girl_thesis (![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small} girl_thesis) wrote,@ 2008-04-03 13:05:00 |
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My final thesis report
Unfortunately, I can't get the footnotes to post along with the final paper, so all of my findings appear to be unsourced, but they really do have sources. If you would like to know the specific source for a specific sentence, please leave a comment, and I will send you the appropriate footnote reference. If you want to know the sources I used in general, see the bibliography at the end of the paper.
Abstract
In this paper, I question how the word girl is used as an insult for both females and males in the English language. I identify the insulting uses of girl as a problem of sexism in language, since girl as an insult encourages sexist attitudes and will require feminist action to create semantic change. For this research, scholarly works, dictionaries, magazines, style guides, and my own questionnaire results from 70 participants have been gathered and analysed. My research reveals that girl is considered to be insulting in certain contexts, and when spoken by certain people. Hence, girl will be examined in a variety of situations throughout my paper, such as sports and workplace settings. I believe this research is beneficial since it continues the academic discussion about the relationship between societal sexism and language use.
Introduction
In 2006, I worked at the McMaster University Student Centre setting up furniture and other materials for events that took place in the building. One day I was asked to give a new staff member a tour of the building. My boss had asked us to drop off some rather heavy boxes along the tour, so when we reached the drop-off area, I started to lift the boxes onto the high shelves where they belonged. Instead of helping me, the trainee stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Then he said the words that would begin my year-long research endeavour: “You’re pretty strong...for a girl.”
I told him that he had insulted me, and he insisted that he did not mean it “that way,” but I remained upset. What was it about being called a girl that upset me? Was I offended simply because I identified as a 20 year-old woman, and not as a girl? Would I have been insulted if I were not majoring in Women’s Studies? I hypothesized that there must be meanings behind the word girl that made it insulting, and I set out to conduct my research under the guidance of an experienced and knowledgeable linguist, Dr. Marzena Walkowiak.
This paper will etymologically and semantically analyse the word girl in English. It will focus on my own questionnaire and magazine research results, but will include theory and observations from other scholars as well. In addition, this paper will address language change, and offer some suggestions for how to use girl in positive ways. Before all this, however, it is necessary that I clarify why this research is important, not just for me on a personal level, but for all users of the English language as well.
The meanings behind the word girl influence and sometimes even determine how girls are regarded in society, as well as how they understand themselves. Treating girls positively in language may help them to be identified positively in society, while attaching negative stereotypes to the word girl might cause girls to feel negatively about themselves. Of course, there are other factors that also contribute to how girls feel about themselves, but language is a very important one since it influences the way people think, behave, and communicate their ideas to one another. When girl is used as an insult, it encourages the idea that males are more valuable than females. This concept – that boy is better than girl – is, in my opinion, the underlying core of all sexism. It is this concept that gives males more rights, freedoms, and respect than females, and it is this concept that must be abolished. Therefore, because this concept is still alive today in language, semantic change is needed in the task of eliminating sexism. If sexist language is left unaddressed, it not only has the potential to perpetuate and maintain sexist attitudes, but may also re-create them, even after political and other types of progress have been made. Hence, in order to ensure that women are working towards equality in all areas, language too must become non-sexist. Finally, it is important to address this topic since sexist uses of girl will not go away on their own. Since language will always exist in this world, so will sexist language, until it is dealt with directly.
Methodology
To begin this research, my supervisor suggested that I start looking in dictionaries to understand the etymology of the word girl. After studying the word’s history and its many definitions, I moved on to reading a variety of peer-reviewed journal articles, newspaper articles, and books, some of which will be referenced in this paper. The articles and books pertained to either the issue of sexism in language, or the word girl specifically. For my primary research, I studied the uses of the word girl in popular magazines, and I conducted an online questionnaire.
