Language and women

"I can go on to tell you that I saw two major problems -- for women -- with
English and its close linguistic relatives. (1) Those languages lacked
vocabulary for many things that are extremely important to women, making it
cumbersome and inconvenient to talk about them. (2) They lacked ways to express
emotional information conveniently, so that -- especially in English -- much of
that information had to be carried by body language and was almost entirely
missing from written language. This characteristic (which makes English so well
suited for business) left women vulnerable to hostile language followed by the
ancient "But all I said was...." excuse; and it restricted women to the largely
useless "It wasn't what you said, it was the way you said it!" defense against
such hostility. In constructing Láadan, I focused on giving it features intended
to repair those two deficiencies."
Suzette Haden Elgin, linguist and author
(see her website here)

I have long been intrigued by the native tongue series of books by this author – I have read the first 2 books of the trilogy. They are based around the conviction that language helps construct reality , and that the lack of feminine input into language historically has therefore impoverished (or even damaged) culture. I certainly believe that language and culture interact with each other, that language is very powerful, and I wonder what changes to culture would occur with a female oriented language, though unlike the author’s perspective in the first 2 books – which I gather changed somewhat by the third - I am not sure it would accomplish redemption, for I think divine intervention is necessary!

I came across the quote above recently, and felt sympathy to the vulnerability of women to hostile language she speaks about – many many times I have known someone was using language in an aggressive or manipulative fashion, yet when asked to explain why, found it very difficult to form my perceptions into words that could be readily understood by the other – particularly when that other was male. Women were much more likely to immediately understand the hostile intent in language without needing an explanation. Though these gender distinctions do not always hold. So I was intrigued by the possibility that this comes about because of a language that isn’t geared towards female perception. I’ve had a look at the language she constructed and it does have words for things that you think ahhh yes, a word for that is good. For instance, it is a language rich in emotion words, for different types of love, anger, loneliness and so on. It is almost commonplace these days to see English as lacking in terms for love – that said, it does help you see the common thread between different love experiences – romantic love and love for your children have differences, and yet the intensity of feeling has a lot in common too.

If you look at the biblical world view, language is seen as of incredible importance. For instance , one title for Jesus is the Word. God creates by word. The Tower of Babel punishes human arrogance by the multiplication of languages so that they could not understand each other. I wonder whether one thing that makes us in the image of God (in distinction from animals) is that we have language. In a sinful world, language can be both illuminating and deceptive – it has power for good and evil.

Well, here you can see my first degree intersecting with my second (first honours in literature, then I did honours in theology).