Language use Archives - Page 2 of 2

The Myth of Mars and Venus

June 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

Do men and women really speak different languages?

A notion has sprung up in the last decade or so that men and women use language differently – even that they are psychologically and genetically hard-wired for language in different ways. This notion has solidified around the expression ‘Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus’, which was the title of a book which became a best-seller in 1992. This current book is Deborah Cameron’s exploration of gender and language from the perspective of an academic specialist in the field.

Not to hold back on her conclusions unnecessarily, she points out that the notion is complete rubbish. There isn’t any proof or justification for it in any of the published research. There are only vague ‘surveys’ and pop-journalism which make claims which evaporate under the scrutiny of rigorous examination. So the question immediately arises – why is this myth so widespread and enthusiastically accepted as a universal truth? Why do people continue to believe it, when it’s not true?

The answer to that question is that like most myths, it is comforting. It panders to prejudice and reinforces stereotypes of both men and women. And it spares us the difficulty of looking more closely at what we think we are observing.

She looks at all sorts of research into the relationship between language and gender, and it all points to the same conclusions – that for any investigation, the context needs to be given; that larger samples need to be taken; that general conclusions about choice of vocabulary, volume of speech, interrupting, and verbal dominance cannot be made on grounds of gender without many other factors being taken into account.

Rather than speaking differently simply because they are women and men, women and men may differ in their patterns of language-use because they are engaged in different activities or are playing different conversational roles.

What one person thinks of as a supportive tag question (isn’t it?) is another person’s facilitation. It all points to the need for more scientific rigour before making rash claims.

The most serious argument she makes is that giving credence to these myths can be a dangerous reinforcement of prejudice against both men and women which when translated into social action can result in discrimination, persecution on gender lines, and even social exclusion.

She also backs up her claims with excursions into sociology and ethnography, illustrating the point that behaviour which is often seen as essentially gendered is just a different way of responding because of a particular role being enacted – irrespective of gender.

She actually takes this further, into areas which seem to border on the philosophy of human existence in a way which reminded me very much of the work of Stephen Pinker. The ‘explanations’ of language/gender difference which stem from Stone Age evolutionary psychology are examined under her clear, realistic gaze and shown to be wanting.

This is only a short book, but there are thought-provoking ideas on just about every page.

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Deborah Cameron, The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008, pp.208, ISBN: 0199550999

The Real McCoy

June 27, 2009 by Roy Johnson

the true stories behind our everyday phrases and sayings

English is incredibly rich language, full of colorful and unusual phrases and sayings. This is one of those books which offers explanations for commonly used expressions. For instance, why do we say ‘know your onions’, ‘straight as a die’, and ‘the apple of your eye’? The answer in the last example is that the pupil was once supposed to be round. The Real McCoy is unusual as an expression in that nobody really knows its true origin.

Another typical example is ‘Mad as a hatter’. I knew this one, because it comes from the mercury poisoning used in felt hat manufacture – a former speciality in the town where I live. Most of the entries are very short. However, there are occasional special sections dealing with groups of – such as Biblical expressions, colours, eating and drinking, foreign countries, legends and myths, parts of the body and expressions coined by Shakespeare. Most of the entries are ploddingly obvious. I think that just about everybody knows that ‘full of beans’ means ‘lively and in high spirits’ and that the origin comes from vegetable protein.

However, there were one or two expressions I had certainly not thought about, such as ‘curry favour’ which has nothing to do with cooking or the Indian subcontinent, but comes from the expression curry as in to groom a horse with a coarse brush or comb.

And I certainly didn’t realise that a devil’s advocate was originally an official Catholic appointment during the process of beatification. The person’s role was to challenge the case being made for sainthood.

It’s an easy and lightweight approach to the subject. The entries come with no evidence or credible sources, and there’s no bibliography or list of further reading.

This could be useful as a Xmas or birthday present for someone who hasn’t yet thought much about the quirky nature of language. For something more substantial you will need to go to books such as The Oxford Dictionary of Idioms or Michael Quinion’s Port Out, Starboard Home.

