Or, Why it’s hard to be heard
I’ve been preparing course materials for an A-level English Language course and, among a slew of handouts left over from previous teachers, found this assessment of Robin Lakoff’s ‘Language and Woman’s Place’:
“As you can see, [hers is] quite a sexist outlook on our language. This may be a good one to use and then evaluate it in your answer as it’s a convenient way to include your own disagreements.”
Curious, I downloaded a freely available PDF of Lakoff’s 1973 article of that title and began to read, antennae quivering for ‘sexist outlook’.
Instead, this:
If a little girl ‘talks rough’ like a boy, she will normally be ostracized, scolded, or made fun of. In this way society, in the form of a child’s parents and friends, keeps her in line, in her place. This socializing process is, in most of its aspects, harmless and often necessary, but in this particular instance – the teaching of special linguistic uses to little girls – it raises serious problems, though the teachers may well be unaware of this. If the little girl learns her lesson well, she is not rewarded with unquestioned acceptance on the part of society; rather, the acquisition of this special style of speech will later be an excuse others use to keep her in a demeaning position, to refuse to take her seriously as a human being. Because of the way she speaks, the little girl – now grown to womanhood – will be accused of being unable to speak precisely or to express herself forcefully.
So a girl is damned if she does, damned if she doesn’t. If she refuses to talk like a lady, she is ridiculed and subjected to criticism as unfeminine; if she does learn, she is ridiculed as unable to think clearly, unable to take part in a serious discussion: in some sense, as less than fully human. These two choices which a woman has – to be less than a woman or less than a person- are highly painful.
So far, nothing here to suggest that Lakoff believes women’s speech to be innately inferior, deficient or subpar, only the observation that female persons are socialized to speak in a way that is then held against them by male persons.
Lakoff explains her intentions:
I should like now to talk at length about some specific examples of linguistic phenomena I have described in general terms above. I want to talk first about the ways in which women’s speech differs from men’s speech; and then, to discuss a number of cases in which it seems clear that women are discriminated against (usually unconsciously) by the language everyone uses. I think it will become evident from this discussion that both types of phenomena reflect a deep bias on the part of our culture (and, indeed, of every culture I have ever heard of) against women being accorded full status as rational creatures and individuals in their own right; and finally, I would like to talk briefly about what might be done, and perhaps what should not be done, to remedy things.
Why am I not surprised that commentators seem more eager to criticize Lakoff’s observations on male sexism than to tackle male sexism itself?