The questionnaire featured ten questions and was available for two and a half months. It was conducted over the internet in order to ensure confidentiality. The questionnaire was advertised on Facebook, in classrooms at McMaster University, and by general word-of-mouth. Altogether there were 79 participants, but nine people chose not to complete the questionnaire and their answers were discarded, leaving a total of 70 participants. The questionnaire was voluntary, and ethical information (such as risks or benefits associated with the questionnaire) were presented to the participants before they began. The participants were not asked for any personal information other than their age and how they identified their gender (the options available were: man, woman, boy, girl, transgendered, or other). This information was used for demographic data only; the results of my questionnaire were organized according to similar answers, not by age or gender. When sorting responses, particular attention was paid to adjectives that people used to describe and define the word girl. The majority of participants (77%) identified as women, and 70% of participants were aged 18-25. The male participants varied in age from 18-60, and only one (female) participant was above age 60. Although the questionnaire was open to children, no one under 18 completed it. No one identified as a boy, and only two people identified as girls, one was aged 18-25, and the other was 26-45. There was one transgendered respondent and two people whom identified as other. The results of the questionnaire were open to the public in an oral presentation I gave on February 29, 2008 at McMaster University.
The magazine data I collected came from four types of magazines: a feminist genre, a women’s genre (“The #1 Women’s Magazine”), a men’s genre (“The Best Canadian Magazine for Guys”), and a pornographic genre. To gather information from these magazines, I went through each of them, page by page, and highlighted every time the word girl was used. For the analysis, attention was given to a number of factors. First, I looked at who was using the word girl, a male or a female. Secondly, I examined whether girl was being used as a self-reference or to identify someone else. I also observed the age of the person being called a girl, and took note of whether the word boy was also being used in the same context. My findings from both the questionnaire and the magazines will be discussed in the upcoming analysis.
Etymology
To really understand the present uses of girl and suggest future changes, it was necessary for me to learn the origins of the word. Unfortunately, the exact origins are unclear, so we can only work with theories about how the word came about. The two most popular theories will be presented here. First, girl might have come from the Middle English term girle or gurle, which would have been used commonly in spoken language, but was not formally written down until the 13th century, when girl first appeared in a document. The second theory is that girl originated from the Low German word gor or goere, and was later translated into English and modified in spelling and pronunciation. What is interesting is that both the Middle English girle/gurle and the Low German gor/goere meant the same thing: a child or young person of either sex. To distinguish between the sexes, male children were referred to as knave girls and female children were gay girls. From 1290 to the late 1400's, this was the only meaning and usage of girl. It was not until 1530 that girl was used to designate females only, and even in this case, it was only used to refer to children and unmarried females. However, since females got married much younger in the 1500's than they do now, these unmarried females could probably still be considered children by today’s standards.
Dale Spender, an accomplished linguist, has written in the past about a ‘semantic rule’ that she notices in English. This ‘rule’ entails that words that are marked for the female gender will develop negative meanings over time, regardless of their original definitions. I found that girl was no exception to this rule. In 1668, girl was considered to be an offensive term used to refer to maid servants, irrespective of their age. This usage remained for a long time, possibly up until the 1950s, as evidenced in the film Corrina, Corrina, in which the middle-aged maid (played by Whoppi Goldberg) is called a girl, and is so insulted that she quits her job. By the early 1700's, girl was being used as a term of reference for sex workers. In the 1800's, girl became a word used to insult black women, such as in A.W. Tourgee’s 1879 written work, “you must remember that all colored women are ‘girls’.” By 1921, the term girlie (a variation on the word girl) was used to refer to naked women or women in erotic contexts, such as a girlie magazine, or a girlie show. In 1986, effeminate males were referred to as girls in order to insult them, especially in sports. After this time, however, feminists started to acknowledge the negative uses of girl and decided to create some positive uses, some of which entered into the dictionaries. For instance, in 1995, girl became a term of endearment among lesbians, and in 2000, girl wonder became a phrase referring to “an extremely talented and accomplished young woman.” Therefore, although girl started out as a gender-neutral word, it soon changed in usage to refer to females only. When this happened, girl developed all sorts of negative meanings. Luckily, there have been people who have recognized this as a problem, and have been working towards creating positive meanings for the word girl.
