In the name of the law, stop the disrespect!

The killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis USA in May 2020 raised questions about the impartiality of police officers when dealing with the public and particularly those from black and ethnic minorities.  Six years earlier, in 2014, a team of researchers from Stanford University investigated exactly this issue by using footage from police body-worn cameras to analyse the language they used during routine traffic stops in the multiethnic city of Oakland in California. 

The researchers transcribed footage from 981 traffic stops of both black and white drivers, which were conducted by 245 different officers during a period of one month. Participants in the study were given transcripts of these interactions without knowing the race, age or sex of the drivers. They were then asked to rate the respect shown by the officers through placing their language on a gradient, showing how respectful, polite, friendly and formal they were. The research team used a model based on linguistic theories of respect where respectful language includes apologising, being grateful, expressing concern for the other person and softening commands to reduce confrontation. 

The results demonstrate that, although officers used the same levels of formality for both black and white drivers, they were rated as significantly less respectful, polite or friendly to black drivers than they were to whites.  Even after controlling for the severity of the traffic offence, the length and outcome of the stop and the race of the officers themselves, interactions with white drivers were consistently more respectful. In fact, 57% of white drivers were more likely to hear an officer say one of the most respectful phrases (e.g. “sir”, “thank you”) in the transcripts whereas black drivers were 61% more likely to hear one of the least respectful (e.g. “hands on the wheel”, or use of first name). 

The researchers conclude that the racial disparities in their study are clear, however the causes of them are not.  They write that these disparities could have far-reaching effects as personal interactions with the police build a community’s opinion about them and ultimately lead to a relationship of trust or distrust. They suggest that future research could expand body camera footage beyond just text to audio features such as intonation and video features such as facial expression, to try and investigate how interactions progress and sometimes break down.  This could be invaluable in informing police officer training and to establish better relationships with the communities they serve. 

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Voigt, Rob, Nicholas Camp, Vinodkumar Prabhakaran, William Hamilton, Rebecca Hetey, Camilla Griffiths, David Jurgens, Dan Jurafsky, and Jennifer Eberhardt. 2017. Language from police body camera footage shows racial disparities in officer respect. PNAS 114 (25): 6521-6526.

https://www.pnas.org/content/114/25/6521

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle

 

Accent Bias: Responses to Accent Labels

Continuing our series of posts related to the 'Accent Bias in Britain' project, in this blog post we discuss some findings from our research which investigated current attitudes to accents in Britain.

In the first part of our study, we replicated Coupland & Bishop's study (2007, summarised in an earlier blog post) to see whether the accent attitudes that people held 12 years ago still persist today. A similar study was conducted by Giles in 1970, giving us a further time point to compare our results.

We recruited a sample of over 800 participants aged between 18 and 79 via a market research firm. The group of participants was intended to be a representative sample of the UK population, so was balanced for gender and region (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland) and included all major ethnicity groups.

Once participants had been recruited, they were asked to respond to 38 British accent 'labels', such as 'Estuary English', 'Received Pronunciation', 'Multicultural British English', and 'Birmingham English'. You can listen to some of these accents here. The participants were asked to rate each accent label on a scale of 1-7 - where 1 is the lowest and 7 is the highest - for the prestige and pleasantness of the accent.

After they had completed the survey, we collected social information about the participant, including their gender, ethnicity, age, region of origin, highest level of education, occupation, English accent, languages spoken. We also asked them to complete a short questionnaire about their exposure to different UK accents, the diversity of their own social networks, their beliefs about bias in Britain, and respond to a series of questions designed to measure how much they were concerned about being perceived as prejudiced.

As the image above shows, when compared with Giles' results in 1969, Coupland and Bishop's results in 2004, our findings (2019) demonstrate that whilst there are some minor differences, overall, attitudes to accents in the UK remain fairly stable. Standard accents, such as Received Pronunciation (RP) remain very highly rated, whereas ethnic and urban accents, such as Birmingham English, are rated much less favourably. These findings appear to be stable across the three time points.

Want to replicate this study? 

We've developed a series of Language Investigations and Teaching Units that helps students and teachers develop a research project of their own! Head over to Teach Real English! to access these resources.  

However, all is not lost it seems. Although we see similar patterns across the three studies, we do see a gradual improvement in the ratings of the accents that are rated the lowest (Afro-Caribbean, Liverpool, Indian, Birmingham). In fact, our 2019 study reports quite the improvement in overall ratings of these accents. It's therefore possible that people view these accents much more positively than they did 50 years ago.

