Every so often I mention to Leen that I find it more difficult to understand Malay when it is spoken by Malay men. She thinks that’s silly and tells me so every time. But I swear Malay women speak more clearly. It’s a phenomenon I only really noticed when I moved to Malaysia, and only when listening to Malay speakers.
Well, evidence from the field of linguistics backs me up. Not only that, it could tell us something about equality of the sexes in Malaysia (and Malay culture in particular). Consider this, from An Introduction to Linguistics by Stuart C. Poole:
Many studies have shown that women generally use forms which approximate more closely to those of the standard language than do men of the same social background, age, and so on.
And:
The status of men, it has been argued, has been traditionally defined by their occupation and wealth, while women have had to find other ways of establishing their position and one of these has been their speech. Women are expected to behave better than men; traditionally, just as society has been harsher on women with regard to such vices as promiscuity and drunkenness, a better standard of language may have been required.
So why did I only really notice this in Malaysia? If I really think about it, I can find evidence for this phenomenon in Canada, but it’s still so much more striking here in Malaysia. Perhaps it’s because this country still has considerable ground to cover in terms of equality of the sexes. Poole goes on to say:
On the other hand, the spread of sexual equality may be eroding many of these factors. Perhaps women are increasingly feeling that they do not have the same need to impress, to justify themselves. If so, they might move towards the less formal style of speech that has been more associated with men who, to quote Trudgill, ‘are at a subconscious or perhaps simply private level very favourably disposed towards non-standard speech forms’, a situation that has been ascribed to a greater concern with group solidarity than with the desire to rise on the social scale. Men may associate masculinity with the physical labour of the working class. It may be coarse language that helps you attain your social goal when that goal is to be ‘one of the lads’.
I’m not sure it’s as simple as Poole claims (which we can forgive him for because it is, after all, an introductory text and I’m sure this topic has been studied and discussed in depth elsewhere by him and others), but it certainly is interesting.
Sex Talk
Every so often I mention to Leen that I find it more difficult to understand Malay when it is spoken by Malay men. She thinks that’s silly and tells me so every time. But I swear Malay women speak more clearly. It’s a phenomenon I only really noticed when I moved to Malaysia, and only when listening to Malay speakers.
Well, evidence from the field of linguistics backs me up. Not only that, it could tell us something about equality of the sexes in Malaysia (and Malay culture in particular). Consider this, from An Introduction to Linguistics by Stuart C. Poole:
And:
So why did I only really notice this in Malaysia? If I really think about it, I can find evidence for this phenomenon in Canada, but it’s still so much more striking here in Malaysia. Perhaps it’s because this country still has considerable ground to cover in terms of equality of the sexes. Poole goes on to say:
I’m not sure it’s as simple as Poole claims (which we can forgive him for because it is, after all, an introductory text and I’m sure this topic has been studied and discussed in depth elsewhere by him and others), but it certainly is interesting.