Book Review
Language and Gender
By
Penelope Eckert
&
Sally McConnell-Ginet.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003
Submitted by:
Hassan Abdu Rab-EN-Nasir
ID # 100884009
MS-AL
Submitted to:
Ma’am Shagufta Jabeen
Course Title:
Critical Discourse Analysis
Department of English Language & Literature
University of Management & Technology
Lahore
Introduction
Language plays an important role in our day to day interaction with people and is
used as a tool to effectively carry out acts through language’s use. In most of the
situations, the use of language is quite natural especially in informal interaction but
at certain places or in certain situations, the language use is based heavily on the
appropriate choice of vocabulary to effectively carry out the communication without
arising any unpleasant feeling.
Over the years, linguistic choices have evolved and varied a lot depending upon the
context of the use of those choices. The choices have been associated with social
changes. One such change is the women’s stand against the traditional male-
chauvinistic use of language, i.e. women protested against the traditional language
use where masculine words were associated with women at many places e.g. in “all
men are created equal..” the word “men” stands for both men and women which
was unacceptable for the women of the modern period, they wanted to replace
sexism with gender-neutral language and demanded the use of such words which
should either be neutral or separate words be used for both the separate sexes.
Many books have been written on the topic of language and gender which
encompass a variety of issues related to the traditional and modern views of
language use regarding both the genders. One such book is Language and Gender
by Penelope Eckert & Sally McConnell-Ginet. I have reviewed the book to highlight
the issues discussed by the author in this book chapter wise presenting a summary
of the content.
Review
Issues and queries regarding the use of language to socially construct gender and the
influence of one’s social interaction with a particular gender influencing one’s use of
language have been successfully dealt by Eckert and McConnell-Ginet. They took up
the task of showing that language and gender both are socially and contextually used
and produced within boundaries of interaction and well in accordance with the
shared community norms. The book is poised both historically and ideologically as
inferred from the introduction and the writers declare that they support a feminist
view on difference-dominance dichotomy. Until mid 1980’s the debate was strong
after which the researchers argues for a more thorough account of context and a
more social view of language which reflected that language is bound intricately to its
use.
Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the reader to gender as a social and dynamic construct
and to language as a social and evolving practice. It is these two chapters that
provide the basics of both gender and language.
Chapter 3 discusses the importance of access and ratification of talk in order for one
to be heard and taken seriously and reviews how talk is organized through
interruptions, amount of talk, backchanneling, and silence.
Chapter 4 emphasizes that people have intentions and goals in interacting with each
other, which are mediated by practices directly linked to gender identification.
Chapter 5 shows how speakers use linguistic resources to portray their changing
stance or position in interaction. The authors note that speakers position themselves
with respect to the ideas that they are trying to communicate as well as to other
participants as can be seen, for example, through the use of honorifics.
Chapter 6 focuses on the “content of what people communicate as they engage with
one another” and the role of gender in influencing how people discuss and
linguistically express such content.
Chapter 7 discusses how we flexibly use language and gender to categorize which
may reflect both differences and “inequalities.”
Chapters 8 and 9 focus on dialects and how, despite one’s conscious or unconscious
attempts to use linguistic features not part of the backdrop of one’s overall dialect,
one’s language variety still plays a powerful role in understanding who one is and the
places tied to them. Chapter 9 re-emphasizes gender as “achievement” which is
managed in local and often ordinary moments of interaction. The authors note that
each chapter presents the reader with a resource for understanding how gender is
constructed and how gender identities are forged. Chapter 9 highlights how
individuals use these linguistic tools, to portray themselves within these local and
otherwise ordinary interactions.
As can be seen from these chapter summaries, the issues under discussion are all
presented as dynamic and flexible and dependent on their use and negotiation in
various contexts.
Language and gender are presented as practices that cannot be disconnected from
the people who use and interpret them. Language and Gender is written as an
introductory text and achieves the objectives of such a resource; it provides concrete
examples. While the book covers a lot of ground and has many benefits, there are
some shortcomings. For instance, categorizing an individual as male or female in
interaction when it is not evident that the participants themselves are oriented to
these categories has been viewed as problematic in some lines of interaction
research, particularly Conversation Analysis, perhaps the most recognized area
investigating talk-in-interaction. Lastly, the authors note their own limitation: The
book does not provide any detailed discussion of non-verbal discourse, such as texts
or images. They justify this limitation by noting that face-to-face communication is
primary in terms of how we are socialized into language and gender norms. Despite
these shortcomings, the book is certainly a useful introductory resource that fulfils
its purpose and, with supplemental materials, could be a welcome addition to any
course on gender and language.
