10 reasons why men and women speak diffrently
Both Males and females start out as a little bundle; both are born with biological differences .men have male particles and women have female particles . as they grow up, they start to develop an other kind of differences . Boys and girls both acquire their mother tongue language the very same way; that is, from the same source which is the society that they are surrounded by; however, males and females tend to speak differently during their lifetime , be the sex difference using different vocabulary , different styles and registers, or any other kind of linguistic differences ..A report from the seventeenth century suggests that although there were quite clear differences ,that no linguist shall ever deny, between men’s and women’s speech , yet only a relatively small number of vocabulary items were involved , there is nothing such as men’s languages and women’s languages ; that is to say ,male and female speakers do not speak different languages; rather, they speak different varieties of the same language. Sometimes the linguistic sex differences are so big and numerous that people might be misled to think that male and female speakers of a speech community speak totally different languages , but this is not quite true .Boys are more likely than girls to use nonstandard local pronunciation ;on the other hand ; women tend to use more prestigious, correct varieties of the standard language ; the sex differentiations in languages differ from one language to another ; some languages differ more than the others in many terms , to name a few , phonetics and phonology . the differences vary they might be quite noticeable to not much or barely noticeable .The pressure on female speakers to Acquire prestige , double standards in our society, and favorable associations of masculinity of the speech of a given regional group , the fear of female speakers of seeming sexually promiscuous , and many others , are all reasons why men and women speak differently. Expecting a better behavior from women than men:
The first reason why male and female speakers of a given speech community speak differently is that many societies seem to expect a better behavior from women than they do from men , some societies more than others depending on the cultural background of the society; nevertheless , they all have higher expectations for women more than man, because of a double standards in our society as Elizabeth Gorden puts it . For instance ,It is okay for a man to come back home after the middle of the night totally wasted , smelly, half naked , and vomit all over the place; however, it is absolutely not okay for a woman to do so, in some cultures this is considered to be shameful act or disgrace . It is the same case when it comes to the language. A survey of New Zealand middle-class speakers shows that their stereotype of a lower-class female speaker includes potential sexual immorality. Because of society's double standard regarding men's and women's sexual behavior, the stereotype affects women more than men, and could be an explanation for middle-class women's use of prestige forms as a way of avoiding association with the lower-class stereotype. Unlike men, women are forced to use more standard forms just because they are women who are under social pressures to meet up given standards or expectations.
Favorable associations and connotations:
One more reason why males and females speak differently is that working-class speech has favorable connotations for male speakers. Working class speech , one example would be the cockney accent, seems to have associations with, masculinity , which may lead men to be more favorably disposed to nonstandard linguistic forms than women ,who avoid using it in other not to appear masculine , since the working-class speech , one example of it would be the cockney accent which is spoken in particular reigns in London it is also spoken in Norwich ; the members of the Norwich society aim to use it because this accent has favorable connotations for them that they are quite keen on obviously . It is associated with toughness and manliness , which are desirable masculine characteristics to the male speakers of the speech community
Taboo:
The linguist Jespersen suggests that the only reason for sex differentiation in languages may be the result of taboo which is those to be avoided entirely , or at least avoided in mixed company or polite company , an example would be swear words , in other words taboo words are all the inappropriate words that are not allowed to be said in formal setting , But some languages took it to the extremity; they went so far as to include some sounds ;for example, the sound /Z/which is a part of a tabooed name , so the women apparently are not allowed to use any word that contain that sound which means that they would have to use another form of the word amanzi which is the word for “water” which is amandabi . Unlike men, there are some taboo words or sounds that women cannot produce just because of their sexual identity. Jespersen was not incorrect, but he was not correct either ! he was not incorrect in the sense that there are some cases where we can say :“this is the result of taboo” , but there are many other non-lexical cases in which it is quite clear that we are not dealing with taboo , since in some languages , some sex differences can be predicted according to a series of quite fairly complicated rules. In English sex differences are generally much smaller , less noticeable ,and more subconscious. These differences represent statistical tendencies and not absolute distinctions. Some words and phrases are sex-bound which suggests that taboo may be involved in someway . Differences within English are phonetic and phonological
Historical reasons:
The classic example of linguistic sex differentiation that every linguist know comes from the West Indies, whose male and female inhabitants spoke different varieties of the same language .the difference were unbelievable , which led people to assume that there are actually different men and women languages . later on , that believe appeared to be nothing more than decorative details . Both sexes spoke only different varieties it seems that the Indians themselves had an explanation for this phenomenon , which has also been quite widely accepted these differences were the result of the mixing of the two language groups , the Carib and Arawark , since the Caribs came to invade the lands where an Arawak tribe used to inhabit , they were killed except for the women whom they married to populate the country .
Men lead the linguistic change followed by women:
In more than one language women’s speech is more conservative than the one of men which is considered to be innovating ; that is to say, linguistic changes were led by men and women followed a long . One evidence to support that is Loss of consonants in men’s speech have been attested in languages from all over the world which indicates that the female variety is older than the male dialect ., while women’s variety does not undergo linguistic changes until later on .
The fear of seeming sexually promiscuous:
Sex-preferred differentiation appears to be remarkably spread across a number of languages and language families. One area where women are forced to use more standard varieties and to use less non-standard varieties is sexual activity. Women may have a tendency to speak in a more prestigious way so as not to be thought sexually provoking which is obviously an adjective that no woman wants to be described by .as a result women try as much as they can to avoid tabooed names and non standard varieties , and even if they use them unconsciously they would deny it .
Covert prestige:
A specific group of speakers (men) shows positive evaluation and orientation towards a certain linguistic variety, usually occurs unconsciously. In other words, one more reason why men and women speak differently is that a man chooses to speak a prestigious variety of a non-standard dialect while women tend to use more prestigious varieties of the standard language .non-standard forms by working-class men.
Overt prestige
One more reason why the speech of women differs from that of man is overt prestige which is acquired by a group of speakers who have command of a standard dialect, or dialects, that is / are spoken to gain social status within the community. As a result male speakers of a given language are under pressure to use less prestigious non-standard variants as a signal of solidarity among the members of the same group of speakers ;moreover , men use these non-standard forms to indicate personal identity; however , in the case of female speakers , it is quite the opposite , there are social pressures on females to acquire prestige , that is to say , women are forced to use more prestigious beautiful , and correct varieties of the standard language while men are forced to use non standard varieties which are usually not considered to be prestigious or even correct .
How much should men say Vs how much should women say:
A typical man , as he speaks to another person , be it a male or a female , would usually mention only the essential details when he refers to an event or a story ;on the other hand , a woman speaks about all the details even the boring nonsense ones as an attempt of her female brain to connect these events and details as she mentions them , and this is what is referred to by gossiping or as the British say having a chin wag ; in other words , the inner workings of the male and female minds are an other reason for linguistic sex differentiation ,consequently men tend to interrupt women once they get the gist , simply because they can live without the boring, unnecessary , nonsense details .
Women’s variety is better than men's
Since male speakers of a given speech community , frequently use non-standard language forms , be it a prestigious dialect (covert prestige ) or a non-prestigious one , while female speakers usually use a more prestigious variety of the standard language of the same speech community , women's speech is evaluated as being purer ,more beautiful , prestigious , and correct than that of man ,in other words better, even from a male stand point . although The higher the social class is the better and more correct and prestigious forms are used , women on average use more correct , prestigious , pure ,and better forms than men do .