However, this study examines only responses to 'accent labels'. What would we find if we played actual audio recordings of these accents to participants? Would we see the same results? In the next blog post, we introduce the findings from the second part of our study. In the meantime, you can find our more about the project by visiting the project website. 

This summary was written by Christian Ilbury

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There ain’t nowt wrong with accents

What do you think of when you hear someone speak with a Brummie accent? How about when somebody speaks with a West Country accent? Do you think that some accents are more attractive or prestigious than others? If so, it’s possible that your judgements of these accents are influenced by accent bias.

As part of the Accent Bias project led by academics at Queen Mary University of London and the University of York, over the next few weeks we’ll be uploading a series of Digest posts that discuss the effects of accent bias.

In the first post of the series, we focus on a 2007 study by Nikolas Coupland and Hywel Bishop that investigated how people perceive different types of British accents, looking specifically at whether some accents were evaluated more positively than others.

Credit: https://www.voices.com/blog/quiz-british-slang-uk-colloquilisms/

In their 2007 study, they report on a BBC survey that collected 5010 respondents’ evaluations of 34 different accents. To assess these evaluations, they created an online survey where participants where asked a series of questions about the prestige and pleasantness of the 34 accents. This included asking participants direct questions such as “How much prestige do you think is associated with this accent?”, and “How pleasant do you think this accent sounds?”. The participants rated their judgements electronically via a digital survey by clicking a seven-point rating scale, where 1 is low rating whilst 7 is high rating. This is what is referred to as a 'label study' in that participants were not asked to listen to a recording of the accent, but were simply asked to respond to different accent 'labels', such as 'Asian English' or 'Southern Irish'.

Participants also were asked to indicate where in the UK they were from, how old they were, and their gender. The researchers also asked a series of questions about whether the respondent liked hearing different accents to test whether their attitudes towards accents and dialects influenced their ratings of the different accent labels. 

Coupland and Bishop find that, for social attractiveness, accents such as Standard English, Southern Irish, and Scottish are generally positively evaluated, whilst accents such as Birmingham, South African, and Glasgow were typically down-rated – that is, they score much lower. For prestige, however, they observe a slightly different pattern. Received Pronunciation (or the ‘Queen’s English’) scores much higher in terms of prestige than it does for social attractiveness. Whilst accents such as Birmingham and Asian English score poorly across the two different scales.

Interestingly, accents such as Southern Irish English, Newcastle English and Afro-Caribbean English are rated far higher for attractiveness than for prestige, whereas London English, North American-accented English, South African-accented English and German-accented English are all ranked higher for prestige than for attractiveness.

Whilst these ratings reveal more general trends of the social evaluation of different UK accents, Coupland and Bishop suggest that these evaluations may be influenced by the respondents' social characteristics, such as whether they are male or female. Focusing just on ‘prestige’, on the whole, Coupland and Bishop find that women are more likely to evaluate a given accent as prestigious than men. They also find that where the respondent is based in the UK appears to play a role in their evaluation of a given accent, with participants more likely to evaluate in-group accents as more favourable than others. In other words, Scottish speaking participants were more likely to evaluate Scottish accents more positively than respondents from other parts of the country. Similarly, they also observe that the respondents’ age is likely to influence their evaluation, with the oldest age group tending to show a preference for their own accents than all other groups. Lastly, they observe that the more liberally-minded respondents who indicate that they appreciate accent variation were more likely to rate non-standard accents as more prestigious than their peers. 

So, what does this all mean? Well, Coupland and Bishop note several implications of this study. The first is that language use is influenced by ideology – that is a widespread system of ideas and values that governs a particular concept or social issue. For instance, they observe that there is a general tendency to rate ethnically linked accents (Asian and Afro-Caribbean) and some of the urban vernaculars (Birmingham, Liverpool, Glasgow) as lower in prestige and attractiveness than non-ethnically linked and rural accents. They argue that this is because there is a widespread belief that people should ‘speak properly’ and so accents that are further away from more ‘standard’ varieties are typically perceived to be less attractive and less prestigious than ones that are closer to the standard.

Whilst these findings may not at first seem very encouraging for speakers of non-standard varieties, Coupland and Bishop suggest it seems that there is seems to be a shift towards embracing more liberal attitudes towards accent variation, with younger respondents and those claiming that they like hearing different accents more likely to evaluate non-standard varieties as more prestigious and more socially attractive. So, it seems that although some people might think of certain accents as more attractive or prestigious than others, perceptions are gradually changing. 

