Mark

EN-110-11
2/28/19
Essay 1

Gender language communities

Language communities are everywhere and we all take part in many of these

communities. Language communities are basically groups of people that use similar norms

and terms of communication that other may struggle to understand. The world we live in

consist of many language communities such as college, family, and sports committees. One

that catches my interest is gender language communities. Over the past years many

authorities take time to study such difference within such community, but I myself have been

engage in such communities and can see similar and different behavioral patterns in which

each community communicate. The language community of men and women have

generalized differences in how they speak, process and understand information received, and

also how they interact in different environments.

Speaking is a skill that is significant and is used differently in many communities.

Speaking is how one convey or express their thoughts in spoken language. How one tend to

speak is determined not only by one but by many factors. Although gender is only a small

factor in why people convey their message differently, one can identify aspects that are

different from this specific factor. In determining some differences we ca look at three things

visual, verbal, and vocal pattern. Visual is how one looks when conveying their thoughts.

During many meetings I tend to notice that many women tend to smile and often try to create

rapport. Women also as I have noticed tend to use many facial expression while men tend to

maintain the same facial expression. Vocal patterns is another factor in communication.
Generally speaking many finds a women’s voice more pleasing than a man’s. The different

artificial intelligence programs such as Bixby, Siri, or Alexa supports such concept. These

artificial intelligence programs do not have a gender, but the voice outputted is similar to that

of a female. Companies did not just choose to use a more feminine voice. The choice was

selected through beta tests and that was the voice that was most appreciated. The last part of

how men and women speak differently that we are going to take into account is verbal-what

they actual say. Generally women use more personal pronouns and often adding more to her

statement while men tend to be more direct. (Lenard)

Communication requires two very important aspect, which are sending and receiving.

How we process and understand the information that we receive is different for everyone.

Although when we specifically take a look at gender we can see some differences. Many

generalized differences exists between the two communities specifically in how each

community process and understand the information they receive. One being how the minds

handles thinking. Men usually excel at singular task while women usually have more going

on and can divide their attention among several tasks. (Spencer) I often observe that men

usually tend to separate information, stimulus, emotions, relationship, into separate

components and narrow down to only a few while women tend to link everything together.

Another aspect that one may consider is how emotion play a part in both of these

communities. In both communities emotion is part of their language community although

women usually take emotion more into their thinking. Listening is another factor, often men

listen with the intent to do something while women expects that one should listen to

understand and sympathize.

How we say and receive information are factors in how a language community

interact or communicate in different environments. Taking for example because women

generally involve emotion to their expressing of thoughts they are usually more interactive in
social events. The reason for why is because women in general are able to share some type

emotional connection, while men tend to speak directly making the conversation relationship

more about the content not the personal feelings. Another difference between men and

women is that men generally speak what they mean while women sometimes does not. I have

seen such act happen many times. For example, when a guy ask if his girlfriend if he can go

hang with the boys. She replied letting you know that she is okay with your plans, which in

most cases she is not. Similar statements happen every day such as I do not want to talk about

it, GO!, and I’m fine.

These gender language communities have different aspects but we also have to

consider important factors like culture and some others that also play a big part in these

generalized differences. All of these are a generalized view of the two communities. These

two language communities are ever changed because factors within societies and cultures are

shifting. These communities and their differences are very complexed that many things

contribute. Although certain differences can be distinguished in the two groups such as the

way they express, manage, act on their thoughts.

References
Lenard, Dragana Bozic. "Gender differences in the personal pronouns." Journal of Research Design
and statistics in Linguistics and Communicatuin Science vol. 3.2 (2016): pg. 161-188.
<https://bib.irb.hr/datoteka/861053.Gender_differences_in_the_personal_pronouns_usage
_of_the_corpus_of_congressional_speeches.pdf>.

Spencer, Ben. The Daily Mail. 2 December 2013. 26 feburaury 2019.

<https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2516990/Sorry-chaps-brains-arent-multi-
tasking-But-women-hard-wired-juggle-jobs.html>.