LANGUAGE AND GENDER
Language in gender
We have used the word ‘manipulable’ in relation to the acting on language attitudes in order to try to change them and we have suggested that this intervention goes to the heart of the applied linguist’s interest in language and gender. While the linguist is, as we have seen, concerned with the role of gender in language, the ways in which gender (or indeed sex) affects both language structure and language use, the applied linguist’s professional role as interventionist means that he or she is concerned with the language–gender relationship the other way round, with language in gender, paralleling the impact of language on society.
What impact does language have on gender? The most obvious answer is that it promotes and, above all perhaps, enshrines unequal power relations, including of course negative stereotyping of women. It should be pointed out that making such a direct causal link, when all that we can be sure of is that there is a correlation between language and power, is disputed. It is further disputed that changing the language will necessarily change the power imbalance. Language, it may be argued, is merely the messenger not the message. Nevertheless, there is recognition that being politically correct, which is what wishing to change the language of gender has been mocked for being, has the merit of compelling awareness of the power imbalance which the inertia of a fixed power relationship, enshrined in a fossilized terminology, hides from us all. The rationale is similar to that of exploring language attitudes with a view to changing them, a view which takes for granted that attitudes are malleable and can be changed so as to promote good intergroup relations. Similarly, while power in itself is notoriously hard currency, language can be changed through engineering: such change may do no more than create a temporary awareness of the inequalities, but it may possibly do more and help ameliorate them. Whether or not this is true, considerable effort has in recent years been directed at attempting to make the language more equal with the intention of redressing the gender–power relation.