Given the fourteen or so years since Coupland and Bishop conducted their study, it’s worth considering whether this liberal outlook has continued. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be focusing on the Accent Bias in Britain project which, among other questions, sought to investigate this issue. In the meantime, or more information on the project, you can visit the Accent Bias in Britain homepage. You can also find further educational resources, including a Language Investigation and a Teaching Unit on our Teach Real English! website.

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Coupland, Nikolas & Hywel Bishop (2007) Ideologised values for British accents. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 11 (1):74-93.



This summary was written by Christian Ilbury
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9841.2007.00311.x

Pride Month Special: Language, Sexuality & Identity

Content note: this article contains some references to homophobia.

No one could argue that LGBT rights in the UK have not made progress over the last decade or two. With the introduction of the Gender Recognition Act in 2004 and the successful campaign for same-sex marriage in 2013, today LGBT people have more and more protection under UK law. However, there is still some way to go before those who identify as LGBT experience the same levels of equality afforded to the rest of the population. Given this struggle for total equality, it is perhaps unsurprising that many of these themes emerge in the way LGBT people present themselves, including how they use linguistic features to mark aspects of their identity.

Lucy Jones of the University of Nottingham did a study on a group of LGBT youths, looking particularly at the way that they used language to construct their own identity. Jones noted that, with many of the above advancements, came a culture of what is known as homonormativity – the belief that sexual and romantic attraction should be between man and woman, as opposed to those of the same sex. This belief influences the way LGBT people live their lives and members of the community feel that they are under pressure to assimilate (i.e., become more similar to) mainstream society and adopt heterosexual or cisgender social norms.  

In her study, Jones wanted to see if this had an impact on the way that the youths discussed their identities.

Her research took place in a youth group that specifically supported those who identified as LGBT or who questioned their gender or sexual identity. Jones spent four months with the group, and did several interviews with members. She ended up taking data from five members, all of whom were white and cisgender, and identified either as lesbians or gay men.

Jones identified three ways in which these young people negotiated their identity. The first way was through the rejection of stereotypes – one participant deliberately distanced himself from the idea of a “stereotypical gay camp man”, rejecting the idea of “flaunting around the place”. The participant also compared being gay to horse-riding, saying that it would be silly to define people by their hobbies. Jones argued that this creates a disconnect between being gay and performing a gay identity, and hence deliberately distancing themselves from it.

The second way was through the discussion of “othering” by their heterosexual counterparts. When discussing the importance of Gay Pride Marches, the teenagers aligned themselves with gay people, and positioned themselves in opposition to heterosexuals by using the pronouns “we” and “they”. When quoting heterosexual acquaintances, one teenager repeatedly used the second person pronoun, but in the plural, such as “why do you have Pride?”. By reporting their speech in this way, the respondents show how they become ‘othered’ by heterosexual peers.

Finally, as might be expected following the above, negotiating the homophobia that they experienced formed a considerable part of how they constructed their identity. The teenagers reported that they had experience multiple homophobic incidents. Jones interprets this as a possible cause of why these individuals sought to distance themselves from overtly gay stereotypes.

Ultimately, what Jones’ paper shows is that, despite the advances that legislation has made, LGBT youth still have very difficult experiences that lead them to construct their identity in ways that adhere to mainstream norms and make themselves more like their heterosexual peers. Through an analysis of language, we can see that we have a long way to go to help LGBT peers feel accepted. 

Glossary - Cisgender: Someone whose gender identity matches the sex they were assigned at birth

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Jones, L. (2018) ‘I’m not proud, I’m just gay’: Lesbian and gay youths’ discursive negotiation of otherness. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 22(1), 55-76.

doi:10.1177/1363460719830343

This summary was written by Marina Merryweather

Like, it's just like a joke, no?

If you’ve spent even a day casually browsing the Internet, you’re probably aware of the stereotypes of a 'typical white girl'. She goes to Starbucks, she wears Uggs, she dyes her hair blonde and straightens it... it’s a similar concept across Anglophone spheres.

Not pictured: the Pumpkin Spice Latte.

There are, of course, language features associated with the stereotypical white girl too. And in this paper, Tyanna Slobe, a linguistic anthropologist, wanted to investigate how three different online performances utilised these resources to create their mock white girl characters. This relies on a concept known as indexicality – when certain groups use a particular feature more often, it can become associated with that group. For example, the use of the word like is often indexed with young people, as they have led the trend for it being used as a discourse marker.