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Georgia Hole, The Real McCoy, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005, pp.200, ISBN: 0192806114

The Usual Suspects and Other Cliches

July 1, 2009 by Roy Johnson

all the low down and the full monty on street-cred lingo

At first you might wonder why anybody would want to look into the origins of a cliché. But the more I read the examples in The Usual Suspects, the more they emphasise the tired, stale nature of expressions we often take for granted – or even worse, sometimes use without thinking first. This of course is based on the widely held belief that using cliché is a stylistically bad thing – though there are some people who actually defend them. (They can also be used ironically, but that isn’t taken up here.)

These issues are debated by Betty Kirkpatrick in the introductory essay to her collection which considers both the definition of cliché (when does an expression become a cliché for instance?) and the various categories of cliché. She debates intelligently with authorities such as Fowler and Eric Partridge and even considers how clichés blend easily into idioms, proverbs, catchphrases, vogue phrases, and allusions. Her entries run from the proverb cliché absence makes the heart grow fonder to You wish! and zero hour. She includes both traditional clichés, as in beat about the bush, and more recent usages such as spend more time with my family – which is what politicians and public figures say when they’ve been sacked – which neatly combines cliché with euphemism.

She also identifies what she calls ‘filler clichés’ such as at the end of the day, you know what I mean, and with all due respect. My own pet hates – used repeatedly, day after day by Sean Rafferty on BBC Radio 3 – are as it were and so to speak, both completely meaningless fillers which send me reaching for the off switch or tuning in to Jazz FM.

So a typical entry in this collection runs as follows:

push the envelope is an idiom cliché which is also a vogue cliché. It means to try to achieve more than seems possible, to take a risk, as A good coach is constantly driving the athlete to break new barriers, encouraging him to push the envelope. The cliché dates from the turn of the twentieth century, but the phrase may go back to early aviation test flights (1940s) where the ‘envelope’ refers to the line on a graph that represents the limit of an aircraft’s known capabilities.

It’s interesting to notice that in some clichés – such as flotsam and jetsam – the words in the phrase are almost never used separately from each other.

Most of the explanations listed are quite easy to understand – as in the case of to spend a penny. Even young people must know that this was once the standard charge for entering a public toilet. But maybe non-English readers will not. For this reason I suspect the book might be specially useful for people with English as a second or other language.

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Betty Kirkpatrick, The Usual Suspects and Other Clichés, London: A & C Black, 2005, pp.222, ISBN: 0713674962

Totally Weird and Wonderful Words

July 8, 2009 by Roy Johnson

a dictionary of obscure, unusual, and bizarre terms

Do you know what illecebrous, langsuir, and telematology mean? No – I thought not. They are ‘attractive’, ‘female vampire’, and ‘the study of peat bogs’ respectively. Not a lot of people know that. Of course, you might say that not many people would want to know that. But if you are one of the exceptions – people who are fascinated by etymology, unusual words, and obscure terms – Totally Weird and Wonderful Words is the book for you. It’s a collection of really out-of-the-way lexical items and words you have probably never heard of before. Entries run from abligurition (spending a lot on food) and abnormous (18th century, ‘mis-shapen’) to zoonosis (disease transmitted from animals to humans) and Zyrian (a north Russian language).

The alphabletised entries are interspersed with mini-essays on various categories of obscure terms, and laced with lots of New Yorker type cartoons. The weirdness of the entries might lie in a word’s obscure meaning, or it might be its unusual orthography – a strange conjunction of letters, as in kalokagathia (nobility and goodness of character).

It doesn’t pretend to be encyclopedic, but I was surprised that one of my own favourite obscure terms wasn’t in there. Borborygmous means ‘rumbling of gas in the stomach’ – and despite its quasi-medical connotations it always brings a smile to my face. But another of my favourites is included. Carphology is ‘the delirious fumbling with bedclothes prior to the onset of death’. Not a word you would need to use every day – but when applied at the right moment, very impressive.

