Universität GH Essen
Anglistik; Wintersemester 2000/2001

Contrastive Sociolinguistics

Contrasts of gender, case and tense 
in English and Serbo-Croatian

by

Tamara Kostic

Introduction

1. Gender in English and Serbo-Croatian
1.1. Grammatical gender
1.2. Natural gender
1.3. Social gender

2. Methods of specifying gender
2.1.The word formation of female forms
2.1.1. Introduction
2.1.2. Serbo-Croatian
2.1.3. English
2.2. Grammatical methods
2.2.1. Tense
2.2.2. Case
2.3. Lexical methods

3. Methods of gender abstraction
3.1. Grammatical methods
3.2. Laxical methods

4. Social and political aspects of language usage
4.1. Language acquisition
4.2. Politics and sex discrimination
4.3. Solutions for a non-sexist usage of language

Conclusion

Bibliography

Introduction

WHAT IS SOCIOLINGUISTICS?

"Sociolinguistics is a term including the aspects of linguistics applied toward the connections between language and society, and the way we use it in different social situations. It ranges from the study of the wide variety of dialects across a given region down to the analysis between the way men and women speak to on another. Sociolinguistics often shows us the humorous realities of human speech and how a dialect of a given language can often describe the age, sex, and social class of the speaker; it codes the social function of a language."⁰

One can assume that in southern countries where women are thought to be more under pressure by men, this might be also expressed in the native language.
Indeed, not only in southern countries but also in numerous European languages three basic facts which express the patriarchal status in most countries are apparent:

1. It is obvious that the female gender is semantically of lower range than the male form. In English, "master" indicates a positive connotation while the female form "mistress" indicates something negative. In Italian, "filosofo" means "philosopher" and the female form "filosofessa" stands for "imaginary wife".
2. Male forms often are seen as revaluating while female forms are perceived as degrading: "She is man enough to ...", or in German, "Im Beruf steht Birgit ihren Mann." And contrary: "Tom behaves girlish.".
3. Male forms that are syntactically or morphologically marked refer not only to a group of men but also to a mixed group of female and male persons. For example, when there are 99 women and one man in a lecture-hall, the male form must be taken as the conventional one. In Germany, for instance, it is not common to say "Liebe Studentinnen".

Yet it must be said that with changing times (with the help of feminism, the discussion about political correctness and the need for equalization of women) in some languages it is accepted to refer to both genders. For example, in German and Serbo-Croatian one would say "Liebe Studentinnen und Studenten" / "Po_tovane studentkinje, po_tovani studenti". This is however, not in English "Dear students". Here one probably would say "Ladies and gentlemen."
It is not only in the case of syntax and semantics that women are in a worse position. Women are also at a disadvantage in everyday situations, such as discussions in mixed groups. Numerous studies about male and female conversation have shown that women do not have equal opportunities to be heard. Deborah Tannen works out the differences between men and women in conversation. She differentiates the "Report Talk" of men and the "Rapport Talk" of women and concludes that "...rapport style of relating doesn′t transfer well to the public arena where men vie for ascendancy and speak much more than women."¹
How and why female and male expressions developed the way they have done is not the topic of this essay. There are many other interesting works about language change in society, especially between women and men.²

In this essay I will describe and compare the "femalisation" of words in English and Serbo-Croatian. The questions are: Which one of the two languages "treats" women better? Which one seems to be more patriarchal? Does one of the two languages discriminate women more than the other?
To answer these questions I will first give a survey of the grammatical gender of the two languages. For a better understanding I will also add some examples in other well known languages. I will then proceed to describe the patterns of specifying gender in personality terms, and in case and tense. I will evaluate the use of abstract forms, that can indicate female or male in English and in Serbo-Croatian. I will finally discuss social aspects and mention why women and men use language the way they do.

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0 www.uni-essen.de/anglistik/; Website from the University of Oregon, Explore!Linguistics

1 Tannen, Deborah, You Just Don`t Understand, p.451.

2 For example: Hellinger, Marlis, Sprachwandel und feministische Sprachpolitik. Internationale Perspektiven, 1985