Language, Gender and Bias in American Culture
Language, Gender and Bias in American Culture
Through language, bias has proliferated in our culture against both women and men. Language expresses aspects of culture both explicitly and implicitly. Gender expectations, behaviors, and cultural norms, are determined through language. A divide between the sexes has developed which includes language usages, intention, and understandings. This has created obstructions to communication between the genders.
When anthropological linguists look at a language, he/she takes into consideration the "world view" of those languages (Whorf 221). The anthropological linguist will try to understand the language to learn more about the culture of that language. Aspects of that culture can be determined by the definitions of terms and usages of the language. In this sense, language and culture are very closely tied to one another. Language influences and sculpts culture, and this determines how relationships within a society will associate. A very good explanation of how language specifically influences culture was postulated by Edward Sapir who argued that:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.... The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. (Sapir 209)
Sapir states that "language is a guide to social reality" and that it "powerfully conditions all our thinking" (209). The language we speak conditions our social behavior and how we speak that language will affect our view of reality. Benjamin Lee Whorf, who studied under Sapir, continued the ideology through his analysis of linguistic and social structures in daily life (220-221). This is widely known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and is used today in anthropological linguistics.
Through language, bias has proliferated in our culture against both women and men. Language expresses aspects of culture both explicitly and implicitly. Gender expectations, behaviors, and cultural norms, are determined through language. A divide between the sexes has developed which includes language usages, intention, and understandings. This has created obstructions to communication between the genders.
When anthropological linguists look at a language, he/she takes into consideration the "world view" of those languages (Whorf 221). The anthropological linguist will try to understand the language to learn more about the culture of that language. Aspects of that culture can be determined by the definitions of terms and usages of the language. In this sense, language and culture are very closely tied to one another. Language influences and sculpts culture, and this determines how relationships within a society will associate. A very good explanation of how language specifically influences culture was postulated by Edward Sapir who argued that:
Human beings do not live in the objective world alone, nor alone in the world of social activity as ordinarily understood, but are very much at the mercy of the particular language which has become the medium of expression for their society.... The fact of the matter is that the "real world" is to a large extent unconsciously built up on the language habits of the group. (Sapir 209)
Sapir states that "language is a guide to social reality" and that it "powerfully conditions all our thinking" (209). The language we speak conditions our social behavior and how we speak that language will affect our view of reality. Benjamin Lee Whorf, who studied under Sapir, continued the ideology through his analysis of linguistic and social structures in daily life (220-221). This is widely known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis and is used today in anthropological linguistics.
Cited: August, Eugene R. "Real Men Don 't: Anti-Male Bias in English." A Meeting of the Minds. Patsy Callahan and Ann Dobyns. New York: Pearson/Longman, 2004. 475-485. Lakoff, Robin Tolmach. Language and Woman 's Place. New York: Oxford University Press, 2004. Salzmann, Zdenek. Language, Culture, and Society 3rd ed. Boulder: Westview Press, 2004. Sapir, Edward. Language: An Introduction to the Study of Speech. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Company, 1939. Tannen, Deborah. "Can 't We Talk?" A Meeting of the Minds. 466-469. Tannen, Deborah. Gender and Discourse. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994. Tannen, Deborah. You Just Don 't Understand. New York: William Morrow, 1990. Turner, Robin. " 'Male Logic ' and ‘Women 's Intuition '." A Meeting of the Minds. 469-475. Whorf, Benjamin Lee. Language Thought & Reality. Cambridge: The M.I.T. Press, 1956.