Language & Communika~ion. Vol. 8, No. 2, pp. 155-158. 1988 Printed in Great Britain.

0271--5309/88 S3.00+ .OO Pcrgamon Press plc

DO MEN AND WOMEN TALK DIFFERENTLY?

SARA MILLS

Jennifer Coates, Women, Men and Language, Studies in Language and Linguistics Series, Longman, Harlow, 1986, 178~~.

Jennifer Coates’ book Women, Men and Language is a much needed and long-awaited survey of the research which has been undertaken on the question of gender and language. Since much research in this area is published in article form, a book such as this which is up-to-date and interdisciplinary is extremely welcome. Her aim in this book is to answer the question: ‘Do women and men talk differently?’ (p. 3) and if so, how and why they do so. Researchers from many different fields have attempted to show that there is such a thing as a ‘women’s language’, that women are naturally conservative in their language use, or that they are naturally innovative. She examines the claims made by various researchers, and subjects them to rigorous scrutiny, and she shows that certain of their claims belong to the realms of ‘folklinguistics’. However, she does not suggest that all early work belongs in this unscientific realm, for some of this research has important implications for future work in this field. Coates examines a wide variety of the most important research under headings such as the acquisition of sex-differentiated language, the social consequences of linguistic sex difference and the role of sex difference in linguistic change. In this way, the book lends itself to use as a coursebook for inter-disciplinary courses on language and gender. It is also a very useful introduction to the complex and sometimes confusing area of gender and language studies.

After the publication of Deborah Cameron’s book, Feminism and Linguistic Theory in 1985, many feminists felt that little could be published on gender and language, since it seemed that much of the research, by feminists and non-feminists alike, was imbricated with patriarchal assumptions. However, Jennifer Coates assures the reader that although a healthy criticism has to be maintained for some of the research done on language and gender, there is work being undertaken, for example by Jenny Cheshire and Lesley Milroy, which does not offer dubious explanations for the language differences which are discovered. Although Deborah Cameron and Jennifer Coates have different perspectives on language and gender, there are points at which one can be read in conjunction with the other, and can act as a critique as well as a complement to the other; it is for this reason that I read Women, Men and Language through Feminism and Linguistic Theory to demonstrate exactly where Coates has broken new ground.

Coates criticises some of the early research in the field of language and gender, and she gives some fascinating examples from historical texts. She also demonstrates the problems of research by anthropologists and dialectologists which claimed that women’s language is either conservative or innovative. Simply juxtaposing these two sets of claims is enough

Correspondence relating to this paper should be addressed to MS S. Miis. Dept. of English Studies, University of Strathclyde. Livingstone Tower, 26 Richmond St., Glasgow, Gl 1XH.

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to destabilise their supposed objectivity. But her chapters on the social networks theory developed by Lesley Milroy, and on Jenny Cheshire’s work with adolescents, are perhaps the most important parts of this book; she shows that work in this area can be based on empirical field-work, and yet not fall into the false assumptions so ably documented by Cameron. She uses Cheshire’s and Milroy’s work to challenge the assumptions made by sociolinguists, such as Trudgill and Labov, that women’s speech aims at standard English, for she shows that it is rather the fact that ‘the less tight-knit networks which women belong to are less efficient at enforcing vernacular norms’ (p. 91). I found this explanation much more satisfying than the explanation usually offered, that women in the lower middle class are aspiring to be upwardly mobile. It was also heartening to see a report of research where patterns in gendered language use were changing, thus challenging the notion that all women in every period choose particular language forms. Coates points to Milroy’s research in Belfast, where employment patterns have changed, for instance in areas of high male unemployment; this social change means that women’s networks change, and there is thus a corresponding change in their language use. This is a useful step forward and a move away from models of women’s speech which are ahistorical and unchanging.

Her explanation of the long-debated issue of women’s language and language change is particularly insightful, since she shows that both male and female speakers can be innovative, but that the salient difference is that between conscious and unconscious change. Women engage in linguistic change which tends towards the standard and is therefore conscious, whereas male change goes largely unnoticed because it is towards the vernacular. She dismisses the notion that it is women’s role as mother which leads to language change, since peer group pressure is more important than parental pressure in this respect.

Cameron’s Feminism and Linguistic Theory acted as a ground-clearing device, to question the assumptions of the many articles and books, published mainly in the 1960s and 197Os, which aimed to prove that women’s language was different, and that therefore women were essentially and always different to men. Coates has taken that critical work to heart, and she devotes a chapter of her book to ‘folklinguistics’: those assumptions which are made about language and gender which are not based on empirical evidence, but on prejudice or stereotype. There are many similarities between the two books, in that both believe in the notion of women’s language being a source of strength, rather than simply seeing it as a form of disadvantage. Similarly, they are concerned with the problem of relating non-linguistic elements to formal linguistic elements on a one-to-one basis. Both of them are prepared to discuss work which has been done outside their immediate area of interest: sociolinguistics. Cameron has drawn on the increasing work on language done by theorists within the field of critical theory and psychoanalysis, and Coates draws on research in the field of anthropology, social science and sociolinguistics.

However, there are significant differences; because of Cameron’s interest in literary theory, she tends towards a concern with language’s role in constituting subjectivity; she says:

The young man learning the use of sexual insults like ‘slag’ or ‘scrubber’ is simultaneously acquiring the norms of male heterosexuality. Discourse in other words, is the prime location where structures reproduce subjects and subjects reproduce structures ut one cmd the sume rime (Cameron, 1986, p. 85).

