Making the Invisible Visible: Gender in Language

By M. J. Hardman, Anita Taylor and Catherine Wright

All that is human is mediated through language. And because we learned the process of being human in a culture as we learned the language of that culture, much that we learned remains invisible to us. But even though invisible, it guides what and how we learn and remember, our perceptions, our behaviors, including communicative behaviors. Throughout our lives, that early language/culture learning affects us, all too often without our realizing.

The discoveries about that early learning that this book makes possible enable readers to see through their language and learn to live productively and engage fully in mutually fulfilling relationships.

This book talks back to the old adage, Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt. We show how words do hurt, of course not by breaking bones, but by damaging self-confidence, reputations, livelihoods--or provoking people to the point of breaking bones--or worse.

We focus on the roles of gender in language in effective or failed communication.
We direct attention to invisible impacts of daily language use. When the invisible becomes visible, readers can see the many ways daily talk and interactions create and reinforce genders.

We explore how language functions, its sources of power, and why it resists change even when negative impacts are clear. We explore how, in part through hidden gendering, English disadvantages many of its users and point to how the problems emerge in the ways gender functions in this supposedly non-gendered language. We describe how gendered language guides us to create and reinforce behaviors and relationships we do not intend. We conclude with suggestions of how to use English to reflect egalitarian values.

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Sep 4, 2013
• ISBN: 9781491701416

M. J. Hardman

Anita Taylor, Professor Emerita of Communication and Women's Studies at George Mason University in Fairfax VA, focused on understanding gender in communication for over 30 years. With PhD from U. of Missouri-Columbia and M.S. from Kansas State University, she has sought help people live and work more effectively in a variety of gendered worlds. To contact Dr. Taylor, email her at [e-mail] M J Hardman is Professor Emerita of Linguistics and Anthropology, and affiliated with Women's Studies at the University. of Florida. She has specialized in the Jaqi languages and in gender as manifested in language and culture. Dr. Hardman, has made a life-long study the Jaqi languages of Bolivia, Chile, and Peru; with her colleague and dear friend, Dimas Bautista, has published in print and on-line a grammar of the languages as well as making available bi-lingual learning materials and cultural resources. For more information, see http://clas.ufl.edu/users/hardman. Catherine K. Wright (PhD, Regent University, 2005) is the designer and primary architect of the web pages that provide support for this book. As undergraduate adviser and term Associate Professor of Communication at George Mason University she focuses on computer-mediated communication and the various means people use to transmit information to each other. Among other courses, she emphasizes media and society, business and professional communication, web development and communication. For more information, see http://classweb.gmu.edu/cwright5

Book preview

Contents

Preface

Introduction: Making The Invisible Visible

Chapter 1   How Language Works

Chapter 2   Uses Of Metaphor

Chapter 3   Derivational Thinking

Chapter 4   Limiting Agency

Chapter 5   Confusing Observation, Inference, And Judgment

Chapter 6   Maintenance Of Privilege: Cheswam

Chapter 7   Using Sentence Structure To Recreate Social Structure

Chapter 8   Is The Seducer

Chapter 9   Making Changes

Student Learning Materials

Preface

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain or bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Max Ehrmann

All that is human is mediated through language. And because we learned the process of being human in our culture as we learned the language of that culture, much that we learned remains invisible to us. But even though invisible, it guides what and how we learn and remember, our perceptions, our behaviors. Throughout our lives it continues to affect us, all too often without our realizing.

With these materials we hope to direct users’ attention to the invisible impacts of their daily language use, whether as readers, speakers, listeners or writers, whether hearing or seeing. We want to make the invisible visible. We want our students and readers to begin recognizing all the many ways our daily talk and interactions create and reinforce genders.

The lessons presented here explore how language functions, where its power comes from, and why language often resists change even when its negative impacts are obvious. Throughout, we pay attention to aspects of language rarely noticed, which, precisely because users don’t notice them, have unnoticed powerful effects. After a quick review of how language functions, we explore a number of issues related specifically to how English disadvantages many of its users. We show that many of these problems emerge in the ways gender functions in this supposedly non-gendered language. We describe the many ways our daily talk and interactions create and reinforce genders, as well as gender behavior and relationships, often in ways we do not intend. We conclude with a number of suggestions for using English to reflect our egalitarian values.

Our goal is to nurture understandings that make available language and communication tools permitting us to live productively and engage fully in mutually fulfilling relationships.

Introduction: Making the invisible visible

a scent of words

Words

thought, spoken, written, even silent

it seems we’re shaped by words.

a simple breath of human exhaust

and we’re comforted or infuriated

a particular throat vibration

and we’re encouraged or undone.

symbols arrive from keyboard or pen

we transliterate them into words

emotions rise inside like steam

twisting themselves into thought.

we can sound them selectively

or we can blurt them carelessly

stories for each word

words for each story.

united by our stories

our people will thrive

Richard Zane Smith, Wyandot tribal member and artist, Wyandotte Oklahoma. Reprinted by permission of the author. See more of his work at http://richardzanesmith.wordpress.com/

Consider the following events:

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Photo credit: Mary R. Vogt, Morguefile

1.   A little league coach yells to an outfielder whose throw missed home plate: You throw like a girl.

2.   Boys at play in neighborhood park; one begins to cry after being knocked down; two others point and say loudly, Sissy, Sissy. Go play with your sister.