Analysis
If there is one thing I have learned from doing this research, it is that context is the most important factor used to determine whether girl is being used as an insult or not. It would be incorrect to say that a word is negative or positive in all times and places. After all, no word is inherently insulting, but becomes insulting due to the meanings that are attached to it. The good news about this is that all words have the ability to be reclaimed and changed in meaning. Such can be done with the word girl. For example, one questionnaire participant told me that her baseball team reclaimed the word by writing on their uniforms, “you only wish you could throw like a girl.” In this situation, girl is a positive term. Nevertheless, other contexts may use the same phrase (“throw like a girl”) negatively, and so context must be taken into consideration.
To properly evaluate the context of girl, one must consider a number of factors. First, attention should be given to the user’s attitude, tone, and identity. Obviously, if the word girl is used with a disgusted tone or a sneer, it will not be taken positively. Identity is also important since the gender of the person using girl can make a large difference in how the word is understood. This is because of “in-group status,” the idea that a term is less offensive if the user of the term could also be referred to by the term. For example, a woman “referencing other women as girls could be viewed as a privilege of the ingroup,” while a man referencing other women as girls could be seen as sexist. Questionnaire participants also managed to point out that the gender of the speaker matters, even though they were not told about the “in-group status” theory. Participants were asked to consider the phrase You go girl!, and twenty of them commented that the closer the speaker is to the referent in age, gender, race, class, and so on, the more acceptable this phrase becomes. A second factor to consider when working with context is the identity or characteristics of the person who is being referred to as a girl. 22% of questionnaire participants agreed that, even if girl was being used in a negative way to begin with, it would be more insulting for males to be called girl than for females. This is not simply because males are not girls by modern definition. If this was the case, then girls would be just as insulted to be called boys, but we know that this is not true. In fact, calling a girl a tomboy is an acceptable custom in Canada and America, and can even be considered a compliment. It is therefore the negative stereotypes attached to the word girl that make it a term of abuse for males. Consequently, both the gender of the user and the referent certainly matter when determining if the word girl has been used offensively or not.
Aside from gender and other individual characteristics, a third factor to be considered when evaluating the word girl is the setting in which girl appears, since different language rules apply to different settings. For example, when writing a paper, there are specific guidelines to follow, and in the majority of styles available to writers today, certain uses of girl are not tolerated, such as using girl as a substitute for woman. Also, many professional settings have rules about language use, such as McMaster University, which upholds a ban on the use of sexist language in its sexual harassment policy. These types of settings differ greatly from settings in which no defined language rules apply, such as on the street or in someone’s home. Thus, the setting in which girl is used also determines how the word girl is understood.
