I was woken up by a phone call. It's the Kam. Good to hear you voice. Finally you got your butt back here. We hope it's a permanent move.

Aaahh... after my usual cuppa, I went to complete two tasks. Dumping my clothes into the washer and clean the frickin' car. Yesh... there is nothing like doing chores while soaking under the sun. Now I don't feel like a couch potato. You feel more productive holding a sponge for once, rather than a remote control.

Heard an interesting lecture online entitled Gender, Participation and Silence in the Language Classroom: Sh-Shushing the Girls by Allyson Jule. Very intriging. No, she don't hate men. Her research is rooted in the intersection between feminist scholarship and Christianity. The connection between social science and theology. She is not a feminist in a sense to gain power or position, rather as a linguist studying the impact of social settings on the role of gender, specifically on how men and women differ in their speech and the kinds of words they use. Sex and gender, she says, is defined separately. Sex is more of a physiological description. Gender is something that you wear. A mask that you put on.

The universal claims from this linguistic field of study is this: Those born female tend to speak using certain strategies largely for the purposes of rapport while those born male tend to use certain speech strategies largely for the purposes of report. Men speak in ways that are esteemed in any culture, and women's way of speaking connect them to the secondary position. Both sexes, male and female collude in securing these positions.

There are some features in women's way of speaking suggested by Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman's Place. See if you agree with them. Some are hilariously true, in my opinion.

1. Women use back channel supports in conversation and show eagerness to respond.
2. Women have more words that relate to their world, like sewing.
3. Women use empty adjectives like "really" and "very".
4. Women use rising intonation in declarative statements.
5. Women use more hedges, like kind of, maybe, i guess.
6. Women use the intensifer "So" more in conversation and they speak in italics.
7. Women use hyper-correct grammer and pronunciation; they articulate more clearly.
8. Women use super-polite forms and are the repositories of tact.
9. Women do not tell jokes, nor do they understand them.
10. Women use direct quotes when describing speech of other people. ie she said "Yes, he can come." instead of she said that he can come.
11. Women use more tag questions. eg You love me.... don't you?

Her conclusion lies somewhere to the notion that women lack confidence and this is presented in their weak style of speech and that they have learned their helplessness by such speech strategies. Many scholars criticised her research for being largely intuitive, that is she had no data, which I think it's quite funny.

Today, most scholars would agree that the way women speak, that is, using powerless words, is due to social construction. It's not an innate feature found in a DNA of being a woman but is formed by certain circumstances and settings.

Perhaps the one thing from women's speech pattern that often left me befuddled is the strategy of silence. In a positive sense, it leaves space for listening and that's probably why they empathise better with people. On the other hand, we men are largely bewildered due to our limited perception and ignorance especially when posing to our mates the question, "What's wrong?". To which they often reply "Nothing." And leaves it at that. And as sophia posted, "Nothing" usually means there's something. That's when we men should start getting worried.

Now that I know a bit more about feminist linguistic, I can learn to appreciate women better not for their limitations due to cultural constructs but for who they are, in the eyes of the Creator. And may I use language not to tear down, but to build up; to encourage and not to demean.

G

The limits of one's language is the limit's of one's world.