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И. Г. Петровского Кафедра английского языка учебно-методическое пособие

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5. Vocabulary and the depiction of gender
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5. Vocabulary and the depiction of gender


We can see something of the interested nature of representation by looking at the distribution of English vocabulary items around the notions of "woman" and "man", "female" and "male". In a study, based primarily on American English, it was found, for example, that there were more words for men than there were for women. Despite this kind of imbalance, however, there were many more words for a woman in her sexual aspect than there were for a sexually active man. Thus, for women there are in excess of 200 expressions such as "pint", "Judy", "tart", "skirt", "piece", "bitch", " tight-bitch", "slag", "scrubber", "piece-of-ass", "cunt", "bird", "broad", "lay", "pick-up", "prick-teaser" and so on. Many of the terms sound pejorative. An equivalent list for men is much more difficult to compile but would include less than fifty items such as "stud", "dirty-old-man", "randy-old-goat", "philanderer", "Casanova", "trick", "lecher", and so on. Not only are there fewer of them in total but proportionally less of them are explicitly pejorative. Some, indeed, have the option of actually being honorific.

Why should "woman-as-sexual-being" require such a proliferation of lexical items? Such terms can hardly be said to be representing reality in disinterested ways. The items themselves, of course, give same kind of clue to their origins. They mostly have resonances of certain all-male subcultures: the adolescent male peer croup, the locker room and the building site subculture. As such they are mare likely to be used by men of women than women of men. Also, there is an overriding tendency in items of this type towards metonymic representation, where a part is made to stand for the whole: it can be an anatomic element ("ass", "cunt"); or an element of dress (""skirt"); it can be an element of the act itself ("lay", "screw"); or a preliminary to it ("pick-up"). The cumulative effect of these metonyms is to objectify and depersonalize in a reductive fashion.

Obviously, not all men, necessarily use such items. And those that do so will probably use them only in certain restricted context. And even than, the items will not always and inevitably be used in a reductive and objectifying fashion. But the presence in the language of such a skewed distribution of lexical items generates and confirms a pressure in favour of modes of representation that ultimately help to produce women as a commodity for consumption (cf. "tart").

A similar pattern of representation seems to be in play around paired items in the language, where by derivation the pairs were once roughly equivalent in meaning except for a difference in gender. Such pairs include the following:

Bachelor Spinster

Courtier Courtesan

King Queen

Lord Lady

Master Mistress

Sir Madam

Thus, one meaning for "king" and "queen" is monarch or sovereign, male and female respectively. But, whereas the farmer has retained, exclusively its honorific orientation towards "pre-eminent" the latter item is now available for use in designating "a male homosexual who dresses and acts effeminately", in which sense it is quite likely to be used derogatorily. Similarly, "master" and "mistress" could once be used equivalently to refer to the male and female heads of a household. More, recently, however, mistress came to be used almost exclusively to designate "kept woman" or "illicit lover". In like manner "courtesan" now refers exclusively to "high class prostitute"; and "madam" is just as likely to refer to "woman brothel keeper", unless it is being used of a child ("she's a right little madam").

It is quite normal, of course, for words to change their meaning. Nor is it at all unusual for some words in some situation to be used for pejorative purposes. It is striking, however, that words associated with women should be consistently downgraded in this way. Such a tendency lends support to the claim that English, at least, is systematically skewed to represent women in a subordinate’s position.


Aids to study the text:
  1. What do we mean by “the ideational possibilities of language”?
  2. In what terms can we understand the way in which language represents the world to us?
  3. What’s the essence of the “Universalist” position to judge the connection of the world and language?
  4. What point of view does the “Relativist” position express on the issue in question?
  5. Illustrate the difficulties in the Relativist position.
  6. How does the Relativist position describe the “interested” character of linguistic representation?
  7. What vocabulary and grammatical differences between languages can be fairly pointed out?



Chapter 6. Pragmatics and its relationship with other sciences

When we speak or write we want to be understood and respected. We want to convey our meaning and we want to do it in a way that will command admiration, To accomplish these ends we must know the meanings of words, their connotations, implications, and we must know how to combine words effectively into sentences.

What does one want to know about a word? First of all, what it means; also how it is spelled, how it is pronounced, and what its origin is. But a dictionary can help us to understand the meaning of a word. But the only way to understand a word fully is to see it in use in as many contexts as possible. This means that anyone who wants to improve his vocabulary must read a great deal and must make sure that he understands what he reads. But there is no short cut to this kind of knowledge.

The function of grammars and dictionaries is to tell the truth about language. Not what somebody thinks ought to be the truth or wants to sell somebody else as being the "best" language, but what native speakers actually do when they talk and write.

Good usage is matter of combining-the rules of grammar and acceptable meanings of words with an appreciation of our relationship with the addressee None of us can afford to be complacent about our command of English. It is in ordinary talk to ordinary people on ordinary matters that we are most at home, linguistically and otherwise.

Problems arise as soon as the context as somewhat out of the ordinary. We suddenly need to address a cousin about the death of her husband. This is when we may -or should- pause and wonder about idiom, good usage, and the most appropriate way of putting things. There is the risk of sounding too colloquial, too flippant. There is the converse risk of seeming ponderous, distant, pompous, unnatural. Here we should deal with pragmatics.

Pragmatics is defined by modern dictionaries as the study of the use of language in communication, particularly the relationships between sentences and the contexts and situations in which they are used. Pragmatics includes the study of:
  1. how the interpretation and use of utterances depends on knowledge of the
    real world;
  2. how speakers use and understand speech acts;
  3. how the structure of sentences is influenced by the relationship between
    the speaker and the hearer.

Pragmatics is sometimes contrasted with semantics which deals with meaning without reference to the users and communicative functions of sentences.