Slobe also situated her work in the context of two different ideological perspectives. One is that of how mocking certain linguistic resources can perpetuate stigma against them: the language associated with white girls is often used to dismiss them as vacuous or unintelligent, and exploiting those resources can perpetuate that stereotype. On the other hand, they can be knowingly exploited in order to critique hegemonic identities in society. In the case of the stereotypical white girl, the identity can be satirised in order to point out the glaring omission of women of colour in cultural notions of femininity, and the problematic opinions that white women often hold.

Slobe looked at three different performances. One is a genre she describes as Saviour, a form of performance to encourage superficial notions of gender equality. One comes from the popular Sh*t white girls say Youtube series, looking specifically at two videos that discuss what white girls say to black and Latina girls. The third is from the social media platform Vine’s series  Teenage girl problems, where the white girl character is performed in a way that mocks her stereotypical concerns.

Two of these performances contribute to further stigmatisation of the character. One example that Slobe gives of the Saviour genre is an interview with Lake Bell, who adopts creaky voice – where the vocal cords are compressed so that less air passes through them and they vibrate less frequently – to discuss what she calls a “sexy baby virus”. Through performing this voice and indexing it in such a way, she means to imply that young white girls performing these stereotypically feminine vocal traits are responsible for the sexism they encounter in the work place, and the attitudes towards such language. Similarly, in the Teenage girl problems Vine, his performance of the white girl uses exaggerated gestures, eye rolling, and creaky voice to contrast the slow and carefully articulated male character, whilst performing trivial and irrational concerns. By indexing the communicative cues with the concerns, the Vine star portrays an ideological stance that ultimately stigmatises girlhood.

On the other hand, the Sh*t white girls say videos use the persona in a critical way. Franchesca Ramsay, the creator of Sh*t white girls say to black girls, also uses creaky voice to highlight parts of the white girl’s dialogue, but particularly to draw attention to the character’s racism, such as when she describes hair texture that feels like a “Brillo pad”. Similarly, she uses the right? tag question associated with white girl speech to highlight the affirmation the character wants for a racist statement. By specifically parodying the racist elements of the character, these resources satirise the white girl’s behaviour as an embodiment of naïve racism.

Ultimately, there are a number of ideological stances that the white girl character can be used for. So next time you see a meme featuring the character, you could think to yourself about what stance is being adopted, and what ideologies are being perpetuated or criticised as a result.

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Slobe, Tanyanna (2018). Style, stance, and social meaning in mock white girl. Language in Society 47(4): 541-567.

doi:10.1017/S004740451800060X

This summary was written by Marina Merryweather

"I'm so Fancy"

Remember Iggy Azalea? Well, if you were just about anywhere in 2014, you might recall her smash hit song 'Fancy' featuring Charli XCX. In fact, that song was so popular that it earnt Iggy Ig's a Billboard award for the 'biggest ever hit for a female rapper'. But whilst she might be one of the most recognisable Hip-Hop artists of the current period, you might also recall that she's faced quite a lot of criticism too with many referencing the difference between her ethnicity (as a White Australian) and her distinctive rapping-style which has been referred to as a 'Blaccent' (literally a 'black accent'). 

But, why does Iggy sound 'Black'? And why do people perceive Iggy to have a 'Blaccent'? These are two questions that Maeve Eberhardt  & Kara Freeman decided to investigate in their 2015 paper.

By transcribing Iggy's entire back catalogue of albums, EPs and mixtapes, Eberhardt & Freeman set about analysing her distinctive rapping style. With newspaper articles referring to Iggy's 'Blaccent', the authors examined her use of features typically found in African American English (AAE) in her rap music. As a speech variety, AAE is typically spoken by Black individuals (i.e., African American) speakers who live in parts of Northern America.

One feature that the authors decided to explore is 'copula absence' which describes the tendency for speakers to pronounce the sentence "he's in here" as "he in here" - in other words, the verb 'be' (is/are) is absent from the sentence.

Whilst this feature occurs in many varieties (including some varieties of British English), in AAE, researchers have found certain patterns that seem unique to the variety. In particular, they have found that speakers tend to use higher amounts of copula absence before certain types of words and that this feature is more likely when the verb occurs before gonna as in "she gonna go home" and least likely before noun-phrases "Marie's in there".

Remarkably, by analysing Iggy's rapping style, Eberhardt & Freeman found good evidence to suggest that she wasn't just using copula deletion randomly but, rather, her use of this feature mirrored the same patterns that native AAE speakers exhibit! However, when they analysed Iggy's interviews, they found that she rarely uses copula deletion.

