Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

Jennifer Coates is Professor Emeritus of English Language and Linguistics at Roehampton University London. She is author of Women Talk (Wiley-Blackwell, 1996), Men Talk: Stories in the Making of Masculinities (Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), Women, Men and Language (3^rd edition, 2004), and The Sociolinguistics of Narrative (edited with Joanna Thornborrow, 2005). She was made a Fellow of the English Association in 2002.

Pia Pichler is Senior Lecturer in Linguistics at Goldsmiths, University of London. She is co-editor of Gender and Spoken Interaction (with Eva Eppler, 2009), and author of Talking Young Femininities (2009).

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The new edition of Language and Gender: A Reader responds to the wealth of research that has shaped the field since the book’s initial publication in 1998. Coates and Pichler combine new research articles with foundational works, and they accordingly draw on research from all over the world including Brazil, China, and Japan as well as North America and Europe. The Reader discusses a wide range of topics including single and mixed-sex talk; language, gender and power; gendered talk in the public domain; and language, gender and sexuality.

The volume is divided into ten sections exploring gender differences in pronunciation and grammar; in conversational practice; power and dominance in mixed talk; same-sex talk; talk in the public domain; and debates on gender and power and on difference or dominance. There are two new sections, on language, gender, and sexuality; and on debates around the relevance of gender in spoken interaction. The Reader concludes by discussing new directions in language and gender research, including the concept of the Community of Practice, the significance of gender and language ideologies, and the influence of social constructionism on the field. The editors have kept the strongest features of the previous edition, while adding in twenty-three new and important pieces.

Coates and Pichler have assembled an invaluable resource that engages the reader with the research and asks what is next for this vibrant and wide-ranging field. Introducing students to key theoretical debates and demonstrating the variety of methodologies that can be applied to the study of language and gender, this unique collection is a vital resource for anyone exploring the issues of women’s and men’s talk.

Aus dem Klappentext

The new edition of Language and Gender: A Reader responds to the wealth of research that has shaped the field since the book’s initial publication in 1998. Coates and Pichler combine new research articles with foundational works, and they accordingly draw on research from all over the world including Brazil, China, and Japan as well as North America and Europe. The Reader discusses a wide range of topics including single and mixed-sex talk; language, gender and power; gendered talk in the public domain; and language, gender and sexuality.  

The volume is divided into ten sections exploring gender differences in pronunciation and grammar;  in conversational practice; power and dominance in mixed talk; same-sex talk; talk in the public domain; and debates on gender and power and on difference or dominance. There are two new sections, on language, gender, and sexuality; and on debates around the relevance of gender in spoken interaction. The Reader concludes by discussing new directions in language and gender research, including the concept of the Community of Practice, the significance of gender and language ideologies, and the influence of social constructionism on the field. The editors have kept the strongest features of the previous edition, while adding in twenty-three new and important pieces.

Coates and Pichler have assembled an invaluable resource that engages the reader with the research and asks what is next for this vibrant and wide-ranging field. Introducing students to key theoretical debates and demonstrating the variety of methodologies that can be applied to the study of language and gender, this unique collection is a vital resource for anyone exploring the issues of women’s and men’s talk.

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Language and Gender

John Wiley & Sons

Chapter One

John Bradley

Source: Aboriginal Linguistics 1, 126–34 (1988). John Bradley 1988. Reprinted with kind permission of the author.

This paper describes briefly the apparently unique system within the Yanyuwa language of having separate dialects for male and female speakers. I will highlight some of the social and ethnographic features of language as it is used in day-to-day speech and in such specific examples as song and ritual. The system is pervasive and distinctly marks the way in which men and women must speak. As a result the roles of men and women in Yanyuwa society are not only contrasted by their social roles, such as ritual life, hunting and nurturing, such as can be found in other Aboriginal communities, but also explicitly by the use of different dialects by male and female speakers. The sex of the hearer has no relevance to the way the language is spoken: men speak their dialect to women and women speak their dialect to men.

The Yanyuwa people today are centred around the township of Borroloola some 970 kilometres south-east of Darwin. Traditionally the Yanyuwa people occupied the Sir Edward Pellew Group of Islands and the lower reaches of the McArthur River delta system and the Wearyan River. Today Yanyuwa speakers number approximately 90 to 150, ranging in age from the late twenties upwards. The younger generation have grown up speaking English with some influence from Kriol, though many have obtained a passive knowledge of Yanyuwa. The reasons for the decline in the language are many, varied and complex and have been described by Jean Kirton (1987). She has been working with the Yanyuwa since 1963 and has been in a position to document the language in considerable detail (see bibliography).

