Eleanor Horner

7th of June 2025

The differences between men’s and women’s language¹ tend to be analysed in the context of whether or not the speech counts as standard². The conclusion is usually that women speak more standardly and men speak more regionally. There seem to be two main explanations for this.

One explanation links men’s regional speech to their social networks. We are to picture a well-defined local area where all of the men work in the same factory and socialise in the same pub. The male social network is dense (there are lots of connections between members of the community), closed (the group is well defined and has limited contact with outsiders) and multiplex (any given pair of individuals may be connected in two or more ways, e.g. being both colleagues and friends). This effectively creates a breeding ground for language change, which will almost by definition be a move away from the standard. Although this type of social network is typically experienced by men, the reverse phenomenon (i.e., women are the ones with the regional accents) can be seen in areas with high male unemployment and many women working in the same place.

The second explanation ascribes women’s standard speech to their place in society. Eckert claims that, in the absence of real power, women are forced to rely on “symbolic capital”, such as speaking well: they gain authority by appearing worthy thereof. (Men also use symbolic capital, but they – unlike women – also have the possibility of gaining respect through isolated demonstrations of skill or strength.) Coates provides the evidence for this. Firstly, both men and women ‘improve’ their speech in more formal situations, but women more so than men (and women are therefore more susceptible to hypercorrection). I think that this could show that women are more interested in prestige, or that they are more conscious of the effect of their speech on their status. Secondly, women overestimate and men underestimate the extent to which their own speech is standard. The way people estimate themselves is an indication of what they are aiming for: if women think that they are using standard forms, that means that they are trying to speak properly.

One problem with both of these explanations is that the societies they rely on do not bear much resemblance to our post-industrial modern world, its want for third spaces (we do not all hang out at the one local pub), and its feminism (women can in fact access direct power). I would even question the extent to which they accurately reflect the 1980s world that Coates and Eckert were writing in.

Aside from this, I am convinced by the first explanation (your social network defines your accent). Your language is defined by who you spend your time with, and that’s that. In a society where men spend time with men, and women spend time with women, men will talk like men, and women will talk like women.

One big problem I have with this entire discussion is that the data is collected with regards to binary sex categories and the conclusions are drawn based on masculinity and femininity. These are not the same thing.

If language has something to do with femininity and masculinity, then you want to divide your interviewees according to these criteria, not according to their sex. If language has nothing to do with masculinity and femininity (as I suspect is the case), then they are irrelevant; instead, what should be considered is which social groups a person belongs to, be they gender-based, class-based, regionally based, or anything else.

It may be the case that there are particular characteristics innate to men and women, and that these characteristics inspire certain attitudes towards language, but even if this were the case and even if it affected the majority, the language of any given individual would be much more influenced by their socialisation than by any mysterious biological tendency to avoid standard English.

Notes

¹ Here, I am very specifically referring to pronunciation and grammar, but mostly pronunciation. Men and women also interact differently, but that’s a different topic.

² This problem this presents is: Do people know what the standard is? I was sceptical of this at first, but I think that the answer is generally yes. When people are asked to read from a word list, their accent suddenly and accidentally becomes much more standard, which shows that people do know what is ‘proper’ and are (although possibly to a lesser extent) capable of imitating it.

Sources

Coates, Jennifer. 1986. Women, Men and Language. New York: Longman Inc.

Eckert, Penelope. 1989. The whole woman: Sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation and Change 1. 245-267.