The gender paradox is a
sociolinguistic
Sociolinguistics is the descriptive study of the effect of any or all aspects of society, including cultural norms, expectations, and context, on the way language is used, and society's effect on language. It can overlap with the sociology of l ...
phenomenon first observed by
William Labov
William Labov ( ; born December 4, 1927) is an American linguist widely regarded as the founder of the discipline of variationist sociolinguistics. He has been described as "an enormously original and influential figure who has created much of ...
, in which "Women conform more closely than men to sociolinguistic norms that are overtly prescribed, but conform less than men when they are not."
Specifically, the "paradox" arises from sociolinguistic data showing that women are more likely to use
prestige
Prestige refers to a good reputation or high esteem; in earlier usage, ''prestige'' meant "showiness". (19th c.)
Prestige may also refer to:
Arts, entertainment and media Films
* ''Prestige'' (film), a 1932 American film directed by Tay Garnett ...
forms and avoid stigmatized variants than men for a majority of
linguistic variables, but that they are also more likely to lead language change by using innovative forms of variables.
Overview
William Labov identifies three main principles that, in combination, constitute the gender paradox. They illuminate the juxtaposing roles of women, who display both conformist and nonconformist behavior in the treatment of linguistic variables.
Stable linguistic variables
The first of the three principles states that "For stable sociolinguistic variables, women show a lower rate of stigmatized variants and a higher rate of prestige variants than men."
This principle gives the most general understanding of women's treatment of linguistic variables, in that when variables are not undergoing any change, women tend to prefer the
standard Standard may refer to:
Symbols
* Colours, standards and guidons, kinds of military signs
* Standard (emblem), a type of a large symbol or emblem used for identification
Norms, conventions or requirements
* Standard (metrology), an object th ...
form of the variable to the non-standard form. It is a commonly occurring phenomenon that sociolinguists have observed in a wide array of societies.
Peter Trudgill
Peter Trudgill, FBA (; born 7 November 1943) is an English sociolinguist, academic and author.
Trudgill was born in Norwich, England and grew up in the area of Thorpe St Andrew. He attended the City of Norwich School from 1955. Trudgill studie ...
's study of the (ng) variable in
Norwich, England
Norwich () is a cathedral city and district of Norfolk, England, of which it is the county town. Norwich is by the River Wensum, about north-east of London, north of Ipswich and east of Peterborough. As the seat of the See of Norwich, with ...
provides evidence to support this principle.
In his 1968 study, Trudgill studied the frequency of the (ng) variable among sixty random subjects, calculating the usage of the standard form
ªÅ‹versus that of the non-standard form
™n ~ nÌ© He classified his results into categories of class, style and sex. Women tended to avoid the stigmatized form, preferring the standard form more than men did, which hold true for nearly all English dialects. Women were even more careful with their choice in variable when speaking formally, indicating a high level of linguistic awareness.
Changes from above
Occasionally considered a corollary to the first principle, the second principle states: "In linguistic
change from above, women adopt prestige forms at a higher rate than men." These are language changes that individuals are generally conscious of. People are aware of the prestige associated with formal styles and thus are prone to
hypercorrection
In sociolinguistics, hypercorrection is non-standard use of language that results from the over-application of a perceived rule of language-usage prescription. A speaker or writer who produces a hypercorrection generally believes through a mi ...
– a product of
linguistic insecurity
Linguistic insecurity comprises feelings of anxiety, self-consciousness, or lack of confidence in the mind of a speaker surrounding their use of language. Often, this anxiety comes from speakers' belief that their speech does not conform to the ...
. Several studies have shown that women are leaders both in eliminating stigmatized forms and adopting incoming prestige forms, and they do so at a notably higher rate than men.
This finding is widespread across languages and can be seen in examples such as (r)-pronunciation in New York City, the reversal of the Parisian French chain shift, and entire language shifts, like that from
Hungarian to
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
**Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ger ...
in Austria.
Changes from below
The third principle is as follows: "In linguistic
change from below Change from below is linguistic change that occurs from below the level of consciousness. It is language change that occurs from social, cognitive, or physiological pressures from within the system. This is in opposition to change from above, where ...
, women use higher frequencies of innovative forms than men do."
These changes, which generally occur below the level of social consciousness, are "the primary form of linguistic change that operates within the system." In these cases, women are the initiators and leaders of changes in progress.
The
Northern Cities Shift (NCS) offers a clear example of women leading change from below. For instance, the Atlas of North American English provides data on the regression analysis of 56 speakers in the Inland North, in which the most significant factor regarding sound change advancement is gender, making women the leading innovators. Women-led sound change from below is particularly salient for new and vigorous changes, like that of the palatalization of /t/ and /d/ in Cairo Arabic.
Explanations
Researchers in sociolinguistics have attempted to provide a unified account and explanation for the gender paradox with varying levels of success.
Neurobiological view
One proposed explanation from J. K. Chambers is the notion that women lead sound change due to some inherent biological verbal advantage. Under this view, women command a greater range of variants and styles, despite similar gender roles, because of sex differences.
This view is contradicted by the varying size of the "gender gap," and the fact that differences have not remained constant over time.
Labov asserts that if Chambers' biological explanation were to hold true, it would need to produce a robust effect across generations.
