Journal Entry #1

In both the introduction to The Language and Sexuality Reader, and the first chapter of Gender Voices the observation that people adopt or are brought into different ways of speaking is brought to light. Furthermore, both introductory sections explain that these different (and therefore significant) ways of speaking can also be related to different states of existence as regards sex, gender, and sexuality. As we have continued to read in Gender Voices, we are confronted with multiple studies involving the accent, that is to say the pitch and tone of the different voices of men and women of varying age and social status. These observations and documentations have been laid out carefully and their phenomena explained. However, the conclusions that are to be drawn from these documents seem elusive.

I am thus, in the beginning of my exploration into linguistics troubled by uncertainty of the conclusions that can be drawn from these varying speech patterns. I find my mind’s general focus during these readings to be on worrying how these specific observations and systems of speech patterns can be translated into evidence regarding the culture in which they reside. It seems to me all to complicated and interwoven a system to be able to answer the questions which seem to have prompted investigations into the way we speak, which is namely: what does this say about us? I allow this to be the focus of my journal entry because however broad, I think it deserves some consideration trying to understand the basic phenomena. For example, the task of outlining the basic conditions under which these experiments were performed is meticulously handled in this book. Clearly these kinds of variants must be catalogued. From time period to class to region to language, all of these are relevant, and furthermore, all of these categories are present in each documented instance of speech. But if the simple description, that is to say the rendering in textbook form of these experiments is this laborious, what then of the conclusions that are to be drawn, which suffer under the same conditions, the same delicate web of interconnected elements of society. Is it possible to really, scientifically (as scientifically as this data has been recorded), draw conclusions from the evidence gathered? Or all any conclusions drawn a result of “common sense” or assumptions which are not objective and cannot help but be made by an observer working inside of the same culture? This problem is partially referenced I believe in the idea of meta language, or the problem of using language to talk about language, or in this case using a culture to explain that culture. But still I cannot help but be self-conscious of my own cultural biases which must in some way taint the observations what I could hope to gain. And, as an absurd contradiction, I am also anxious when presented with information that lies out of my personal scope of knowledge, for example the study of “prestige” as poled in British accents, that I will not be able to understand or draw any conclusions, culturally biased or not.


ct. 516