The uses of girl as an insult today probably appear the most in sporting contexts. Here it is considered shameful for a person to run like a girl, throw like a girl, or do anything like a girl. This is evidenced in numerous cases. For instance, a Texas A&M football coach became famous for calling his team girls after they had been outplayed, and in the film, The Sandlot, boys are yelling insults at each other until one boy says, “You play ball like a girl,” which ends and wins the argument, since the other boys are stunned into silence. Phrases like these suggest that females are never considered as ‘good’ as males when it comes to sports. Dale Spender asks, “What happens if you are as GOOD as a female? It’s laughable isn’t it. . . .You just can’t capitalize on being female.” To see if Spender’s comment was true, I asked participants of my questionnaire how they would interpret the phrases you run like a girl or you throw like a girl. An overwhelming majority (84%) said that these phrases are meant to be insults, and that they imply there is something “wrong” with the athlete. But the only thing that could be “wrong” in the case of these statements is that the athlete is not male, or is not behaving in a “manly” way. Forty percent of participants said that these phrases mean that girls are not as ‘good’ at sports as boys, thus confirming Spender’s message above. Interestingly, there were seven women who claimed they would not feel insulted by these phrases, since they can admit that they are bad at sports. Only one of the seven then wrote down that she realized, by claiming this, she only affirmed the idea that being a girl means being ‘bad at sports.’ What is more, only four questionnaire participants identified these phrases as “sexist.” Perhaps these statistics stand as evidence that, even though people recognize these uses of girl to be insulting, they fail to see why they are problematic. Fortunately, not every use of the word girl in sports contexts is negative. In fact, eleven questionnaire participants said that it could be positive if one’s attitude towards girls are positive. Moreover, nine people wrote about cases in which they have reclaimed phrases such as the ones above. For example, one participant said that if someone told her she ran like a girl, she would respond, “I am a girl” with pride. However, the issue still remains that the majority of people think girl is a negative term of address in sports. Either sports contexts must rid themselves of these phrases, or the majority of people must develop positive attitudes towards female athletes.
Another context in which girl has been used frequently as an insult is in the workplace. Even though girl in this context has been rapidly decreasing in recent years, and the uses of woman have been on the rise, girl can still be found in the workplace, particularly in lower status jobs, and jobs that focus on appearance. For instance, in my research, Urban Male Magazine (UMM) referred to burlesque dancers and Gillette models as girls, never as women. Other jobs of lower status use the word girl in the occupational title, such as “coat-check girl,” even if the jobholder is an adult. In my opinion, using girl to refer to any adult woman is an insult, especially in the workplace where respect is based on status. Using girl for an adult “denies [her] competence and independence, and relegates [her] to subordinate status.” This is because girl is often associated with youth, immaturity, and appearance more than capability. Another problem with girl in the workplace is that it establishes a linguistic version of the glass ceiling; those who are called girls never get to grow up. For example, Holmes and Sigley wrote about a woman in her seventies who is called, “Wapping’s oldest office girl.” Clearly, using girl in this context makes her sound a lot more irresponsible than if she were called “the oldest woman in the office” or “the oldest office worker.” Thus, using girl in the workplace to refer to adult women implies that these women are irresponsible, or valued for their appearances instead of their capabilities.
Luckily, there has been public attention given to the use of girl in the workplace. In 1983, a Supreme Court Justice was punished for calling an attorney a “little girl,” since people recognized that girl was meant to demean the lawyer. More recently in 2004, there was public outrage when the governor of California called his opponents “girly-men” when they failed to finish the budget on time. Feminist groups and others said the statement was misogynist since it blamed women and “wimpy men” for being the “only reason the budget [was] stalled.” The governor refused to apologize and insisted that the phrase was funny. Thus, even though there has been considerable effort to eliminate the word girl from the workforce, there is still room for progress to be made.
In addition to exploring contexts in which girl has been used, it is also necessary to study cases where girl is not used. I am referring here to the use of a popular masculine generic: guys. There are some people who will argue, before I even begin my discussion, that we cannot compare the use of girls to guys, since the opposite of girls is boys. But the fact of the matter is that, in modern language, guys is used as an opposite to girls just as much as boys. Guys and girls are frequently used in contrast to one another, such as in Cosmopolitan’s guys vs. girls hotness contest. The word guys becomes problematic when it is used to refer to both males and females simultaneously. Why is girls the word that always gets dropped? One answer to this question is that girls is a gender-specific word, whereas guys is not. Twenty-seven questionnaire participants agreed that guys is a gender neutral term. This ignores the fact that guys is used to refer only to males in many instances, including the Cosmopolitan example above. As scholars have noted in the past, guys is not a gender neutral word: one guy is masculine, and so are the guys. The gender neutrality seems to lie with the phrase you guys, but even this phrase can be gender-specific, such as with the website heyyouguys.com which refers to itself as “the man’s search engine.” The use of this masculine generic term makes women invisible in language since it enforces the idea that ‘male’ is normal, and ‘female’ deviates from that norm. Despite this damaging effect of rendering women invisible, there are still some people who insist that saying guys to a mixed-gender group is no big deal, and that we should not waste our time worrying about it. However, “we ought to ask what we are protecting when we claim that you guys is no big deal.” Clearly, all that is being protected is the sexist attitude that women do not matter, and this is why it is ‘no big deal’ for them to be invisible in language.