Social capital view
Another possible explanation for women's leadership in language change is their greater sensitivity to the social status associated with certain variants. As women have historically been denied access to the standard economic capital available to men through education and job opportunities, this may have motivated the usage of prestige forms to help them gain social capital and advance their social standing, both consciously for cases of change from above and subconsciously for change from below. The notion that women's speech is in fact the "language of powerlessness" is supported by findings that some features of stereotypical women's speech were also used by men when in a position of subverted power.
However, this view fails to address the consistently higher use of prestige forms even in contemporary societies with high levels of gender equality. Studies of language variation in central Sweden show that gender differences in speech have been maintained or even increased since 1967, despite the fact that recent legislation in Sweden has led to widespread gender equality.
[ Nonetheless, the legislation may be too recent to have any great effect on the power entrenched in language and the inherent sexism that might remain despite various new laws, although this would not explain the increases, and belies the likelihood that 57 years - three or four generations - of legislation is more than enough time to produce an effect.
]
Network theory view
Gendered patterns of speech can also be explained by social network theory
A social network is a social structure made up of a set of social actors (such as individuals or organizations), sets of dyadic ties, and other social interactions between actors. The social network perspective provides a set of methods for an ...
, which suggests that speech differences are accounted for by the differences between the social networks of men and women. Men tend to have denser, more local social networks, which are more conservative and resistant to change, resulting in higher usage of non-standard local variants. On the other hand, women tend to have more open, less locally-constrained networks, which are more likely to use standard variants and have access to innovative forms due to weak ties to other speech communities.[ Of course, if these differences are cross-cultural, it would also suggest that biological differences are at play.
]
Complications
In addition to the difficulties that arise in reconciling the gender paradox itself, other complications have emerged in the methodology and interpretations that led to its discovery.
Ethnocentric data
Though evidence of the paradox is widespread in sociolinguistic variation studies that use either sex or gender as a variable, findings that support the principles are not universal. Most data in support of the gender paradox come from studies of Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
in Europe or North America, but studies done in Asian, African and Middle Eastern countries often show contradictory patterns. For example, male speakers use the prestigious classical variety of Arabic far more than women, even though women lead in the use of locally "prestigious" standard variants. Male speakers of Malagasy also lead in the use of their ideal speech style, characterized by non-confrontational indirectness, whereas the women are "norm-breakers" and use the stigmatized, direct style associated with negative information. These counterexamples suggest that the gender paradox could be limited to western cultures or languages.
Stylistic differences within women
Several sociolinguists question the validity of making generalizations about a group as large as "women," which makes up roughly half the population of the world. Penelope Eckert
Penelope "Penny" Eckert (born 1942) is Albert Ray Lang Professor Emerita of Linguistics at Stanford University. She specializes in variationist sociolinguistics and is the author of several scholarly works on language and gender. She served as t ...
argues instead that women are not using prestige forms to declare whether or not they are women. A single linguistic variable can be indexical
In semiotics, linguistics, anthropology, and philosophy of language, indexicality is the phenomenon of a ''sign'' pointing to (or ''indexing'') some object in the context in which it occurs. A sign that signifies indexically is called an index or, ...
of multiple traits and women (and men) can belong to multiple social groups, each with their own linguistic traits. Language variations are chosen by their third order indexical qualities on a personal, rather than gender-wide level, reflected in the fact that no two women's speech is exactly alike. These findings challenge the idea that women's use of prestige forms is not necessarily something inherent in their biology, but could also be an external, third-order indexical quality more highly valued among women than men.
Social-constructionist view
Social constructionists
Social constructionism is a theory in sociology, social ontology, and communication theory which proposes that certain ideas about physical reality arise from collaborative consensus, instead of pure observation of said reality. The theory ...
view the gender paradox as questionable because many of the studies used as evidence fail to take into account the sex and gender distinction
Though the terms ''sex'' and ''gender'' have been used interchangeably since at least the fourteenth century, in contemporary academic literature they usually have distinct meanings. ''Sex'' generally refers to an organism's biological sex, while ...
. When gender is mentioned at all, it is often used synonymously with sex. While statistics support the fact that women often lead language change, the motivations for doing so cannot be determined by statistics alone. It is inconclusive whether it is something physiologically inherent that makes women more progressive in their language use, or if this trend is instead an effect of the role of the female gender within society. If a tendency towards language change is a product of gender, which is socially constructed, then sociolinguistics should instead be focusing on the social aspects of femininity that are indexed by female speech. This view would also account for the inconsistency in results between studies done in western cultures supporting the gender paradox and those done in other cultures where the results are less conclusive.
Shifting of standard forms
Variation among women could also be due to shifting standard forms. In a 2003 study of the multilingual community of Palau
Palau,, officially the Republic of Palau and historically ''Belau'', ''Palaos'' or ''Pelew'', is an island country and microstate in the western Pacific. The nation has approximately 340 islands and connects the western chain of the Caro ...
, Kazuko Matsumoto and David Britain, examined the functions of prestige forms among women of various age groups. They found that among Palau women of the parent and grandparent generations, the use of Japanese is considered a conservative behavior, as it is used to preserve their ethnic home language. Among young Palau women, however, the use of Japanese is considered an innovative behavior because, having been raised speaking Palau, Japanese is an overly-prestigious foreign language used to secure a job in the modern employment market.
See also
* List of paradoxes
This list includes well known paradoxes, grouped thematically. The grouping is approximate, as paradoxes may fit into more than one category. This list collects only scenarios that have been called a paradox by at least one source and have their ...
References
{{reflist
Sociolinguistics
Paradoxes