There have been a number of languages recorded throughout the world that have some sex differences. Edward Sapir (1923: 26385) documented the now extinct Indian Yahi language, a dialect of the Yanna group in Northern California. Sapir noted dialect differences relating to sex and found that in Yana the male form was longer than the female form and included a final syllable as the root; dialectal differences occurred more in complete words than in suffixed elements. There was also a further non-structural distinction in pronunciation whereby men when talking to men spoken fully and deliberately and when speaking with a woman preferred a 'clipped' style of speaking. Three examples of the Yana speech are given below.

male female

'grizzly bear' t'en'na t'et 'see me' diwai-dja diwa-tch 'Yana' Yana Yah

Sapir concludes that there are or have been few if any languages in the world in which the split in a dialect has been so pervasive or so thorough: The sex-based dialect differences in Yanyuwa are at least as far-reaching. The following text illustrates the extent of divergence between the two dialects (see Kirton 1988 for a full discussion of the grammatical differences). Note that the same word stems are used in both dialects, but it is the class-marking prefixes on the noun classes, verbs and pronouns which are affected. (NB Yanyuwa has seven classes of common nouns: male (M); female (F); masculine (MSC); feminine (FEM); food (non-meat) (FD); arboreal (ARB); and abstract (ABS); and four cases: nominative (NOM); dative (DAT); ergative-allative (ERG/ALL) marking transitive subject and 'to' a person or location; and ablative (AB).)

Women's Dialect

Nya-ja nya-wukuthu nya-rduwarra niya-wini nya-Wungkurli kiwa-wingka This-M M-short M-initiated man his-name M-personal name he-go wayka-liya ji-wamarra-lu niwa-yirdi na-ridiridi ji-walya-wu down-wards MSC-sea-ALL he-bring ARB-harpoon MSC-dugong/turtle-DAT

Men's Dialect

Jinangu φ-wukuthu φ-rduwarra na-wini φ-Wungkurli ka-wingka wayka-liya This short initiated man his-name personal name he-go down-wards ki-wamarra-lu na-yirdi na-ridiridi ki-walya-wu MSC-sea-ALL he-bring ARB-harpoon MSC-dugong/turtle-DAT

'The short initiated man whose name is Wungkurli, went down to the sea, taking a harpoon with him for dugong or sea turtle.'

The reason behind this dialect distinction is today unknown and the reason why a male and female dialect arose can only be left to the realms of speculation. The Yanyuwa themselves give no definitive answer as to why there are two dialects, and there is no mythological account for the distinction. In their mythology the female Creator Beings speak the women's dialect and the male Creator Beings speak the men's dialect. The Yanyuwa give no special terms for the two dialects and refer to them simply as liyi-wulu-wu 'for the men' and liyi-nhanawaya-wu 'for the women'. The most common statement given by the Yanyuwa people in relation to their language is as follows:

'Men speak one way, women speak another, that's just the way it is!' (Annie Karrakayn, 1986)

When I first asked why men and women had different dialects, people deferred to the knowledge of the elders who also readily admitted they did not really know, and thought that the question was a little peculiar. As one of the older Yanyuwa men put it:

'I am ignorant why there are languages for the men and women, maybe the Dreamings made it that way. I don't know, the old people spoke that way and we follow them. What about him, that "whitefella boss man" (scientist), he might know you should go and ask him.' (Old Tim Rakuwurlma, 1985)

Other people who profess a belief in Christianity believe that their language was given to them by God because that is the way He wanted the Yanyuwa people to speak. Only a few individuals offered opinions which were different from that of the general community.

'I don't really know, but I was thinking that men and women have to respect each other, so we talk different ways and so we show respect for each other, just like ceremony; you know men have their ceremony and their language well same way women have their own ceremony and their own language.' (Mussolini Harvey, 1986)

Two women, on hearing of Mussolini Harvey's comment, said they would do more thinking on the question and eventually came up with the following statement.

'Look at you, you're different you don't have na-wunhan [breasts] and you are a man, well same way you can't have woman's parts [vagina] so you see we're different, different body, different job, different language, that's why I can't talk like a man and you can't talk like us ladies.' (Amy Friday with Bella Charlie, 1986)

It is obvious then that some Yanyuwa people see the system of two dialects as a natural off-shoot of differing sex roles within their community, in terms of such matters as ritual divisions of labour and other more daily activities such as child nurturing, hunting, social and group dynamics.

Unfortunately the younger generation of Yanyuwa people no longer speak Yanyuwa, so it is very difficult to discuss the way in which the Yanyuwa language was acquired by children. However, conversations with the older Yanyuwa people have enabled at least a partial, albeit fragmentary, reconstruction....