Women, Social Hierarchy & Linguistic Evolution
by Isaac W. Hubbell
In exploring the different concepts of language variation and language contact, we can seek refuge in knowing that there is a textbook answer to many of the matters we have here at hand. Chapter nine of the anthropological linguistics textbook, “Language, Culture and Society” by Stanlaw, opens by discussing the idea that language is not a static entity, but rather a mixture of many dynamic and constantly evolving forms of communicating and understanding a concept, between two or more people. Like so much of what we’ve already discussed in previous chapters, the biggest shapers of these evolutions that occur in languages are a variety of factors that include geography, history, and social context as well as purely anatomical features of the body, such as a person’s vocal tract. These form the basis of what is called language variation(s) (Stanlaw, 2018).
Continuing with this topic, language variation refers to the varied differences that exist between separate varieties of a single language. These variations are contingent on a number of factors which include but aren’t limited to regional dialects, socio-political or economic status, age, injuries or disabilities, etc (Stanlaw 2018). These language variations can severely impact people from different social classes or backgrounds from having the ability to communicate their needs to one another. Also included is how the individual speakers of the separate varieties of a language can often struggle to understand one another, on even the simplest of terms (Stanlaw, 2018).
Next, we looked into language contact, which refers to the ways in which different languages come into contact with one another and often times in the long run, influence the cultures of each other. This happens naturally and has been occurring, as we discussed in previous chapters since we were nomadic tribes leaving Africa. Language contact includes interactions through migration, colonization, and now in the 21st Century, through globalization. Language contact can lead to the creation of new languages, but it also can have severely damaging impacts on existing languages (Stanlaw 2018, Labov 1990).
One of the key concepts discussed in the chapter is the idea of language borrowing, which refers to the process by which one language borrows words or grammatical structures from another language. Language borrowing can impact the structure and vocabulary of a language, and how it can lead to the creation of new words and phrases (Stanlaw, 2018). This comes into play with some of what Vera Regan details in her TEDx Talk "What Your Speaking Style, Like, Says About You.”
In Regan’s talk, she contemplates our use of language and what information about our personality, social status, and cultural background can be sorted out from our use of language. She discusses a particular concept she calls "filler words." Better known by many today as the overuse of "like" and "um," often used in a one-on-one conversation or in large-scale speeches, to fill pauses or a lull. It can also indicate uncertainty about one’s thoughts or concepts.
Regan argues that filler words reveal a lot of information about a speaker, like their age, social status, or gender. She also claims that they can be used in a strategic manner to impart a particular image or persona or to initiate a series of descriptions of a certain topic, person, etc. She goes further to discuss ways that our use of language reveals information about who we are and where we come from - our cultural background. She notes that different cultures have disparate norms and expectations and there is no exception with language use. The norms of cultures impact the way they communicate with others and their own norms. Regan describes how in some cultures, indirect language is preferred, while in others, a more direct or straight-forward language is valued, it doesn’t mean though that one is right over the other. It is simply a case of cultural preference. Regan concludes with how our use of language can often reveal our own attitudes towards power and authority, whether our own or someone else’s. She reiterates how these approaches and postures in our language do impact our interactions with others (TEDx Talks 2014).
Having a two-year-old daughter, myself, who is currently filling my ear every other day with all of her new words and now three-to-five-word sentences, I really appreciated hearing Dr. Regan’s point on how women shape and push forward the evolutions in language. She states in her intro in reference to a conversation she overheard between two young women on a bus as an elderly across from them woman listened in with disapproving ears to their constant use of “like” and “Um’s”:
“Because research has shown that young women are the movers and shakers when it comes to language. They’re the innovators. They’re the ones we should be listening to.” (TEDx Talks 2014).
Regan’s lecture broadens this fascinating position on the ways that a culture’s use of language reveals information about our social status, our individual personality vs. one-on-one or group interactions, and our cultural background. She also highlights how study after study provides evidence that young women and their use of language are among the top reasons why languages evolve (Labov 1990). They play an enormous role in the evolution of language and its meaning within cultures on both the local and global extremes, respectively. Her concluding remarks came full circle:
“So, getting back to our young women in the bus. Instead of saying they’re lazy, or sloppy, or superficial, or whatever we tend to say about young users of speech, we need to know that these young women are using language to show lots of stuff about who they are, who they are becoming, and next time you hear somebody saying “like,” you can say, “Oh, it’s like, here’re the movers and the shakers. They’re our future, like.” (TEDx Talks 2014).
By highlighting these nuanced and complex forms within the use of language, she tries to encourage the audience to try to be more mindful of the ways in which we communicate with others. That we should recognize what many other studies have shown, religion tries to preach at its core, and philosophers for three millennia have wrestled over it. In short - what we say, how we say it, and our intentions behind our words, do matter. Our words affect our interactions with the world around us, plain and simple (TEDx Talks 2014).
Both Regan’s TEDx Talk and our textbook cover this concept of language shift - the process by which speakers of one language steadily shift to the use of another language, or new language. This, like the others, occurs for a number of political and socio-economic factors that have momentous impacts on languages being abandoned as well as the new language being adopted. Language variation and language contact are how languages both evolve and interact with one another, highlighting the dynamic and deeply complex nature of language as a social and cultural phenomenon (Stanlaw 2018, TEDx Talks 2014, Labov 1990).
Bibliography:
Labov, William
1990
The Intersection of Sex and Social Class in the Course of Linguistic Change. Language Variation and Change 2(02): 205. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-variation-and-change/article/intersection-of-sex-and-social-class-in-the-course-of-linguistic-change/AAA8227B739187F5D2CBDA51EA212FD8.
Stanlaw, James
2018
Language, Culture, and Society. Routledge.
TEDx Talks
2014
What Your Speaking Style, Like, Says about You | Vera Regan | TEDxDublin. YouTube.