However, she adds ‘If language oppresses us in and of itself, there is no-one to fight and no escape from its tyranny’ (1986, p. 82). Coates chooses a less deterministic language model, but seems to waver in whether she thinks language is a ‘reflection’ of reality or

DO MEN AND WOMEN TALK DIFFERESTLY? IS?

a ‘reinforcer’ of the status quo. At the beginning of the book she states quite clearly that language ‘reflects’ social conditions, and she goes on to say:

Girls do not fail to go on to university or take up brilliant careers beck of their language; they fail to do so because society dictates different (subordinate) roles for them (p. 159).

But, towards the end of the book, the determining nature of language is introduced, and the strong statements of language as a ‘reflection’ are modified, for example:

This is not to deny that lauguage may play a secondary role in di~vantasins girls. Lins&tic variation is, after all, a direct reflection of sociat variation @. 160).

Yet, if language simply reflects social variation, one might ask how it can play a role in the maintenance of the status quo.

Just as in Cameron’s book, the author aims to avoid ‘steak mysti~~~on’ (Cameron, 1985, p. vii). It was quite refreshing to read the following statement in the introduction: ‘ . . . remember that it is not only you, the reader, who have preconceptions and prejudi~s-I, the writer have them too’ (p. 13). The style of Coates’ text is engaging, and the book is very clearly and fluently written throughout, without attempting to simplify the complexities of this area of study. Although Coates does not foreground this attempt to write in a clear, simple way, as Cameron does, she has obviously tried to make her text readable, by breaking up passages with examples, case-studies, graphs, and by summarising all of the findings in a comprehensible way at the end of each chapter. Where Cameron uses the ‘she’ pronoun throughout as a generic pronoun, it was only on the second reading of Women, A4erz andLanguage that I real&d that Coates had used the som~ne/they form, so unobtrusive is her use of non-sexist forms. The clarity and well-organised nature of the book means that the book will appeal both to readers who are new to the field of language and gender studies, and to those who tkish to keep up to date with what is happening in this subject in different fields.

Although, on the whole, Women, Men and Language is a thoroughly well-rese~ch~ and well-written book, there were certain areas where I encountered problems. For example, despite the attempt in her report on Milroy’s work to show that language patterns change because of social changes, there are occasions when all women are treated as if the same. This runs the risk, as Cameron puts it, of reifying ‘domination by presenting as eternal and natural what is in fact historical and transitory’ (1986, p. 83). This problem occurs when she discusses Heuri Tajfel’s work on d~adv~taged groups, and applies his framework to describe the low self-esteem of women. This can only be done if one assumes that women are a homogeneous group, without difference of class or race. Although it is clear that many women have a poor self-image, it is perhaps better to make explicit which women are being considered, so that it does not seem as if this is the case for women as a biological group. Similarly, her de~ription of social strati~cation theory does not make an obvious criticism-and this is one that Cameron makes-that women are placed in the same class as their husbands regardless of their class position determined by their own income, their fusion, or their parents’ class position (C~eron, 1985, p. 51). Thus, the results obtained from stratification surveys, purporting to give information about the language use of women from different classes, could have been subjected to a more thorough criticism.

Cameron shows that a central problem in research into gender and language difference is the explanation of results, and as I have shown above, Coates’ explanations of difference are generally extremely insightful. However there were several occasions when it seemed that her explanations relied on stereotypes of women as a group. For example, when she

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tries to answer the question of why women should ask more questions than men, she suggests:

Perhaps women feel less inhibited about asking for information, since this does not conflict with the sex- role prescribed by society (p. 106).

But this statement assumes that all women accept this role, and that there is one role for women without distinction of class or race. On occasions, her argument is complicated by her use of literary texts as illustration, for example, she uses part of the dialogue in Pinter’s Birthday Party (p. 106). Although this literary material is often used in a very interesting way, it is difficult to attempt to prove a point about gender difference in spoken language through the analysis of a representation of that language, which might itself be drawing on stereotypical models of women’s speech.

On another occasion she explains the fluency of girls by stating that: Perhaps the fluency and loquacity of little girls in test situations is partly the result of the socialisation of little girls into pleasing others-in this case, the girls are pleasing the interviewer (p. 129).

Again, I found myself asking why fluency was being explained as a result of a subservient position (pleasing someone) rather than as a dominant position (assertiveness) as it would be if boys were found to be more fluent.

This problem of lack of specificity and drawing on stereotype occurred again with the description of women’s co-operative speech style. She notes that:

.when groups of women meet-as a committee or an organising body-it is beginning to be common kither for there to be no chair or for the chair to rotate randomly from one session to another @. 11).

However, it is important to remember that this style is not ‘natural’ to women and has developed mainly through the interventions of consciousness raising groups. Cameron notes that:

. . . though the history and anecdote of early second-wave feminism suggests a difficult and painful process of working out a suitable style, under considerable pressure from women who had not been trained to speak in public, this process has already been obliterated and the style has become naturalised (Cameron, 1985, p. 43).

However, despite these shortcomings, Women, Men and Language is an extremely useful, thought-provoking book, which will, I am sure,. open up new areas of research for many readers.

REFERENCES

CAMERON, D. (1985) Feminism and Linguistic Theory. Macmillan, London.

CAMERON, D. (1986) What is the nature of women’s oppression in language. In Sexual Difference Conference Proceedings, pp. 79-87. Oxford Literary Review, Southampton.