Language and Gender

by Angela Goddard

Language and Gender
* explores the relationship between language and our ideas about men and women
* challenges commonly expressed views on the subject of language and gender
* highlights the individuals role in the expression of gender stereotyping
* includes a range of text types as diverse as personal ads, wildlife documentary, literary fiction and classical music programmes
* includes a comprehensive glossary of terms.

Genres: Nonfiction, Feminism

128 pages, Paperback

First published May 8, 2000

Reviews

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

Me encanta leer libros, como este, que consiguen que comience a fijarme en detalles que antes pasaba por alto, como pueden ser muchas de las relaciones que se establecen entre el lenguaje y el género. A partir de ahora, gracias a este ensayo, intentaré ser más consciente de cómo utilizo el lenguaje.

[Anastasia Tuple · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book for undergrads. Gives a comprehensive idea on how human languages are not neutral as we might think, but reflect our understanding (and categorisation, discrimination, etc.) of the World. I particularly enjoyed the activities interleaved in every chapter, since they were practical, easy to do, and revealing!

[Rebecca Haddaway · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a text that I was assigned to read for a linguistics class focusing on gender and sexuality. The book is informative, but the information included is pretty rudimentary. If you are looking for a primer on basic feminism and how it relates to language, than this is a good choice. However, if you are somewhat savvy about gender issues and know a little bit about linguistics, you will likely want to find a more comprehensive book. I would recommend this text for someone at the high school level, or someone just starting university.

[Martha · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Categories, especially social categories, actually only exist because they are viewed as culturally significant...But the categories which are used in a society are a reflection of what the society believes to be important about people, believes which are based upon its political and social order - its ideology"

This book is quite basic in format, aimed at students to give them an introduction to how language is not neutral, in fact it is incredibly biased. This is a good thing in many ways, starting with the basics is like an awakening to how deep these biases go - they aren't complex arguments, they're incredibly simple and often indisputable examples from everyday life. This is coming from someone who has read books on feminism and would have considered herself to have a good level of knowledge about gender stereotyping - but I hadn't realised how it is so deeply ingrained.

"The markings in each of the phrases above are used to tell us that the label departs from some unstated 'norm' or typical situation...For example, the phrase 'working mother' suggests that the norm for 'mother' is someone who stays at home to look after the children and does not have paid employment...The phrase 'single mother' tells us that the 'ideal' is marriage or partnership...So the unmarked term 'mother' can be seen as representing a norm of: staying at home, not being in paid employment, being in a relationship, being the biological parent, and nurturing and caring for the child."

Just imagine how often we might say 'disabled person', 'person of colour', 'trans person' etc., to the point where our perception of a 'person' will automatically be shaped into a very narrow view of a fraction of humanity - white, non-disabled, cisgendered and so on. - that is encoded into our brains as a very pervasive 'norm'.

This is not about how we got here or putting blame at the feet of any one particular group (as tempting as it is to just blame white men for a lot of things), but recognising how the language we use every day is inherently biased, and the impact that it can have. What I thought was particularly powerful was a point made in one unit that the bias in language means that many disadvantaged groups cannot articulate their own experience without using words that are riddled with negative connotations. Therefore the linguistic biases and wider unequal power structures become self-perpetuating.

The only thing that stopped this from being a five star book was related to the same point. While the simplicity is a good thing, it is very much written as an education text book - i.e. there are a lot of activities, which didn't interest me as much, though they're no doubt useful for all of us to do.

This is a short, simple introduction to the politics of language that can act as a springboard on to more detailed work on the subject. I'd really encourage everyone to pick up this or a book like this to at least have some awareness of how we are unintentionally perpetuating negative stereotypes in the words that we use.