3.    A principal at a Maryland high school sends a letter to parents, describing a few recent altercations on the schoolyard as all involving Black on Black violence.

Now, think about the old saying, Sticks and stones can break my bones, but words can never hurt.

As the cases above show, words can hurt, of course. Perhaps words don’t break bones, but they can damage self-confidence, reputations, livelihoods. And people can be provoked by words to the point of breaking bones. Probably each of us has experienced hurtful episodes like the examples above, hurts that were in turn repaired by kind and supportive words from a friend, parent or sibling. Indeed, words can wound, and words can heal. This book will explore how language can do those things, and more; and it will discuss how gender is involved in the doing, often even when it’s not obvious.

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We generally (not always) use words to achieve our goals: We want some thing or some information; we want someone to do something (or stop doing something); we want to express joy, anger, love, fear, pleasure, anxiety, excitement, etc. Sometimes we choose our words carefully; sometimes they seem to appear from nowhere. Almost oblivious to the process of choosing language, we use words that we expect to achieve the goals for which we use them. Only when something goes wrong in the process do we stop and wonder, What did I say to cause THAT reaction? Or why did THAT upset them so? Although it is common for us to communicate less effectively than we want, we rarely pay attention to how language may have sabotaged our efforts.

In this book we focus on the roles language plays in effective or failed communication and show how gender participates in the work of language.

We begin with an observation: All that is human is mediated through language. And just as fish do not notice the water they swim in until something goes wrong, most of us are mostly unaware of the sea of language in which we swim the whole of our lives. When we say that ‘all that is human is mediated through language’ we do not mean words, or at least not words alone. We mean the whole of the patterns of language. These patterns shape the way in which discourse flows from one sentence to another, from one paragraph to another, from one idea to another. We also mean the shape that these sentences take, and what our language causes us to pay attention to, as well as all those little parts of language labeled grammar that we find so boring. All this is part of the mediation of language. Language mediates the ways in which we recall what we have experienced, how we archive experiences for future retelling, the ways we construct history. How can we share unless we put it in language—whatever ‘it’ is? How do we have memories without language? How, even, do photos in an album have meaning without the language labels we give them? Language affects how we make names for things, concepts, and feelings; how we construct and recall memories; how we perceive ‘things’; it molds even perceptions of what we consider to be reality. The structure of language governs all these, a structure to which mostly we give no conscious attention.

This book explores how language functions, where its power comes from, and why it often resists change even when its negative impacts are obvious. Throughout, we pay attention to aspects of language rarely noticed, which, precisely because users don’t notice them, have powerful effects outside the users’ awareness. After our review of how language functions, we explore a number of issues related specifically to how English disadvantages many of its users. We show that many of these problems emerge in the ways gender functions in this supposedly non-gendered language. We conclude with a number of suggestions of ways in which we can use English to reflect our egalitarian values.

CHAPTER 1

how language works

Speaking the language, I could no longer really hear it. And, once inside its protective walls, I began to find it difficult to get out.

Carol Cohn

an overview

We begin with some definitions, so that we are all on the same page with these words we are using. What is language, anyway? To describe it simply we could say that language is a combination of symbolic sounds, used by a particular tribe, social group, nationality or heritage group. Hence we have English, Chinese, Arabic, Farsi, Thai, Spanish, Russian, Yoruba, Aymara, etc. Language can also be represented by marks on paper or digital pages (writing) or by sounds on a drum (as in Yoruba drumming). Or in many other ways. (If this issue interests you, you might want to see the discussion of languages & language families in M. J. Hardman’s A Language Sampler for Perceiving Language Structure.) Users of any language will probably have variations in dialect, vocabulary, and opinions regarding propriety of usage. But in spite of the differences, they can understand each other and their speech and writing make sense to each other.

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We easily recognize some language variations, even when people talk what they call the same language. We all recognize differences in sounds: In the U. S., we can distinguish someone from Alabama from one in New Jersey, both of whom sound different from a Texan. Any speaker from a third generation of a family originally from another country, India for example, will sound different from a new arrival from India (for example) who spoke Hindi before learning English or who learned Indian English as a native language. The differences across the U. S and Canada, usually called dialects fit within what is thought of as the English language. So clearly language is more than sounds.

Language experts say a simple description of language elements shows they consist of symbols, syntax and grammar. Syntax can be thought of as sentence structure. It’s the arrangement of words (the symbols) in systematic ways so that making sense results. Part of making sense results from how the words fit together, from the rules of arrangement. The patterns that govern the arrangements, the fitting together, make talk intelligible to other speakers of the language constitute grammar. Grammar involves the rules of how words in a language may be connected. Grammar is also how words are constructed. In some languages most of the grammar is in the syntax (English, Chinese); in other languages most of the grammar is in how the words are constructed (Aymara, Jaqaru). For English speakers, grammar distinguishes I’d like to have a drink of water, please, from* Water have I’d please drink a of like to. This last phrasing would not happen; we use it to illustrate. [In the text, if you see a *, that indicates an impossible construction.]

