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INTERCULTURAL PEDAGOGY: THEORY AND PRACTICE DOI: 10.24411/2470-1262-2019-10059
УДК (UDC) 808-56
Asmat Ardzenadze, Marina Devadze, Batumi State University, Batumi, Georgia
For citation: Ardzenadze Asmat, Devadze Marina, (2019).
Gender Characteristics of Verbal behavior on the Background of Intercultural Communication.
Cross-Cultural Studies: Education and Science Vol. 4, Issue 4 (2019), pp. 35-43 (in USA)
Manuscript received 23/09/2019 Accepted for publication: 20/11/2019 The authors have read and approved the final manuscript.
CC BY 4.0
GENDER CHARACTERISTICS OF VERBAL BEHAVIOR ON THE BACKGROUND OF INTERCULTURAL COMMUNICATION
ГЕНДЕРНЫЕ ОСОБЕННОСТИ РЕЧЕВОГО ПОВЕДЕНИ НА ФОНЕ МЕЖКУЛЬТУРНОГО ОБЩЕНИЯ
Abstract
The article deals with the results on verbal behavior in male and female writing language and dialogues of characters in fiction. The differences between male and female speakers in terms of verbosity have been analyzed. The findings show that according to the gender stereotypes females are more verbose than males in the way of differing males and females' speech across domains, cultures, and developmental stages. The paper provides a descriptive overview of the gender differences in terms of impersonality and verbal communication. The findings also cover the key methodological issues related to assessing gender differences in verbal behavior.
Keyword: Gender, gender language, verbal behavior, verbal communication, cross-cultural communication, gender stereotype, gender communication
Introduction
The twentieth century was rich with scientific innovations including one of the most important one, the so called "Linguistic Shift" in philosophy when the role of language acquired new meaning and dimension: It was recognized that language is not the only an instrument to express opinions and serve as a mediator between humans and the world, but also a mean to shape individuals and the
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world around them (see Richard Roth's monograph „Linguistic Turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method", 1967). Intensive study of linguistic pragmatics led to interdisciplinary research objects, and developed communication theory, cognitive linguistics, linguoculturology, ethnolinguistics, sociolinguistics, psycholinguistics. The gender problem took a significant place in these linguistic branches. One of the most important issues discussed in the context of new scientific achievements is lexicographic description of gender. This issue is extremely topical due to the following reasons: to recognize and state the active processes ongoing in the vocabulary that reflect social changes in the society, changes of cultural values, and also the new linguistic data, resulted from the process of modern language research, including the linguistic gender studies.
The gender in the language presents the peculiarities of women and men's languages. Consequently, gender linguistics studies the language stereotypes characteristic for women and men. The difference between languages spoken by women and men is obscured, which is, in most cases, explained by social factors.
Theoretical background
An individual, despite his/her wish, is submerged in the communication space, verbal and nonverbal interactions, as a part of the group of persons or group of random contacts. Social, cultural, ethnological and psychological problems are perceived differently by women and men. Dissimilarities between men and women's behavior are the subject of gender research (Zherebkin, 2001:56).
Gender studies is one of the fastest growing fields in modern linguistic. It has been more substantially studied in the English, German and Russian linguistics, whereas, gender stereotypes are still understudied in Georgian linguistics. It should be noted that gender studies were enhanced by new approaches and achievements of linguistics in the second half of the 20th century. The theory of speech acts and speech tactics and strategies are directly related to the socialist-specificity of gender.
In contemporary science, we find the following definition of gender: "gender is a construct of conventional ideology, which finds itself in the accumulation of ideas and concepts that express what does it mean to be a woman or a male in a given culture, the concept of "gender" reflects the model of the socially and culturally defined behavior of the person, which will be accepted in a given society at a certain historical stage. According to the Russian scientist A. Kirilina, the concept of "gender" focuses on social and cultural factors of the individual and not biologically-determined sex" (Kirilina 1998:5). The first definition of gender is related to feminist analysis. This analysis reveals women's role in various social situations. In the United States, gender is considered as a feminist term, which implies social aspects linked to the individuals of a particular sex. When we talk about the existence of female and male, we mean biological difference, and when we talk about gender it is related to socio-cultural definition; we mean differences between social status of women and men. A gender methodology theorist, famous American scientist Joan Scott explains gender as "the element of social interaction that draws the difference between the sex and the main path of their power." The new stage of gender linguistics begins in 1990. Maltz / Borker created "Theory of Two Cultures" in this period, which refers to linguistic interaction among men and women, who represent two different cultures not as ethnically different individuals. The following theory has become topical in England and Germany. The language of men and women is discussed as different sub-cultural phenomena and relationship between them is a form of intercultural communication. Russian researcher E. Goroshko notes that in consideration of gender studies three key approaches to the West are as follows:
• The essence of the first approach is to interpret the social nature of the language of men and women, and aims to identify the language differences that can be explained by the peculiarity of the distribution of social forces in society. Besides, the language of men and women is considered as a functional language derived from the main language used in cases where participants of communication are at different levels of social hierarchy.
