Instructions for Short Answer Questions

 

You will be answering five of fifteen short answer questions associated with chapters in your primary textbook. The questions are in Canvas, and you will be putting your answer in the textbox associated with each question.  I suggest that write your answer outside of Canvas and then copy and paste it into the appropriate textbox. This will prevent your answer from being lost if by chance Canvas goes down before you finish writing the answer.

All student responses will be graded with a 20 point rubric based on the four criteria below, each of which is worth five points:

Example of an Excellent Student Response

 

The student's answer (used with permission) is to Question 13, which is one of the more difficult questions to answer because it has a number of sections that must be addressed. Note that the answer below addresses all the sections; in addition it's well organized, clear, detailed, and edited. The only real flaw is the student gave a personal impression about the vocabulary choices American men and women make rather than providing the actual research evidence that men and women use certain adjectives with greatly different frequencies such as 'darling,' and 'fabulous.'

For your convenience, I have repeated Question 13 for you below with the student essay following immediately afterwards.

Question for Chapter 13

Some linguists have claimed that men and women use slightly different varieties of speech. Briefly discuss the linguistic evidence used to support this claim; you may want to review the chapters on variation to more fully answer the question. Is the linguistic evidence uniform across cultures? For example, does the speech of male and female Americans differ in the same way as does the speech of male of female speakers of Malagasy? Provide clear examples.

It is commonly assumed that there are major differences between men and women’s speech. The evidence described in chapter 13 makes it clear that any major differences in English are observational and anecdotal, but not necessarily based on any hard data. There are not nearly as many gender-based characteristics of English as there are in other languages around the world, some of which have very clear gender rules, both grammatical and phonological. A famous example is the Carib Indians in the West Indies. It was long thought that the men and women literally spoke different languages. In reality, the one language they spoke had many noticeable gender-based characteristics. It is notable that in some cultures, the differences between the way that men and women speak are so dramatic that an observer could think that they speak entirely different languages.

Most dialects of English do not have phonological differences between the genders, whereas other languages of the world do. Some examples include Gros Ventre (an Amerindian language), Yukaghir (a northeast Asian language), and Chukchi (a Siberian language). Each of these languages see men and women using different pronunciations of words. Instead of pronunciations, English has gender differences in more subtle ways. There is some evidence that women and men make different choices in vocabulary. One study found that women use more descriptive words, especially to describe how things affect them. From my own experience, I think there is some truth to this observation. Although it isn’t the most scientific conclusion, I have found that women are more descriptive, whereas men tend to stick to facts and information. Of course, there are exceptions to any rule, but generally speaking, I believe this is a fairly common difference in English.

English does have the distinction of trying to become more equal in its gendered language. Many words that once were gendered, especially job descriptions, like waitress vs. waiter for example, are now becoming more gender-neutral in order to be less offensive to the women in these professions. A good example of this is the word “stewardess,” which has become highly inappropriate to use. English has changed the word altogether to call male and females of this profession, “flight attendants.” This language planning exists to try to reduce the “sexism” of a language.

Clearly, some languages have more defined gender differences than others. Some languages have phonological or grammatical differences, like the ones I mentioned previously, or even French and German in their use of “le/la” and “der/die/das.” Other languages have more social differences, like Malagasy, where men use more discreet and polite language and women use more direct and straightforward language. In this culture, being discreet is more highly valued than being straightforward, and so men assume the language that puts them in a higher position of authority and respect. Therefore, we can see that in some languages, any differences between the way the men and women speak is more due to the sexism of the culture, and not anything inherent in the language. The reason that English may not see these same differences is a result of the feminist movement and the attempt to make men and women equal in all other areas of culture. I mentioned this earlier when I talked about English changing its language to be less gender-biased. In many ways, language is a reflection of society and culture, and the English language has certainly changed in order to accommodate the social and cultural changes that have taken place as well.

 

English 4648 Online: Course Syllabus.