LANGUAGE AND GENDER
The linguist and the applied linguist
In spite of their main interest in gender-in-language, linguists also work at the other end on language-in-gender, where their theoretical concern with the change in language that is led by gender becomes a concern to intervene against the perceived injustice of linguistic sexism. Interestingly, and of course paradoxically, the act of intervention contravenes what we have suggested is their linguistic concern, that is with change. That is to say: if language is of its nature variable, over time and space, which might be called the linguistic creed, then any attempt to fix it, what Swift referred to as ‘ascertaining’, will necessarily fail. What must happen, surely, is that even those changes which are accepted very soon become overtaken by new non-deliberate changes, which may very well return the language in gender relation to the status quo, unless in the meantime those non-linguistic power relations themselves change and so render nugatory their operationalizing in language.
The skills the two professional groups call on in these areas are not all that dissimilar; it would be surprising if they were since the linguist may also work at the applied end and the applied linguist may research the area of some aspect of gender in language – although, as we have seen, always with some ameliorative outcome in view. But at the poles the skills and techniques are different: the linguist will analyze, survey and interview. The applied linguist will test, observe and, above all, evaluate. But more than anything the applied linguist, unlike the linguist, will examine the language in gender situation in context and consider any proposed remedy in terms of the history of the area and of the effects on the stake-holders’ interest in the language of that situation. We might propose that the linguist operates deductively and the applied linguist inductively; while reminding ourselves that deduction and induction cannot stand alone; each requires the other.