• Second psycholinguistic approach makes weak linguistic peculiarities of behavior of men and women according to scientific point of view. For researchers, who work on the mentioned subject, definition of statistical indices and mean parameters is essential. They create a psycho-socialistic theory of speech that is characteristic for women and men.
• The third approach emphasizes the cognitive aspect of differences in the gender linguistic behaviors. It is important for them not only to determine frequency of differences and its functional fulfilling, but to create consistent linguistic models in the cognitive basis of language category.
In modern scientific paradigm all, these approaches are discussed as one of the complementary forces, which have one common definition. According to Goroshko, first, usually, the research object is studied based on sex and language interdependence. This follows from the question of how gender is expressed in language: nomination system, vocabulary, syntax, sex category, etc. The main reason for this researches is to describe and explain how demonstrate gender in language, what is kind of assessments are done in the language of men and women, and in which semantic spheres they are spread. On the other hand, gender studies in the language can be the study of sex conduct behavior, the separation and description of the speech of women and men. In addition, it should be noted that gender studies are often interdisciplinary and comparative in linguistics. Finally, as scientists note, "practically any linguistic spheres can be described by gender perspective" (Goroshko 1998:48-64). The facts of equality of women and men in the language are the subject of feminist linguistics. It is believed that the image of the universe is observed in the eyes of men, so the language is not only anthropocentric (people-oriented) but also the androcentric (man-oriented) (Kurdadze 2012:77). There is an opinion that textual confirmation of social inequality is more evident in grammar languages. From this point of view, English and Russian languages are well studied. There is no grammatical gender in Georgian language, so this Georgian literature and folklore require a more specific approach to gender asymmetry and gender as a whole.
Modern gender linguistics is considered as the language of women and men. Live speech is directly related to both classical and modern communication theory, because first of all "Communication is the way by which we can tell the story ", on the other hands, it is always appraiser, express worldview of participants at time of relationship (Bonvilian 1997:67). Adelaide Haas, American linguist, has created a term - Genderlect, which marks characteristic lects for men and women speech (1979).
Statement of the Problem and Methods
The objective of the dissertation is to study the language behavior of women and men in the Georgian culture, and to identify and contrast the gender-related differences/similarities in other cultures. The empiric material was represented by examples of the Georgian and English language fiction. The language units used by women and men, which are used as gender markers in the languages, were taken by the method of choice. Since these units have additional connotations while functioning in different types of discourses, we tried to present the analyzed data in the diachronic aspect. The research employs the complex methodology. The methods and designs use
in the research are: quantitative method of the data analysis, linguistics descriptive methods, cross linguistic equivalence comparative method.
Received data
Are women conservative towards the changes in the linguistic norms? Some linguists tend to believe women to be norm-oriented, based on the idea that women always play principal role in raising the new generation; respectively women attempt to speak standard language. The similar tendency can be noted in the speech analysis. Women focus on using the prestigious speech patterns. When being bilingual, women prefer the language that would ensure the success of their children in the future.
An experiment was conducted to dermine whether there is a stereotypical perception of the the speech of women and men in terms of using lexical units: the poems of the relatively less known poets were selected and then read to the group consisting of male and female recipients who had to guess who wrote them and suggest their arguments for the decision. This had to be done in written.The experiment involves 30 students of between ages 16 and 17 from the twelfthgrade: thereof 12 malesand 18 females. The gender of the poets were correctly guessed by 16 participants (7 males and 9 females), and inaccurately by 12participants (6 males and 8 females). In our opinion, the most important outcome of the experiment was the justification of their assumptions offered by the participants: this indicates that there is fixed vision on what is typical for men and women's speech. The data of the conducted experiment led us to the conclusion that the Georgian youth displays the following gender stereotypes:
1) Characteristics of women's speech are: emotional (tenderness, warmth, affection) expression, revealed through usage of the respective lexical units, wide range of tonality, frequency of interjections and particles;
2) Characteristics of men's speech are: neutral units, strict tone, less emotionally colored expression, seriousness, and even possible aggressiveness.
