Mars VS. Venus - Are women biased against in the English language?

I take English Language as an A-level subject, which means that I am often required to tackle the big questions in linguistics. The following essay is my first to gain full marks, and the topic was this - Evaluate whether or not there is a bias against women in the English Language.

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As identified by several female linguists of the 1970s-1980s, there is a perceivable difference in the way language is used by men and women, though it is often argued that this difference has decreased in size and significance. The English language – indeed, language itself – is a social construct, and thus the idea that this difference is innate is a false assumption. Rather, it is reflective of the historic power imbalance between the sexes – and the extent and nature of the “bias” against women has been altered through the shifting of this imbalance. Many of the politeness features outlined by theorist Robin Lakoff – apologetic requests, for instance – no longer broadly apply to the speech patterns of all women, though they remain useful tools with which to identify speakers who lack power.

Lakoff termed her research the Deficit Model, under which women use “weaker” language. Aligning her study with Goffman’s theory of politeness, she suggested that women tend to use off-record or negative politeness features, intended to minimise imposition. One such politeness feature is an indirect request, where a female speaker relies on pragmatic assumptions for the true meaning of her utterance to be received. For example, she may say, “we’re going to be late” as opposed to “hurry up”, removing the imperative command and thus inconveniencing the recipient less. Given that these features were found far more commonly in women’s speech in Lakoff’s research, one could say that the way women use the English language puts them at a disadvantage; women are perhaps less likely to have their requests fulfilled because they lack clarity.

However, this is not universally acknowledged as a bias against women; the work of Deborah Tannen disputes Lakoff’s claim that women’s language is innately weaker, instead arguing that the difference between men and women’s speech does not make them unequal. Aptly named the Difference Model, Tannen identified indirect requests as “orders vs. proposals”, approaching the phenomenon with balanced research into both male and female language. Though the difference model advocates a “separate but equal” approach, the suggestion that women are less likely to communicate their desires directly is identical to Lakoff’s, and as such may still suggest a bias towards male speech. Despite this, both theorists have been subject to criticism by Deborah Cameron for their inadequate research methods, perhaps rendering their studies inaccurate and outdated (since they were carried out in the late 20th century). It may well be that the supposed differences in male and female speech have become less notable; recent strides in gender equality are likely to have lessened this gap.

Despite the reduction in difference between how men and women use language, the lexicon - or vocabulary - of the English language still exhibits bias against women. The suggestion that men are the default gender is a sentiment expressed by feminizing suffixes, in which words are lengthened with a suffix to denote a female equivalent of the original word. For example, we have “steward” and “stewardess”, the latter being added to the English language much later than “steward”. This creates the impression that women are an afterthought, or perhaps an extension of men, as opposed to a class of people in their own right. The reason for this is perhaps not malicious – many occupations with feminine variants were initially dominated by men, and as such the assumption was that a person with the title “steward” was male, despite the word being gender neutral at the time (prior to the advent of “stewardess”). However, perhaps in an attempt to reduce this bias, some theorists have proposed gender neutral neologisms in certain fields. For example, to replace “fireman” and “firewoman”, we now have the term “firefighter”. Though this move has perhaps represented men and women more equally, it has met some opposition; in some circumstances it has been judged to be a tool of political correctness and may be “going too far”. As well as this, neologisms are not adopted overnight; language change can take decades to be fully enacted, and thus the complete phasing out of gendered occupations may take time. As such, it could be said that a bias against women in the English language still exists.

Additionally, the semantic difference between “steward” and “stewardess” is notable: a steward is a leader or captain, whereas a stewardess is more associated with airline hostesses and perceivably “inferior” jobs. This is an example of lexical asymmetry, wherein two words that should have the same meaning bear different connotations. A particularly glaring example of this is in the case of expletives, where the slang terms “pussy” and “dick” should be relatively equivalent in meaning, yet bear different implicit meanings. “Pussy” is often used to refer to someone expressing weakness, intended to emasculate those it is used against (especially men). “Dick” is instead an offensive term towards someone being mildly irritating. This would suggest that cisgender women and their bodies are innately associated with weakness, whereas the same connotations are not ascribed to cisgender male anatomy. Indeed, there are many insults in the English language that pertain to female anatomy, perhaps suggesting that women’s bodies are an object of mockery. By the same token, it may also imply that female anatomy is inappropriate to speak about; by speaking about female anatomy in derogatory terms, the female body is implied to be an inappropriate and/or disgusting thing to discuss. There are also many terms that refer to promiscuity that express lexical asymmetry; the terms “stud” and “slut” share the same literal meaning, but the latter has far more negative connotations. However, language change may alter these connotations; the advent of the Slutwalk movement, which supports the right of women to be sexually active without shame, seeks to reclaim the word “slut” and remove its power as an insult. This may offset the historic bias against women in the field of expletives, though it is only one word – for the bias against women to be completely removed, extensive language change must take place.

It is evident that in recent history, the English language has semantic and lexical biases against women, through the way women supposedly use language to the lexicon of the language itself. Though gender equality has led to movements such as the Slutwalk attempting to correct this, language change is an extensive process, and thus the effects of biases such as feminising suffixes and lexical asymmetry will likely still be felt in the near future.