Some which make sense (to a UK audience at least) are terms such as brannigans (the name of a chain of wine bars) which means ‘a drinking bout, a spree, or a binge’. And sometimes the examples are perfectly serious and reasonable – such as steganography, which is ‘the art of secret writing, or cryptography’.

Some are made up, such as igry, which is defined as ‘the way you feel when someone else does something that ought to embarrass them, but doesn’t’. Others are fanciful technical or quasi-scientific inventions.

There’s even a chapter at the end of the book giving you advice on how to create your own weird and wonderful words. However, you should remember that language is entirely democratic. New words will only ever become established if lots of people decide to use them – and that is usually because there’s a need for them. You could struggle for years putting together scientific and Latinate parts of speech – but unless there’s a real need for them, they will die unused. Meanwhile blogging, dogging, and gazumping have caught on because they serve a real purpose – though none are listed here.

Some of the words are clearly deft inventions; others are squeezed out of interpretations of classical terms (it helps if you know Latin and Greek); and others have interesting etymologies, but turn out to be disappointing. It’s interesting to know that there is a word for people who elect to have amputations for the sake of body modification, but somehow disappointing to learn that the word when you get there is only the rather plain nullo.

Some fall into the technical category of what might be called ‘extreme jargon’, as in the following definition of the term contango:

the fee that a buyer of stock pays to the seller to postpone transfer of the stock to the next or any future settlement date. It was also usually paid on a per share or percent basis. The word also has a modern meaning, ‘the condition in which distant delivery prices for futures exceed spot prices, often due to the costs of storing and insuring the commodity’. The antonym of contango is backwardation.

Phew! So now we know.

Many are so obscure it’s difficult to imagine there ever being an occasion when they might be used – either in conversation or in print – such as dromaeognathous, which means ‘having a palate like that of an emu’.

In keeping with its total weirdness, this is a book with three introductions and two forewards. In fact you can open it at any page and be amazed or amused – or both, simultaneously.

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Erin McKean (editor), Totally Weird and Wonderful Words, New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, pp.304, ISBN: 0195312120

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Words (language skills)

July 17, 2009 by Roy Johnson

beginner’s guide to language skills

Did you know that there are between one and two million words in the English Language. It’s the biggest stockpile in any language, mainly because English has been forged from many other languages – including Latin, Greek, Anglo-Saxon, French and German. Most people know between 25,000—75,000 words, and John Seely’s advice in this lively and accessible guide is that we should become aware of the distinctions between words. Word power is not just a case of learning more and more words, but using them with more care. He shows how words should be selected according to the situation in which they are going to be used. For instance, there is no point using specialist jargon if you are writing for a general audience.

He gives advice on using a dictionary, and he offers a good account of what information dictionaries contain, and how to choose one to suit your purposes. There’s an interesting chapter on judging your audience and choosing the appropriate vocabulary for your purpose in writing. This deals with the connotations, the range and tone of words, ranging from formal, informal, and jargon, to slang and even taboo words.

He offers a brief account of the history of the English language, showing how it has been and continues to be built from words borrowed from other languages. It’s also particularly good for coining new terms from existing words – such as cybercafe and velcroid.

The second part of the book gives a humane collection of information about word classes, word structure – nouns, verbs, adjectives, prefixes, suffixes, and so on. This also includes lists of words which are commonly confused, such as adduce/deduce – and he ends with a detailed glossary.

This might all sound rather dry, but I have to say that the more I read on, the more interesting the book became. It’s suitable for anybody who wishes to perform more successfully in the workplace or in studying, and it will tell you all you need to know in order to develop or improve your word building and vocabulary.

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John Seely, Words, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002, pp.128, ISBN: 0198662823

More on writing skills
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Do men and women really speak different languages?

the true stories behind our everyday phrases and sayings

all the low down and the full monty on street-cred lingo

a dictionary of obscure, unusual, and bizarre terms

beginner’s guide to language skills

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