Gender
"The nature of the relationship between gender and speech is complex, and the way gender interacts with a range of other factors needs careful examination in each speech community."
-- Holmes
Women and men do not speak in exactly the same way as each other in any community. Gender differences in language are often just one aspect of more pervasive linguistic differences in the society reflecting social status or power differences. It has been claimed that women are more linguistically polite than men and that women and men emphasize different speech functions.
One of the most obvious speech differences between men and women is in the pitch of their voices. Along with the obvious physical differences, social and cultural factors contribute to pitch differences.
There are gender-exclusive and gender-preferential features. Gender-exclusive speech forms reflect gender-exclusive social roles.
Gender and Social Class
The linguistic features which differ in the speech of women and men in Western communities are usually features which also distinguish the speech of people from different social classes. There is widespread evidence that men use more vernacular forms than women -- but there are exceptions to this pattern.
Signaling gender affiliation or constructing gender identity cannot be ignored as factors in their own right.
Question: Why don't men use more standard forms?
Men may prefer vernacular forms because they carry macho connotations of masculinity and toughness. If so, this might explain why women might NOT want to use such forms. Men may regard vernacular forms positively and value them highly, which suggests these forms have "covert prestige" by contrast with the overt prestige of the standard forms which are cited as models of correctness.
Age
Pitch, vocabulary, pronunciation and grammar can differentiate age groups. These differences include the use of swear words and slang.
Some research suggests that as people get older their speech becomes gradually more standard, and then later it becomes less standards and is once again characterized by vernacular forms. Generally, in the middle years, (30 - 55) people are most likely to respond to the wider society's speech norms by using fewer vernacular forms. These are the peak years of maximum societal pressure to conform
Like slang, vernacular forms act as solidarity markers; they can indicate membership of close-knit social groups.
For an innovation -- a form on the increase -- there will be low use by older people and higher use among young. For a form that is disappearing, the reverse is true.
The Social Network Model
In
the studies that Labov carried out in New York, he examined the general
behavior of members a certain social classes. This allowed him to
identify how the members of certain sub-groups used language relative to
the overt prestige norms of the larger group. It did not allow him to
identify how other specific social factors related to the covert
prestige norms of an individual's unique network. Lesley Milroy wanted to
examine the relationship between certain particular social factors and
the language behavior of individuals. In order to do this, she used a
social network model.
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