<p>One’s sex is biological One’s gender is constructed, learned and performed</p><p>• Gender must constantly be reaffirmed and publicly displayed in order for gender ‘ideals’ to be maintained in a culture.</p><p>Public displays are repeat performances of what a culture defines as ‘masculinity’ and ‘femininity’. </p><p>• Speech too is a ‘repeated stylization of the body’; the learned masculine and learned feminine styles of talking.</p><p>If we examine what ‘mainstream’ North Americans have come to learn are ‘normal’ ways for men and women to talk, and if we compare our version of gender communications with other cultures, we can see just how much is learned rather than biological. The following is an example from a group in Madagascar. </p><p>Madagascar was a French colony in the 19th century, and the Malagasy-speaking people were often slaves at this time. They speak their own language but they also speak French. Linguistic anthropologist Elinor Keenan (Ochs) did fieldwork among the Vakinankaratra and gives a description of male and female speech styles. </p><p>Elinor Keenan (Ochs) 1998. Norm-Makers, Norm-Breakers: Uses of Speech by Men and Women in a Malagasy Community. In The Matrix of Language: Contemporary Linguistic Anthropology. Donald Brenneise & Ronald MaCaulay (eds.). Westview Press.</p><p>Types of Malagasy speech</p><p>Resaka • Everyday speaking simple talk • Gossip, greetings, requests, calling out, consultations, discussion</p><p>1 Kabary • Ceremonial speech, highly stylized, governed by well-known rules, formal speech situations. Marriages, burials, bone turnings. Kabary is also used for conflict resolution. It involves using metaphor, references to stories, and allegory as a way to soften speech to avoid loss of face. </p><p>C ausing hentra. What does it mean for one’s family, and how is it avoided? </p><p>• It is not good to affront another or put an individual in an uncomfortable or unpleasant situation. It means to confront, order someone around, yell at someone etc. etc. • A form of public censure is to speak of offensive conduct as causing hentra (shame).</p><p>• One who has caused hentra is throught to mangala-baraka (to steal honor) from one’s family or community. • One who causes hentra is the center of much gossip. A way to reduce the risk of hentra is to act in ways which support the norm of non-confrontation.</p><p>How are directness, direction, confrontation, and giving orders dealt with in Malagasy speech?</p><p>• Directness is associated with the ways of children and with things contrary to tradition. </p><p>• The use of interpersonal directive creates an active confrontation situation. (Meaning if you tell someone directly what to do or accuse someone directly of something, or if you tell someone directly what they should think, etc. etc.)</p><p>• The person directed, ordered, asked is confronted with having to comply with the directive or with having to reject it. (This puts the person on the spot.)</p><p>• The director or asker is confronted with the possibility that his authority to direct will not be acknowledged. (If someone orders another to do something and the one ordered refuses to do it, the one who gave the order is put on the spot.)</p><p>• So ideally the request or the order is softened by verbal niceties to convey respect and a more egalitarian type of encounter.</p><p>2 Directions are dealt with through metaphor because direct affront indicates a lowering or absence of respect on the part of the affronter. (causing hentra) Ideally in public, a show of respect is expected.</p><p>Ideally:</p><p>• Speakers prefer the passive or circumstantial – what is to be done -rather than - who is to do it. </p><p>• Avoids putting the one asked on the spot.</p><p>• Request mode is typically formulated and presented in a veiled manner. </p><p>• Neither the requester nor the requestee is committed to a particular action. </p><p>Active: Wash the clothes with soap (causes hentra) Passive: Have the clothes washed with the soap (avoids putting someone on the spot) Circumstantial: The soap is to be used to wash clothes (avoids saying who will wash the clothes when)</p><p>Wash Day - A Malagasy Clothes Line</p><p>3 How and why do women speak differently from men in Malagasy? What is women’s speech power? </p><p>• Women are associated with direct and open expression of anger towards others. </p><p>• Women speak in more straightforward manner. </p><p>• Men often use women to confront others with some unpleasant information. </p><p>• Women relieve some social pressure in this way. </p><p>• Women can never be restorers of relationships because they are thought to lack subtlety and sensitivity. </p><p>• They are associated with communication of negative information. (hentra)</p><p>Women are more straightforward so they are the ones who sell village produce in the markets. They buy the everyday necessities in the markets. Buying and selling are confrontational situations. Bargaining is the norm. </p><p>4 What is men’s speech power? • Men dominate the situations where indirectness is desirable. </p><p>• This is the ideal. Men alone are considered to be able speechmakers. They conduct themselves as to minimize loss of face in a social situation. </p><p>• The negative is softened, prefaced with compliments. Criticisms are alluded to through proverbs and poetry etc. </p><p>• Men bargain at the market, but their bargaining is more subtle and ornate and elaborate. This kind of bargaining takes time and doesn’t put as many coins in the pocket. Men sell the meat because its price is more or less fixed. They don’t have to debate or use direct speech when selling meat. </p><p>• Men do speak directly when giving orders to cows, and they do so in French because allusive speech is not effective with cows. </p><p>Men are associated with kabary speech. They participate in the ritualized speech of being intermediaries in conflict. </p><p>• How do male and female speech styles in Malagasy compare with ‘ideal’ male and female communications in the U.S.? </p><p>For Malagasy speakers, male speech has more prestige in the public, decision-making, political sphere. </p><p>In North America, what kind of speech, attributed to which gender, has the most prestige in the public, decision-making, political sphere? Why? </p><p>5</p>