Talking Like a Girl

Nothing connects us and distinguishes us as a species like our voices.  Lots of animals have bodies and touch languages they use to communicate, but I think that the rich layers of information transfer that proceed through human vocalization have few parallels in the biological world.

Think about it.  When you speak, you say so much more than is contained in the literal meaning of your words and phrases.  You embed information about your identity and context.  Your tone and volume deepen the superficial interpretation of the content that you deliver.  Even minor quirks like inflection and cadence send important signals that might operate on a subliminal, psychological level, but they exist all the same.

Tomorrow I'll share the first guest post of the year (exciting!), which gives one narrative example of the ways that men and women might operate differently or be perceived differently in communicative spaces, so I wanted to preface that story today with a broader exploration of the ways that men and women are differentiated by speech.

Don't take that tone with me

Several stories have bubbled to the surface in recent years about the ways that women talk and how they might undermine themselves with the speech patterns that underly the actual content coming out of their mouths.  Tendencies like "uptalking" (ending declarative sentences on an upward inflection that many associate with questions) or "vocal fry" (harder to describe; a slight buzzing that often comes at the end of phrases overlaid on top of words.  The term was coined because it reminds some people of low fidelity sound from older recordings that come with a white-noise type hiss over the entire track) that abound in the voices of young women strike many as totally abrasive, and come with an instant loss of credibility.  Actress Lake Bell went as far as to describe the situation as a pandemic, adding that she can't stand to be around people who speak with those vocal patterns.

One thing to point out: people that lambast young women for manifesting these vocal tics can cite zero research suggesting that these patterns are actually more common in women.  I know plenty of men and boys that uptalk and demonstrate vocal fry, but in popular culture these are perceived to be problems almost exclusively for girls.  You have to wonder if the matrix of patriarchal power relations that infuses our culture pushes us to find new and innovative ways to blame women for the apologetic posture they're encouraged to take in so many ways.  Setting aside the question of whether women "choose" to speak this way, or if it arises from real biological differences, or if it emerges as a product of patriarchal social relations that incentivize women to be meek and submissive, I'm shocked at the kind of comments that otherwise intelligent people are willing to make about very intelligent women, based exclusively on the sounds of their voices.  Emma Gray and Claire Fallon documented some of the abuse they received after starting a podcast, including being labeled "whiny", "empty-headed valley girls", and "sorority girls with zero insight".  They dug deeper and unearthed a wealth of research that shows that boys, in fact, DO manifest all of the same vocal tics as women.  It's only women that get punished and stigmatized for it.

Non-violent Communication

For the sake of discussion, let's accept for now that men and women might have some differences in the ways they speak.  Returning to our monthly theme of patriarchy, the dominance move isn't to acknowledge difference, it's to attach value judgements to difference, i.e. to differentiate between men's and women's speaking styles, and to then declare the men speak "better" than women.  That's Patriarchy 101.  An objective thinker might consider that both men and women bring certain value to groups with their speech patterns.  I just discovered a fascinating excerpt from a longer work by Julia Wood that documents some of the psychological drivers that influence men's and women's speech patterns, for instance that women are driven more strongly by an urge to develop connection and community in their speech, while men are driven by an urge for dominance.

Now when is the last time you heard a prominent male speaker get criticized for being to aggressive or dismissive of his conversation partner's perspectives (besides Trump)?  If we could unravel all of the tentacles of patriarchy that have warped our cultural perceptions, we could draw on a vast wealth of feminine perspectives that deserve to be valued, rather than translated into a communicative mode that's convenient for men.

Words are Fuzzy

One of the greatest debates in the history of Western philosophy -for many the seminal disagreement - is between Plato and Aristotle.  It breaks down essentially as follows:

Today, I'd like to explore how this philosophical disagreement plays out in the world of language.

I heard a fascinating discussion on NPR with Fred Benenson, who translated the entire novel Moby Dick into emojis, and is currently trying to fund and build an emoji translation engine.  The host was indignant, asserting that emojis aren't a real language because their meanings are fuzzy and interpretive.  She has a point, but it hides the bigger point - her critique applies to ALL language, not just emojis.

I think that most of us, almost all of the time, approach language with our Plato hats on - we assume that words have certain correct meanings, that we can generally expect people to be aware of these meanings, and that when we disagree with people, it's because those other people are stupid and have a wrong-headed view of the world (not because we might be miscommunicating).

I also think that we're totally wrong, and that Aristotle provides a much better lens for looking at the way we use words to make meanings.

How did you learn the meaning of the words you know?  You might have looked some of them up in a dictionary, but for the most part, you gained a sense of their meaning experientally, through repeated use and observation; through interactions with others; impressionistically, little by little.  Everyone else did too - but they had their own lives and collection of experiences, so chances are, they understand the words you use slightly differently than you do.

Simply put, we want to put objects, emotions, and experiences into huge categories and give identical characteristics to the items in those categories; for instance, we use the words "cute" or "terrifying" to describe different individuals, but we believe that every person we stick that label on shares a common characteristic.  Our brains like categories.  It makes thinking easy and efficient.  But it doesn't take much interrogation to see that this process breaks down very quickly.  I'm willing to bet that you've used the words "cute" and "terrifying" in many different contexts with different intended meanings, based on the context, the mode of delivery, the people participating in the conversation, and your personal experience with those particular words.  Even inside one human's brain, a single word takes on a multiplicity of meanings that swirl around a vague conceptual area.  Imagine how much more problematic this becomes when you start to consider two different people with different life histories, people raised in different cultures, or in different socioeconomic strata.

I guess what I'm really trying to say is that words don't mean anything by themselves - they're symbols invented by humans to represent ideas inside human brains; they're an attempt to build bridges between isolated intellectual units, and although we'd like to believe we're building those bridges using interchangeable parts, we have no way of really knowing what words mean inside other peoples' heads.

For a much more sophisticated discussion on a similar strain, check out the linked Chomsky lecture.