Man, Female and Oral Language

Male and female are two terms used to signal two different kinds of sex and they are also used as terms for gender. As asserted by Coates (1986: 4), sex refers to biological condition whereas gender refers to socially constructed category based on sex. Sharing almost the same idea with Coates, Arliss (1991: 8) states sex as biologically determined category, and narrows gender as a behaviorally determined category. Indirectly those statements note that society distinguishes male and female by creating such categories. The distinctions between them do not take place only on one or two area but in several and almost all areas of human life. Society through culture drives human to behave things according to category where she or he belongs. These behaviors are learned and then constitute maleness and femaleness, named sex-typed behaviors or gender-specific behaviors (Arliss, 1991: 9). 

In a simple way it can be said that men and women behave according to what is constructed by society. Those factors are still working in daily life, including in the scope of oral language where gender-specific behaviors are also influenced by language. Noted by Weatherall (2002: 97) that through language gender is produced and has its important or meaning as a social category. 

Here are facts about language, men and women. In oral communication with their same sex friends, women tend to talk more but that does not happen when they are talking to men. When they are conversing with men, women tend to listen actively and men dominate the conversation. Based on research conducted by Zimmerman and West (in Coates 1986: 100), conversation is dominated by men looking at the number of interruption and overlap. Women seldom produce overlap because they are concerned not to violate men’s turn. Since men dominate, women have the tendency to fall silent. Zimmerman and West found that the number of silence in same sex conversation is far fewer than in mixed-sex conversation. In same sex conversation both men and women share equal topic control. But in mixed sex conversation, men tend to control the topic by interrupting and delay minimal responses. 

The myth among society that claims women as ones who talk more is countered by several study, for instance according to Swacker (in Coates 1986: 103) it is men who talk more. Based on her research findings, when asked to describe three picture men took on average 13.00 minutes per picture and women took only 3.17 minutes. Not only Swacker, but other researches also present the idea that in mixed-sex conversation men talk more than women. (Eakins & Eakins 1978, Bernard 1972, Soskin & John 1963 and Argyle et. al 1968) 

Besides the facts above, there is another fact that women use more facilitative tag question, and Lakoff’s assumed that. Holmes (in Coates 1986: 105) shows that male speaker use modal tag question 61 per cent to express uncertainty. At the meantime, 59 per cent tag questions used by female speaker are facilitative (express speaker solidarity to the addressee). Linguists also assert that women use more polite language that men. Brown (in Coates 1986: 112) studied Mayan community and found that women use many positive and negative politeness, whereas men’s speech is matter-of-fact. Lakoff (in Arliss 1991: 57) proposed that men are more straightforward than women. 

In case of using expletive (an exclamation, a rude word used when one is angry), men use stronger expletives (Lakoff in Arliss 1991: 53). Lakoff also proposed that women have a big number of color vocabulary and use them in expressing their emotions verbally. In case of using intensifier (in this case means syntactic construction using adverb that heavily emphasized, e.g.: I am sooooo tired), one study reports that during group discussion women use more intensifiers than men (six times more). Men, women and oral language are not separated. Men and women use oral language according to their own way when communicating one another. Their characteristics are constructed by the society yet manifested in social activity as well as in classroom activity.