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Gender and Age-
As well as the body of ‘genderlect’ research, you also need to be able to discuss the gender aspects of the studies you’ve looked at for this unit. The key ideas here are:
- Covert & Overt Prestige -
men often seem to want the ‘cool’ status of speaking in a non- standard way known as covert prestige, whereas women are supposed to want the kudos of speaking a more standard variety - called overt prestige. Cheshire’s research shows this, but Trudgill’s is more definite as his subjects self- report along these lines too. - Networks -
the Milroys found that network density was a more important factor than gender, supporting that ‘gendered’ linguistic behaviour is linked to other social behaviours and not natural.
Age-
Lexis varies between age groups:
- Older people may use words in “outmoded” ways (eg “I feel queer”)
- Younger people will have own slang
- Middle-
aged people also have generation- specific slang - Technology a particular field of difference -
perceived as belonging to the younger
Grammatical differences:
- “Must be” = older; “has to be”/”has got to be” = younger
- Dummy “do” used in negative and question forms in younger speech, eg “didn’t ought to” “did he used to”
Phonological differences:
- More glottalisation in younger speech
- “Uptalk” amongst youth (blamed on aussie soaps!) [rising intonation]
Basic differences:
Older people more likely to use tradtional dialects
Younger people more likely to speak Estuary or other combined varieties (eg “posh Geordie”)