Iggy in an interview - sounds Australian, huh? 

So, why does Iggy use a variety that's typically spoken by Black African Americans in her rap but not in interviews? One such explanation has to do with the music industry and genre that she's working in: Hip-Hop. As an art-form that originated in Black communities in the U.S., many of these artists come from this community and typically those who speak AAE - think of Jay Z or Lil Wayne. As such, the language associated with this genre of music - the 'Hip-Hop Nation Language' (HHNL; Alim, 2004) - is largely based in AAE and shares many features of this variety.

In order to get by and sell records, it seems then that you need to use the 'code' that's typical of the genre and rap in HHNL. But, as a White Australian, Iggy doesn't really look or sound like a Hip-Hop artist... Hip-Hop in an Australian accent doesn't seem to work! Herein lies the explanation for her performance of AAE.

Eberhardt & Freeman argue that she uses AAE to sound like a 'real' Hip-Hop artist in order to sell records. And she does this quite well- as we've seen she uses the same features in the right 'slots' as a native speaker. But, whilst she might be able to speak AAE like a native speaker, it seems that her performance is still pretty problematic. In fact, there are virtually hundreds of articles on Iggy's 'cultural appropriation' of AAE, with many referencing her use of this variety and her lack of authenticity as a White Australian.

So whilst Iggy may be claiming to be a "a white girl with a flow ain't been seen before" it seems that she's not the "realest" after all...

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Eberhardt, Maeve & Kara Freeman (2015) ‘First things first, I'm the realest’: Linguistic appropriation, white privilege, and the hip‐hop persona of Iggy Azalea. Journal of Sociolinguistics. 19(3):303-327.

This summary was written by Christian Ilbury

https://doi.org/10.1111/josl.12128

Is the use of racial slurs really just black and white?

Slurs are terms, such as slut, nigger or bitch, that are typically used to offend members of certain groups.  They are largely considered as the most taboo and offensive of all linguistic expressions. 

In his article exploring their use, Adam Croom firstly distinguishes between three types of terms:  those that are descriptive, those that are expressive and lastly, those that are slurring. A descriptive term is used to objectively identify some feature of an individual or group.  For example, in the utterance ‘S is an African American’ the term is neutral and shows no opinion on the speaker’s part.  Expressive terms, on the other hand, express the speaker’s own heightened emotional state.  So, a speaker may say ‘S is a fucker’ and express anger towards S for some reason but not by targeting a particular descriptive feature.  However, if a speaker says ‘S is a nigger’ this is a slurring term as a certain descriptive feature has been picked out and the individual put down on that basis, in this case on their race.

Croom refers to the concept of ‘face’, which is the desire for respect from other speakers within your linguistic community.  ‘Face’ is a type of social currency as, just like money, you can get more things done with the more positive ‘face’ or respect you have.  Offending people threatens their ‘face’ and complimenting people adds to their ‘face’, with slurring terms often used in this bargaining process.  In fact, the use of racial slurs can be extremely destructive to the actual character of their targets and speakers who use them are contributing to a history of derogation that harms their social identities. 

Croom quotes the example of how slaves were treated like domestic animals by their masters.  Although it is clear that humans and livestock are in no way alike, the easiest way for the slave owners to deal with their own behaviour was to dehumanize the slaves in their minds and think of them as animals.  The slave owners’ language closely reflected this way of thinking, hence the term ‘nigger’ which for them encompassed the meaning of ‘emotionally shallow, simple-minded, sexually licentious and prone to laziness’ and is clearly a negative and derogatory term for an African American. Interestingly slurs are also sometimes used to belittle targets who are not typically associated with the original slur.  Croom quotes research carried out by M. MacDonald* in 2000 amongst African American communities where he reported that the term ‘white nigger’ was sometimes used by black speakers to refer to white people who were thought of as being beneath the speaker socially. 

Intriguingly, slurs may sometimes be used by the very members of the group they were originally aimed at.  In this case, groups of speakers seem to have adopted slurs that were historically used against them and somehow claimed them for their own, giving them positive connotations. At first glance this is a puzzling phenomenon; however traditionally minority groups will often distinguish themselves by turning standard society’s norms on their heads.  So, for example, many black inner-city residents may feel that the wider white society has abandoned them and disrespects them.  In response, an oppositional culture develops and spreads within these groups.  Anything associated with conventional white society is seen as square and the cool things are the opposite things: untied trainers, low slung trousers, caps worn backwards, etc. Running alongside this, such groups will adapt their speech styles too and adopt words traditionally used against them, reversing their original intention in a way, which is exactly what has been seen to have happened with the word ‘nigger’.  Amongst young black people, the word now has positive connotations and this has extended to some extent to young white fans of hip-hop.  ‘Nigger’ is an oft-used term in the hip-hop culture and young white fans usually have no previous knowledge of the word’s history and will therefore also use it as a positive term.  The concept of ‘face’ is reversed as speakers use slurs to actually compliment each other and signal respect.

