Women’s Language Rights!


Women’s Language Rights!

Why is the language women speak not taken seriously?

Picture this: you’re a woman, about to sit that all-important job interview you’ve spent days preparing for. You’re highly qualified and perfect for the job, but you’re rejected because – drum roll, please – of the way you speak.

How is it, in any way, fair that a man who is less qualified is more likely to get the job than this woman, because his language is more ‘assertive’? It isn’t, and it needs to change.

Let me tell you a fact that might surprise you: men and women speak the same language. There is no such thing as one gender’s specific ‘language’ being superior to the other; they’re identical. So why is it that we still insist on pointing out the ‘differences’ in the language between men and women, and worse still, using it as a form of discrimination against women?

The theory for looking at gender differences in language in the present day is called the Diversity model. This is the idea that gender is only one of many factors that may influence language. This means that it is likely there will be more differences between two women’s speech than between a man and a woman’s. And before you ask, this isn’t just a thought a person with politically correct views plucked from thin air – it’s based off scientific research, aka, it’s a fact.

And yet this form of discrimination against ‘women’s language’ is more like the Deficit model from the 1920’s – the idea that men’s speech is the ‘standard’ language, and that women’s falls short and is…well, deficient. This theory sprung to life mainly based off the opinions of a patriarchal society, because it was said that ‘women’s language’ mainly consists of linguistic features such as hedges or tag questions, which makes a woman seem less sure of herself. It’s not the 1920’s anymore, and yet this pretty much sums up why the underqualified man is more likely to get the job in my example earlier.

Well, guess what – men use all these linguistic features too, and women are not less confident than men. In fact, we are just like any other person in the sense that if we’re going after something we want, we have never been more confident. We need to stop telling women to speak more like men to get on in the world – everyone deserves to speak however they want to.

So, one more time, louder for the people in the back: gender is just one factor of differences in language.

  

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