It also has to be noted that there are no strict restrictions to this.
As for the misconceptions about the authors' gender, this must have been determined by the reasons below:
1) First, it has to be noted that the gender priorities of the in selection of the linguistic units and speech forms is not strict and universal determinant, they are somewhat amorphic and shifting;
2) Second, the experiment involved lyrical poems that falls into a specific field, in which even men who are in love expresses the emotions excessively.
Therefore, in our opinion, the main outcome of the conducted experiment is confirmation of the existence of the gender stereotypes.
Gender factor often has a great significance in any genuine piece of work, since it varies in different cultures. Translation itself is a form of cross-cultural communication and therefore translators consider not only linguistic unitstranslation but conveying the cultural connotations and subtext. Translators have to convey the gender-based details e ncoding the cultural information for new recipients of the target text.
The target text is 'bi-cultural'. To certain extent, translation undergoes the adaptation with the cultural recipient. That is why the translator has to compromise. If gender factor is not considered during translation this may result in failure of transferring important cultural nuances which is
unacceptable. Generally, the analysis of the theoretical material showed that the meaning of the term 'gender' is not completely unfolded, and sometimes leads to the terminological misunderstanding. For some scientists, gender is purely grammatical phenomenon, whereas other sees it as a biological or social issue. Respectively, it is understandable that gender linguistics is viewed as a complex issue in translation studies.
Translation from English, Russian, and other languages into Georgian frequently faces certain problems conveying the grammatical categories, since gender in Georgian is not manifested grammatically, but is expressed through the lexical means. The opposite is also the case when translating from Georgian translator has to control so that not to mix the primary and secondary gender markers (articles, morpheme, complying adjective forms, verb forms, etc.). Translating fiction is even more complicated by this when, for example in the detective stories any information about the culprit has to be concealed until certain point, including leaking information like the gender of the suspect. Fiction is the main source of the national and cultural information and expresses the national mentality shaped in the turmoil of the centuries. Therefore, the speech priorities of literary characters reflect the gender stereotypes of the time. As it has already indicated gender linguistics is a recent branch of linguistics, and drawing the common picture of the gender characteristics is a complicated task since the peculiarities of the phonetic, morphemic, lexical, stylistic and syntactic markers of the female and male speech is studied within the frame of certain languages and cultures.
Fiction is the main source of the national and cultural information and expresses the national mentality shaped in the turmoil of the centuries. Therefore, the speech priorities of literary characters reflect the gender stereotypes of the time. As it has already indicated gender linguistics is a recent branch of linguistics, and drawing the common picture of the gender characteristics is a complicated task since the peculiarities of the phonetic, morphemic, lexical, stylistic and syntactic markers of the female and male speech is studied within the frame of certain languages and cultures.
O.Jespersen believes that the difference between the male and female's verbal speech is hardly noticeable at the phonetic and morphological levels of the European languages. Differences are mostly found at the lexical level, and is mainly attributed to the concept of taboo, on the one hand: existence of taboo on using certain verbal forms (for example, sexisms); and the social hierarchy, on the other hand: men have higher social prestige, and respectively, linguistic privileges (Jespersen 1922:237).
In the article "Peculiarities of the Male and Female Speech at the Phonetical and Lexical Language Levels", T.P.Zhiltsova and A.A.Kurdelia published the results of the analysis of the women and men's Russian speech and its characteristics at two levels: phonetical and lexical levels, and made the following conclusions:
1. The tendency shows that women extend vowels, whereas men try to use short vowels;
2. Loss of vowels is noticed in men's speech;
3. Sharp difference is observed in elongation of the consonants in the men's speech, whereas the women's speech tends towards more softness-based assimilation.
At the syntactic level, the gender characteristics are represented at the sentence structure level, its length, and distribution of the members of the sentence.
The analysis of the differences between the women and men's speech in fiction has been elaborated through long period of time. Women have always been characterized as week,
emotional, and neurotic creatures, whereas men were considered as strong, aggressive, and dominant beings, reflected in their internal as well as external features.