Croom makes the point that this is not only true of racial terms but also of sexist ones such as slut and bitch and homosexual terms such as queer.  It is a fascinating field of study and one which merits a lot more research.

*MacDonald, M., 2000. All Souls: A Family Story from Southie. Ballantine, New York.

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Croom, Adam M. (2013) How to do things with slurs: Studies in the way of derogatory words. Language and Communication 33: 177-204.

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.langcom.2013.03.008

This summary was written by Gemma Stoyle

Gentlemen before ladies?

     Does word order perpetuate outdated images about women and men?                             

You probably say pots and pans, not pans and pots, and lords and ladies, not ladies and lords. Why, though? What makes us always produce one of the words in a pair first?

A previous post on this blog discussed ordering in word pairs in general (which way round?). Heiko Motschenbacher, though, argues that pairs involving personal nouns like lords and ladies need special treatment since, unlike pots and pans, pairs that refer to females and males can reflect and perpetuate power differences in society. The term that comes first in the pair is usually thought to represent the social role with the higher social ranking. This is why guidelines for non-sexist language often recommend placing the female term in first position, to symbolically reverse the traditional order.

Motschenbacher analysed 30 frequent mixed-gender word pairs in the 88 million word written part of the British National Corpus. These pairs occurred a total of 8, 156 times. In addition to general terms denoting men and women such as girl/boy, he/she, the pairs included address terms (ladies/gentlemen), nobility terms (lords/ladies), occupational terms (actor/actress) traditionally heterosexual role terms (husband/wife) and kinship terms (aunt/uncle).  She found that the order of the words in the pairs perpetuated images about the social roles of women and men that now seem outdated. Men came first in general, especially in pairs referring to professions (doctors and nurses) and the nobility. The conventional ordering in sons and daughters reflects, she claims, previous traditions of sons being more important than daughters. The ordering in word pairs related to marriage reflects traditional gender discourses: men dominate during marriage (husband and wife) but women come first when they are not yet married (bride and bridegroom), no longer married (widow and widower) or when raising children (mum and dad).

Other factors affect word order too. Just as with non-personal nouns, words with a smaller number of syllables tend to come first (hence, perhaps, ladies and gentlemen). This tendency is more common, though, when it is the male form that is shorter. The form of the word is also relevant, with less complex words occurring first (prince and princess, for example). The sex of the author had a small effect, with male authors using man and woman more often than woman and man, compared to female authors and mixed sex (co) authors. Male authors also had the highest rates of father and mother, preferring this to the more usual mother and father. The sex of the target audience also had an effect: higher female-first rates were found only in writing stereotypically targeted towards women (for example, in a book entitled The Art of Starvation).

In most cases though, the strongest factor overall was whether the word referred to a male or a female. This corresponds to research on word pairs in general, which finds that conceptually more salient semantic features prevail over other factors as far as the ordering of terms is concerned. Male-first predominance is not absolute though: as we have seen, there are some domains where females come first, reflecting traditional views about gendered social roles.

Motschenbacher does not want to make suggestions for language reform, arguing that for some pairs it would be hard to find gender-neutral alternatives and that in any case most recommendations are likely to be biased in some way. She is in favour instead of raising awareness of the fact that no linguistic choices are neutral. Individuals have the choice of shifting away from a traditional ordering that perpetuates harmful discourses about socially ‘appropriate’ roles of the two sexes; we need, therefore, to make up our minds about which messages we wish to convey. We should bear in mind, though, that putting females first is not necessarily the best way forward, since it can entrench domain-specific female stereotypes (in mother and father, for example). Word pairs that specify the two genders, she points out, are almost invariably connected to gender inequality.  

It’s much easier talking about pots and pans, isn’t it?!

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Motschenbacher, Heiko (2013) Gentlemen before ladies? A corpus-based study of conjunct order in personal binomials. Journal of English Linguistics 41 (3): 212-242.

doi. 10.1177/0075424213489993

This summary was written by Jenny Cheshire