Elinor Ochs “Indexing Gender” Article Analysis

Summary

In Elinor Ochs’ article, gender ideologies are commonly socialized, sustained, as nicely as, converted via conversations. It is crucial to observe that the writer vividly explains how the family members of language to gender are created and mediated with the aid of using the family members of social acts, language to stances, social constructs, as nicely as, different social activities.

She compares the communicative practices of ladies of the Western Samoan families with the ones of the mainstream American families and with that, she identifies 2 primary discourses:

1) Language varies systematically throughout unique social contexts;

2) The versions in language are a part of the bigger which means this is listed with the aid of using the linguistic structures.

She factors out that the third man or woman pronouns, as an example, sir, madam, he, and she, the pitch variety may be used to index gender withinside the speech communities. The creator additionally identifies different kinds of non-referential indexing of gender techniques, for example, the syntactic, phonological, and morphological devices.

It is important to note that in her discussions, the author manages to identify 3 major features of the gender-language relation:

1) constitutive;

2) temporary transcendence;

3) non-exclusive.

The constitutive feature suggests that a social meaning may be indexed by either one or more of the linguistic features. The non-exclusive feature suggests that any variable feature of language can be used for, by, or with both the sexes. The feature of temporary transcendence, on the other hand, suggests that the power of language usually transcends the time of perception which is a property of temporal transcendence.

Connection

In most of the communities that I have worked with, it is true to say that there are marked differences in the way women speak to women and men speak to men. It is also true to state that there are marked differences in the way the communities communicate with their children both verbally and non-verbally. However, it should be acknowledged that in other societies this kind of communicative style does not exist.

Confusion

It seems like the author’s observations were more practical in the era when women stayed in the homes to take care of the kids and tend to the homes, however, this has changed and women are now taking positions of power, as well as joining the military, therefore, it is not fair to continue indexing gender the way it was indexed during the author’s era as a lot of changes have occurred since then.