We have analyzed the gender characteristics at the lexical level in the novel by Jane Austen Pride and Prejudice, written in 1813. We have selected two male characters Darcy and Bingley and two women characters Elisabeth and Jane to single out the characteristics of the heroes in the aforementioned novel through contrasting use of nouns and adjectives. The results of our analysis shows that in her novel Pride and Prejudice the author, supposedly, highlights the inner features of men, and external features of women; as for the inner feelings, these are likewise typical for male and female characters. This leads us to the conclusion that the English woman writer in the 19th century is affected by the gender world image of that century, when a woman was considered as a sensitive, emotional creature, whereas a man, on the other hand, occupies the leading position and women are dependent on them.
When doing translation, a translator first needs to consider the content and the entire fabula, the value that were treasured in the 19th century, and the gender factor to deliver the perfect translation. In particular, we have to pay close attention to the lexical units describing the characters inner emotions and features, as well as their appearance, and analyses the mean these units are used in the text.
In our opinion, one of such feature is reflected in usage of one and the same adjective in different contextual meaning in men and women's speech. Namely, an adjective 'young' nominates the different age range in case of men and women nowadays; however, in the 19th century this difference was extremely big, as young women were wedded at the age of 18-19, and at 23-24 they were considered 'old socks' and no longer were referred to as 'young'. However, the man over 30 still could have been considered rather young. Such ethno cultural details have to be considered when translating. It also has to be noted that the author's gender (a woman in this case) affects the results of our evaluation. Thus, we plan to analyze the features of the characters created by the male author of the same period in the future. The value of analyzing the text lies in uncovering the importance of the gender linguistic approach based on the gender markers used in fiction. Selection of the efficient translation strategy requires consideration of these gender markers and understanding of the place of translation units in its structure. Less studied gender speech in the Georgian literature requires special interest to preserve the gender-driven characteristics of the original text in translation.
One of the efficient research methods in translation studies is the comparative analysis of the target and source texts. We have analyzed J.Austin (Pride and Prejudice) and H.Fielding's (Bridget) novels, the source and their translation into Georgian using the continuous selection method at three levels of language: morphological, lexical, and syntactic.
The morphological level is marked with the gender characteristics expressed in the category of gender. The contemporary English language, which has analytical structure, the gender is expressed only in the lexical category and has no formal manifestation. The differentiation of the gender is possible through correlation with the third person singular pronoun, and is not differentiated in the Georgian language (she, he, it). The gender category is also revealed through the context in the Russian language, even the word endings express gender, which probes a problem in Georgian. Therefore, this purpose is served by the context in the original, and grammatical category of gender in the text of translation. This makes Bridget Jones's Diary by Fielding especially interesting.
Both authors (Austin and Fielding) actively use linguistic elements typical for women and men's speech, expressed in usage of the different vocabulary, syntactic structures in the women and men's speech. For example:
"Tou are considering how insupportable it would be to pass many evenings in this manner— in such society; and indeed I am quite of your opinion. I was never more annoyed! The insipidity, and yet the noise—the nothingness, and yet the self-importance of all those people! What would I give to hear your strictures on them!" (J. Austen, 1992:17).
H.Fielding puts the following words in the mouth of the woman furious at her fate:
"Anyway, have got giant traysizedbar of Cadbury's Dairy Milk left over from Christmas on dressing table, also amusing jokegin and tonic miniature. Am going to consume them and have fag"(Filding, 1997:14).
It is difficult to determine who these thoughts belong to in this example, if we did not know the plot of the novel.
"She started saying she wanted to be paidfor doing the housework, and she'd wasted her life being our slave" (H.Filding, 1997:30).
At the lexical level, the gender characteristics are extremely vivid as the description of the characters in the novel, their actions, manners, etc. are revealed This is the principal mean of expressing the gender characteristics. The first significant sign is expressing the gender through the respective pronouns. The pronoun that denotes the gender performs other functions, too such as replacement of a noun, etc. Personal, possessive, reflective pronouns also formally mark gender at the morphological level and serve as the mean of conveying the meaning in full. The replacement of nouns by personal, possessive, and reflective pronouns, etc. is found in the Georgian language too, although words like 'man' or 'woman' have to be added to indicate gender.
„How dare he say you were getting too serious by asking to go on holiday with him?' yelled Sharon. 'What is he talking about?" (H.Filding, 1997:16).
Lexical segment, causing the special interest, is the feministically and masculinely coloured vocabulary segment typical to women and men, and their actions.
Let us analyses several gender marked examples at the lexical level of the language, which represent feministic and masculine concepts. For example, „don't need to wash anyone else's socks".