Learning a language involves learning all three elements in a complex, interactive process. We have to know at least some of the symbols (words or other significant icons). As we become more proficient with the language, we have to know, minimally, the way those words fit together. Infants in English language countries may get away with saying wa wa to achieve the goal of getting a drink. But not adults. As infants grow, they will learn to say water instead of wa wa. And as time passes, the child will add other words (such as please) and the grammatical structures (patterns) that put the words into sentences such as I’m thirsty. May I have a drink, please? etc. Children also begin to learn that different social conditions call for different ways of making the requests.

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Language users learn that particular sounds are meaningful (i.e., are symbolic) and are supposed to fit together in particular ways to become more useful. They also learn words, intonations and patterns, and ways to connect all three. Hence one important part of language learning is coming to know the words recognized in one’s language community to refer to things. Focus on the names of ‘things’ is part of the English pattern. Some other languages focus on actions, so children learn ‘bouncing’ not ‘ball’. English is a noun-centered language; many other languages, including Japanese and many of the American languages, are verb-centered languages. English speakers learn names for concrete things, then for those that are more abstract. Abstract things are labeled concepts. But even what we think of as ‘concrete’ may be quite abstract, starting with the very phonemes we think of as sounds. A large part of learning language involves learning more names for things, and names for more things, and increasingly abstract and interconnecting things. The width of your acquaintance with words is the size of your vocabulary.

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To note how levels of abstraction and vocabulary interact, think of a specific dog, a family pet named Jojo. The words, ‘Jojo’, ‘dog’ and ‘pet’ all apply to that specific animal. All three also refer to whole groups of things: other dogs, and dogs of other types (breeds), cats (a different kind of pet as well as a species). Jojo and other dogs are both like humans (they are mammals) and different from people (though some ARE treated as if they were human). You also know that ‘dog’ also refers to a language class of things (nouns, which differ from verbs, conjunctions, adjectives, adverbs, etc.). Even if you can’t define the class (noun for example) or explain how sometimes doggy can also act as an adjective; you do know the differences. And you understand the difference in the terms when used. You know dogs differ from cats, for example, or from birds, fish, or snakes, although all these, too, are animals, which in turn differ from plants. And if you’ve studied biology you can visualize a tree of life forms with many increasingly complex concepts reflected by many, many branches. You learned all that never realizing you were learning grammar.

Think for a minute about that distinction between a class of things (dogs) and of words (verbs, nouns, etc.). In the case of Jojo language learning includes distinguishing between the concreteness of the animal (the thing) and the abstraction of the word, dog. Here we’re interested in the interactions among the grammar patterns and the abstractions added by much of the vocabulary. Any growing child copes with such complexities in informal learning. The ability to distinguish between the reality of the thing being referred to and the abstraction of the sound or picture used to do the referring rarely involves formal instruction. Understanding how language works, however, requires seeing the distinction. By the time you are reading this, you have so well learned the process it seems automatic, even though it is everything but automatic. It’s a complex, interactive, learned process involving and based on much experience. Moreover, this human ability to make and use language in relating to the world we live in requires, and reflects, virtually limitless flexibility. Different language communities do the process differently. They develop different categories, different symbols and different rules and patterns for connecting them.

Vocabulary, while essential, by itself alone doesn’t take a language user far. To communicate through language we must also know how the words fit together.

Here, too, first language learners accomplish such learning informally: by listening to models; by repeating what they think they hear and being understood and rewarded for saying or seeing. They also learn a language by hearing patterns and extending them, and by playing with patterns. Formal instruction may be involved later or in case of learning additional languages, or of language disabilities. But first learning a language cannot be achieved formally because then language is being used to teach language.

Extending the example of a child learning to ask for water: Before long, the child is expected to say, May I have a drink please (at least in some groups or situations). What if the child said * drink have I please may? (This wouldn’t happen; again we use the example to illustrate patterns). A correction (and, probably concern) is sure to follow: The word arrangement broke too many syntactical and grammatical rules of English. In some situations, I wanna drink, might be accepted though it doesn’t conform to social norms, while in other groups no one hears anything wrong with the request.

We probably do not learn to label what we already use well, as noun, verb, conjunction, modifier, adjective or adverb, etc., until we enter formal schooling. By then, around 6, most humans already use with skill the necessary sound systems and grammatical functions of the words that fit into whatever categories their language involves. Whatever the language, those who speak it know the basics of how words are put together to make sense. Even if introduced to formal grammar through early schooling, children have previously learned most of the grammar of their language with no idea they were learning grammar.

Probably we all got lots of coaching about vocabulary (Remember A is for apple, B is for baby?). And some of us were coached about verb and noun agreement and admonished not to say Me and Joey want a drink, or Joey and me want a drink. But such coaching plays a minor role in the enormous accomplishments of infants acquiring the complex grammatical systems most use with great fluency well before formal schooling.

We quite unconsciously learn rules of grammar that we all use, every time we talk or write, never knowing they are grammar. And we DID learn them, even if most of us could never state what those rules are. If we didn’t use these basic grammar rules, others