ucbesvax.turner@ucbcad.UUCP (07/22/83)
#N:ucbesvax:10300014:000:3790
ucbesvax!turner Jul 12 00:06:00 1983
Language and Woman's Place
Robin Lakoff, Harper & Row, New York 1975 (83 pages)
Robin Lakoff is a professor at U.C. Berkeley in the department
of Linguistics. Her style of research is not "empirical"--she is, in fact,
somewhat disdainful of what she sees as abuses of the scientific method
in social science and psychology. She draws freely from fiction, film,
and even television, when it suits her purposes. In her words,
I have examined my own speech and that of my acquaintances,
and have used my own intuitions . . . . I have also made use of
the media: in some ways, the speech heard, for example, in
commercials or situation comedies . . . mirrors the speech of
the television-watching community: if it did not (not necessarily
as an exact replica, but perhaps as a reflection of how the
audience sees itself or wishes it were) it would not succeed.
Her methodological justifications are more exact than this, but
her main point is clear: any source of data will be biased by the
observer or analyst, in the process of highly motivated scrutiny.
And unavoidably so, when studying human behavior.
The thesis of her essay is, roughly, that women are taught modes
of speaking that either compromise their credibility as full, legitimate
adults, or compromise their socially-designated femininity. It is a
double bind: to be feminine is to be "a lady", and to speak like one,
and to have the speech of men conditioned by the presence of "a lady".
But it is also to refrain from bluntness, categorical reasoning, jibes
and jokes of certain kinds, profanity, loose articulation, etc.,
lest one be seen to be too serious or aggressive. Of course, women
are given their own style of speech, which ("real") men avoid for
fear of sounding effeminate. One of her examples:
neutral women only
------- ----------
great adorable
terrific charming
cool sweet
neat lovely
divine
The word "lady" itself (as opposed to "woman") comes under
some scrutiny. While having a connotation of gentility, "lady" also
implies frivolity, or low station.
The more demeaning the job, the more the person holding
it (if female, of course) is likely to be described as a
\lady/. Thus \cleaning lady/ is at least as common as
\cleaning woman/, \saleslady/ as \saleswoman/. But one
says, normally, \woman doctor/. To say \lady doctor/ is
to be very condescending: it constitutes an insult. For
men, there is no such dichotomy. \Garbageman/ or \sales-
man/ is the only possibility, never \garbage gentleman/.
And of course, since in the professions the male is unmarked,
we naver have \man (male) doctor/. (p. 23)
The list goes on: master vs. mistress, bachelor vs. spinster,
widower vs. widow, all words whose parallelism extends only as far
as the physical. Socially, they involve a world of difference.
There is much more, but I urge you to find this book and read it.
Lakoff regards the he/she controversy as a waste of time, in view of all
the less obvious and more invidious gender distinctions that permeate our
language. As good as she is in dissecting the semantics of individual
words and titles, she is far more subtle in dealing with grammar and
forms of expression. While occasionally pedantic (or at any rate,
excessively dry in her humor), the essay moves briskly, with much for any
sociologist, or sociolinguist, without leaving adrift the more casual
students of language.
Michael Turner
ucbvax!ucbesvax.turner
P.S. Robin Lakoff is also co-author of the forth-coming "The Politics
of Beauty".
P.P.S. Robin Lakoff is not to be confused with the Berkeley
linguistics professor George Lakoff, although she readily
admits to having been confused *by* him, when they were
married. (p. 2)