COMMENTS:Aya Mohammed

Unit two is a great example of Angela Goddard’s and Lindsey Mean Patterson’s analytical style. Throughout the unit, they try to prove that the English language is gendered and that “we make up gender as we go along.” From the title of the unit, “making up gender”, the reader acknowledges(realizes) its main subject. In fact, the writers were successful in proving that cultural background affects our language greatly. Despite this, the unit is not well-organized. They start with describing the effect of culture on the language of adults. For example, adjectives used to describe men and women and how “we have sex-exclusive vocabulary, language that is used to describe either males or females (such as ‘hunk’ and ‘buxom’)” or “language where the linguistic item remains the same but the meaning changes according to whether it is men or women who are being described .” Then they return to the period of childhood proving(claiming) that “learning about gender starts at a very early age. From birth onwards we are given certain types of toys, dressed in certain types of clothes, talked about and to in a certain way and told what(which) behaviours are acceptable and which are not.” Finally they move back to adulthood then the language used in fictive writing. Thus, though the unit is quite informative, little arrangement would have made it easier on the reader to understand it.
Good Part

Unit three continues to discuss the relationship between culture, gender and language. Yet, the main focus of the unit is to “explore the thinking and associated language features involved in stereotyping and marking.” Angela Goddard and Lindsey Mean Patterson try to prove that “the way our mind works is strongly related to our language and our culture, because it is through these that we perceive and understand the ‘real world’.” Actually, they were quite successful in this. First, they point out that since we do not know how our minds work, we tend to describe abstract ideas metaphorically “because they are hard to ‘get at’.” The metaphors that we use depend largely on our culture and that is why we say “my memory is full” or “I’m in active mode today” instead of “I can’t get my brain into gear” or “I’m a bit rusty.” This is due to the fact that computers are new technology and cars are old ones. Second, they state that we categorize the information we receive from the world around us because “categorizing allows us to generate ‘everyday’ thinking which is automatic, quick, and effortless, without which interacting with the world would become a long and laborious process.” So since “the basis of the brain’s cognitive system is categories, and since categories are labelled linguistically”, then “language influences our thinking and reasoning via the process of categorization.” Finally, they explain how the process of categorization works. Every category has a cognitive model which puts things together in a group. These category models need to be simplified so that thinking and language use would be easy. This is accomplished through social knowledge. “We learn them through socialization and language acquisition so that social knowledge is mainly integrated into the ways we think without us being aware.” The cognitive models which represent central members are called prototypes. The construction of a few group members and the application of these to the whole group is stereotyping. So, they succeeded in proving that there is a relationship between thought, culture and language.Furthermore, through marking, they were able to show that English language is gendered. “Linguistic meanings can derive as much from their structural relationships as from the specific markings that occur on the words themselves.” Marking has many forms. One of them is part of the morphological system of English. For example, “suffixes such as ‘ess’ and ‘ette’.” They proved that “we have pairs of terms where the unmarked form is male, and the marked form female. Not only does this suggest that the male figure is the ‘norm’ and the female one ‘deviant’, but the female form clearly has derived status and, in the case of ‘ette’, implies diminution or imitation (cigarette is a small cigar, suedette is ‘false’ suede.”

NICE