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LANGUAGE, SEX AND GENDER: DOES LA DIFFERENCE MAKE A DIFFERENCE? DISCUSSION

The sub-title of this workshop asks whether “la diffckence” makes a difference. If the context of the question did not make quite clear what difference was intended, one might well ask, what difference? Greater male tendency toward baldness? Hemophilia? Color blindness? Greater female viability? Clearly none of these is meant. One of the questions asked of participants specified the difference intended, namely: “are men and women differentiated by the content, structure, or use of speech?” The answer came through clear and loud in all the papers: yes, they are, there are differences between the sexes in the use of speech. They are not, however, based on primitive biological sex but on sex-role socialization. How? the second question addressed to participants asked. How are gender differences in language behavior socialized? Two papers (Beatty, Haas) addressed this question. Differences based on socialization imply that change is possible. There was, however, relatively little attention paid to the third question posed by the workshop: what is the relation between language change and social change? two papers (Lakoff, Gregersen) spoke to this question, both casually. One (Gregersen) did not see language change as a useful feminist technique for producing social change and the other (Lakoff) capitulated to the male style. Before I proceed to discuss the papers, I must make it clear that I approach the subjects here discussed as a consumer rather than as a producer of research in this area. I am not credentialed to make a serious technical critique of any of the papers. “Syntactics,” “semantics,” and “pragmatics,” except in the non-technical, everyday meanings of the terms, are terra incognita to me. Lakoff underscores the old cliche that style is the man and, presumably, the woman. She believes a person’s style applies across the psychic range, characterizing cognition, perception, interpersonal strategies, and physical activity. And she attempts to apply the conceptualization of rules of linguistic behavior to style so conceptualized. She is looking, in brief, for the “grammar” of style. She selects a parameter which she calls “mode of rapport” and distinguishes four styles. She hypothesizes that two of them-clarity and distance-are associated with males and two-deference and camaraderie-with females. She does not see these styles or modes of rapport as categorical but as points on a gradient so that one may have