of the addressee or the nature of the requested action,” but “To date, there has been no documentation of sex differences in the use of polite speech.” The study quantified understood politeness of different formatted requests; for example, “The imperative forms (e.g., ‘Rake the leaves’)” compared to “Can you + the imperative (e.g., ‘Can you rake the leaves?’)” Ultimately, nothing suggested, “That rated politeness is affected by the nature of the requested action or by the sex of the informant.” This study sets a nice precedent for further investigations of the myth. Many base decided facts off of one study; for instance, the author of The Female Brain wrote that women talk three times as much as men, but did not have evidence, but once she conceded this claim, people around the world already threw around this fact to demean women. The science backing up the myth of women speaking better than men proves negligent.
Ultimately, women have been perceived as more polite concerning language because that is the way that early modern society wished them, and required them, to be. Today, individuals of all genders are held to standards, and if they are not, modern movements are pushing them to be.