MARIKINA POLYTECHNIC COLLEGE

Graduate School
2 Chanyungco St. Sta. Elena, Marikina City 1800

ENGLISH 603
INTRO. TO LINGUISTICS, PSYCHOLINGUISTICS & SOCIOLINGUISTICS

FERNANDEZ, Joel T.
Reflection Paper No. 11 March 30, 2019

LANGUAGE AND CULTURE

Language is both an individual possession and a social possession. We would

expect, therefore, that certain individuals would behave linguistically like other individuals:
they might be said to speak the same language or the same dialect or the same variety,
i.e., to employ the same code, and in that respect to be members of the same speech
community. It is instructive to look at some of the ways in which various people in the
world use talk, or sometimes the absence of talk, i.e., silence, to communicate. Talk keeps
communication open among peoples; it offers an emotional release; and it can also be
used to alert individuals that they are stepping out of bounds, so heading off potentially
dangerous conflicts between individuals. Silence, on the other hand, is often
communicative and its appropriate uses must be learned. Among other things it can
communicate respect, comfort, support, disagreement, or uncertainty. In many societies
people do not talk unless they have something important to say.

Hymes (1974) has proposed an ethnographic framework which takes into account
the various factors that are involved in speaking. An ethnography of a communicative,
event is a description of all the factors that are relevant in understanding how that
particular communicative event achieves its objectives. For convenience, Hymes uses
the word SPEAKING as an acronym for the various factors he deems to be relevant.
What Hymes offers us in his SPEAKING formula is a very necessary reminder that talk
is a complex activity, and that any particular bit of talk is actually a piece of ‘skilled work.’
It is skilled in the sense that, if it is to be successful, the speaker must reveal a sensitivity
to and awareness of each of the eight factors. Speakers and listeners must also work to
see that nothing goes wrong. When speaking does go wrong, as it sometimes does, that
going-wrong is often clearly describable in terms of some neglect of one or more of the
factors. Since we acknowledge that there are ‘better’ speakers and ‘poorer’ speakers, we
may also assume that individuals vary in their ability to manage and exploit the total array
of factors. In learning to speak we are also learning to ‘talk,’ in the sense of communicating
in those ways appropriate to the group in which we are doing that learning. These ways
differ from group to group; consequently, as we move from one group to another or from
one language to another, we must learn the new ways if we are to fit into that new group
or to use that new language properly. Communicative competence is therefore a key
component of social competence.

A major topic in sociolinguistics is the connection, if any, between the structures,

vocabularies, and ways of using particular languages and the social roles of the men and
women who speak these languages. Do the men and women who speak a particular
language use it in different ways? Gender is something we cannot avoid; it is part of the
way in which societies are ordered around us, with each society doing that ordering
differently. As Eckert and McConnell-Ginet (2003) say: ‘The force of gender categories in
society makes it impossible for us to move through our lives in a nongendered way and
impossible not to behave in a way that brings out gendered behavior in others.’ Gender
is a key component of identity. In conversations involving both men and women many
researchers agree that men speak more than women do. One also found that when men
talked to men, the content categories of such talk focused on competition and teasing,
sports, aggression, and doing things. On the other hand, when women talked to women,
the equivalent categories were the self, feelings, affiliation with others, home, and family.
Women are also reported to use politer forms and more compliments than men. In doing
so, they are said to be seeking to develop solidarity with others in order to maintain social
relationships. On the other hand, men are likely to use talk to get things done. However,
these are tendencies only; men also try to bond and women also try to move others to
action. Language and gender studies have seen an interesting development in recent
years, known by such terms as queer linguistics and lavender linguistics. These studies
deal with the language of non-mainstream groups such as gays, lesbians, bisexuals, the
transgendered, etc., and focus on ‘sexuality’ rather than sex or gender.

To conclude, men’s and women’s speech differ because boys and girls are brought
up differently and men and women often fill different roles in society. Moreover, most men
and women know this and behave accordingly. If such is the case, we might expect
changes that make a language less sexist to result from child-rearing practices and role
differentiations which are less sexist. Men and women alike would benefit from the greater
freedom of choice that would result. However, it may be utopian to believe that language
use will ever become ‘neutral.’ Humans use everything around them – and language is
just a thing in that sense – to create differences among themselves. Speech may well be
gendered but there actually may be no easy solution to that problem.