An Introduction to Applied Linguistics

3 L ANGUAGE AND GENDER
There appears to be a permanent tension in all linguistic-driven studies of language
between change and stability, between variation and stasis, between difference and
sameness, the individual and the group. In general we can suggest that it is on the
change aspect that the linguist focuses while the applied linguist is more concerned
with the sameness aspect. Thus the linguist has traditionally been interested in the
diachronic characteristic of language (much as the biologist is primarily concerned
with species evolution), while the applied linguist takes greater account of the
synchronic. Of course the linguist deals in grammatical rules and in lexical entries
but these are always to be seen as somehow temporary, open to question and
primarily belonging to one idiolect or another. This is why the effort to standardise
a language is not a primary linguistic activity: when linguists concern themselves, as
they do, with standardising (or language engineering as it has somewhat dismissively
been called) then they shift into an applied mode. This is also the case for dictionary
46
An Introduction to Applied Linguistics
02 pages 001-202:Layout 1 31/5/07 09:31 Page 46

---

writing, and even more clearly for language-teaching textbook writing. But for
applied linguists these stabilising projects are the very stuff of their professional
activity since they see their professional responsibility as that of providing more
efficient uses of language by society, now.
This change–stability difference we see clearly in the extensive work on language
and gender in recent years. We should note in passing that gender here does not refer
to the traditional gender of grammatical analyses where it stood for a distinction
many languages make among word classes. To some extent grammatical gender
does coincide with biological sex, but only partially. A useful distinction contrasts
male/female for sex with masculine/feminine for grammatical gender.
The distinction is sometimes made in sociolinguistics between the influence of
society on language (‘society in language’) and the influence of language on society
(‘language in society’): by society in language is meant the systematic influence of
social forces on language (e.g. a language variety unique to a social class such as the
royal court or the adoption of a new phonetic or prosodic feature such as the high
rise tone, which we discuss below); by language in society is meant the influence
of language on various social institutions (e.g. language planning for education, the
choices made by the media – newspapers, broadcasting, television, or the internet –
or which languages to use in various settings), the role of language in religion (e.g.
the connection between the written holy text and the spoken vernacular). And given
the primary concern of linguistics in language-in-itself, which, we have argued,
means language in flux, it is inevitable that of the two ways of relating language and
society, the focus of the linguist’s attention should be on the first, on the impact of
society on language and on the ways in which social forces cause language to change.
In the same way, the applied linguist’s concern for stable states means that he or she
is more likely to focus on the influence of language on society and on the extent to
which that influence can be gauged and controlled so as to facilitate human inter -
action through language.
A similar reciprocal distinction may be made between gender in language and
language in gender. (This is hardly surprising since the language–gender relationship
is often treated as a subcategory of sociolinguistics.) Gender in language therefore is
more the concern of the linguist, while language in gender more that of the applied
linguist. As we shall see, their concerns are not discrete: linguists do become involved
in applied work when, for example, they advocate the use of ‘inclusive language’ (on
which more below). Similarly, the applied linguist may well, out of interest or as 
part of necessary ongoing research, get involved in the study of gender influence on
language change over time, such as the feminisation of homosexual speech. But we
should also recognise that if the applied linguist does become involved in such
‘change’ research, his or her purpose is not to address the linguist’s central concern
with language change; rather it is to provide support for some project which could
be used to promote the separate status of homosexuals’ speech, such as a dictionary
or forensic tape models. While recognising the overlap, let us proceed by examining
the two concerns at their polarities.
So far we have used ‘gender’ as though it was the normal term. But is it? Why
Language and language practices 47
02 pages 001-202:Layout 1 31/5/07 09:31 Page 47

---

gender rather than sex? For the linguist’s interest in language-in-itself there is strictly
no need to make the sex–gender distinction that is nowadays widely made, according
to which sex is biological and gender is social, which is to say that, whatever the sex
of an infant, the gender it grows into is attained through a process of socialisation.
Since therefore gender is already a secondary influence, based first on biological sex
and then on various social processes, the linguist is likely to see gender (in this sense
of socialisation) as less important than the major sex distinction: what interests the
linguist, we might suggest, is the maleness and the femaleness of language. Of course
some biological males will be socialised as females and vice versa; of course the
male–female distinction is never absolute; and equally of course linguists in their
reporting may well refer to the distinction they are making as that of gender rather
than that of sex because they, like all of us, prefer not to offend particular sensitivities.
Whether it is called sex or gender in language, then, what are the kinds of areas that
are of interest to the linguist?