In our opinion, it is a successful translation decision: the target text completely preserved the connotation of the source text and the author's intention to demonstrate that the protagonist's, Bridget's, speech is characterized by simple phrases. Such application of phrases is typical for women's speech. This immediately indicates that the woman involved in the conversation does not belong to high society as the phrase above falls into the neutral lexis category. Consequently, it can be concluded that the gender-driven speech peculiarities at the lexical level of the language requires application of transformations in translation.
Women's prose is a social and cultural phenomenon which appeared in the social space as a result of the women's development. This was also reflected in the literary texts that described the world and social experience as seen by women.
Therefore, considering the fact that the gender research is one of the central issues in the modern linguistics, sociological and cultural studies, it can be assumed that gender aspects gain more important role in translation of fiction when building translation competence.
Conclusion
Gender is a multilayered phenomenon, the contemporary scientific paradigm though shifted it from the biology field into the social and cultural fields. Tis sociocultural nature is expressed through linguistic units and linguistic behavior typical for communication participant, either man or woman. The modern state of gender research is popular in psychology and sociology and requires enhancement and systematization of research in linguistics, because Homo Loquens men and Homo Loquens women are characterized by a different speech behavior. Study of the gender linguistics genesis, review of the scientific literature and fundamentals of the theoretical psycholinguistics of gender showed that the gender peculiarities of the verbal behavior is a crucial factor in the successful communication, which undergoes interesting transformation during the transcoding or translation. Unfortunately though, gender is relatively studied in the English, Russian, and German linguistics, whereas the similar researches in the Georgian linguistics and culture is limited. The experiment conducted for analysis of the Gender stereotypes of the Georgian youth resulted in the conclusion that the young people in Georgia are characterized by following:
a) Characteristics of women's speech are: emotional (tenderness, warmth, affection) expression, revealed through usage of the respective lexical units, wide range of tonality, frequency of interjections and particles;
b) Characteristics of men's speech are: neutral units, strict tone, less emotionally colored expression, seriousness, and even possible aggressiveness. It also has to be noted that there are no strict restrictions to this. Women's speech are characterized by the special forms of greetings and addressing, indirect way of expressing ideas, new words, new meanings of words. Features typical for men's speech include high number of nouns, followed by adjectives and verbs. Frequent usage of the lexical hyperbola and hyperbolic sentences are more typical for women.
Women and men differ in use of stylistic forms, phraseological units, and semantic word combinations. In contrast to men, women's speech is more diverse. They employ longer, more complex, and nonstandard sentences, whereas men use relatively short and stereotyped patterns in sentences. The women's scope of vocabulary is richer, and more differenciated. The level of pragmatics and cognition reveal the following differences: women efficiency is indirect in conversations, and direct in case of men. Women frequently use the interrogative sentences, whereas man use more imperative. Selection of the efficient translation strategy requires consideration of these gender markers and understanding of the place of translation units in its structure. Less studied gender speech in the Georgian literature requires special interest to preserve the gender-driven characteristics of the original text in translation. 42
References:
1. Austin, J. Pride and Prejudice, England, 1992; file:///F:/%C2%A0/jein%20austin/1342-pdf.pdf
2. Bonvillian, N. Language culture and communication, Washington, 1997
3. Fielding, H. Bridget Jones's Diary", London, 1997
4. Jespersen, O. Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin, New York; 1922
5. Kurdadze, R. Social-Cultural Aspects of Modern Georgian Language, Tbilisi, 2012
6. Rorty, R. „Linguistic turn: Recent Essays in Philosophical Method ", USA, Chicago, 1967
7. Goroshko E.I. Osobennosti muzhskogk b zhenskogo stilya rechi. Moaskwa, 1998
8. Zherebkin I.A. Vedenie v gendernie issledovaniya. Kharkov, 2001
9. Kirilina A. V. Razvitie gendernikh issledovanii v lingvistike. Moskwa. 1998
Information about the author:
Asmat Ardzenadze, Doctor of Philology, Associate Professor, Batumi State University. Email: asmat.ardzenadze@bsu.edu.ge Marina Devadze, Doctor of Philology. Email: mari8507@mail.ru
Acknowledgements:
Authors is grateful for the advice ofprof. M.V. Aroshidze from Batumi State University after Shota Restively for providing consultation on the technical editing of the article.
Contribution of the author. The author contributed equality to the present research.