So what should we do about this? It would not be a good solution to simply switch the term guys with girls when referring to mixed-gender groups. Girls is a gendered term, so replacing one gendered term (guys) with another would solve nothing. What is more, girls would not be considered an acceptable term since it has so many negative meanings attached to it. It would be “a mistake and an insult to refer to a group which contains even one male as gals” or girls unless it is some type of joke. To prove that people attach negative meanings to the word girl, here are some adjectives that questionnaire participants used to describe the word: weak, emotional, helpless, dependent, immature, wimpy, sissy, submissive, powerless, inferior, and out of control. What group of people would want to be referred to in this way if it means that they posess these qualities? To solve the problem of using guys, we need REAL gender neutral terms to use for addressing groups of mixed-genders. Some suggestions from questionnaire participants are: you all (or y’all), people (or peeps), folks, pals, friends, everyone, or even using numbers (such as, “hey you two!”). With so many alternative terms to choose from, the use of guys for mixed-gender groups is hardly necessary.
Next, many of the questionnaire participants commented that they struggled to understand the difference between a girl and a woman. The majority agreed that the difference had something to do with age, but they were hard-pressed to state at which age one was no longer a girl. It is important that we know the difference, since girl connotes an air of immaturity and irresponsibility (as evidenced in the above list of adjectives), and we would not want to refer to a mature individual in this way. As Robin Lakoff says, “You don’t send a girl to do a woman’s errand (or even, for that matter, a boy’s errand).” Perhaps it would not be so bad for girl to have negative connotations if boy implied the same things, for then everything would be equal. Similarly, if boy were used to refer to adults just as often as girl, it would arguably not be sexist because the uses would be balanced across genders. However, corpus data proves that this is not the case. Currently, girl is three times more likely than boy to refer to an adult. Also, while women of all ages have girlfriends, “men do not – in a nonsexual sense – have boyfriends.” These examples show that the uses of girl are unbalanced with boy when discussing adults. Thus, gender equality in semantics does not yet exist. This is probably linked to the fact that the age boundaries between girl and woman are not clearly defined, and this is what requires feminist concern.
Ms. magazine has answered this call for a defined boundary between girls and women, by establishing a rule in their magazine that girl will only refer to females under age 18. This is a good distinction, in my opinion, since it complies with the North American legal age-distinction between children and adults. Still, this rule would not be applicable everywhere since there are social norms that allow for some women above 18 to be referred to as girls, such as college students. There might also a problem with people who are unaware of the in-group status rule, since they might overhear women above 18 calling themselves or their friends girls, and infer from this that women do not mind being called girls at all. These issues aside, I think there should still be a general age-boundary to follow when distinguishing between girls and women, so that most mis-uses of girl can be avoided.
Speaking of girl being mis-used, on-screen media is a major culprit for using girl as an insult. When questionnaire participants were asked if they have ever heard girl used as an insult in television or movies, 18.5% said there were “too many [cases] to count,” and many made vague references to football, sports, and military movies, as well as shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons. A specific example can be seen in the popular American sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond. In the episode that I have cited, Frank says to Peggy, “I think it’s hilarious you beat Ray up, because you’re a girl.” Peggy, who is actually a middle-aged woman, and a mother on the show replies, “It wasn’t easy, Ray was quite a girl himself.” This statement from Peggy may be meant to imply that girls are strong and not easy to beat up. On the other hand, it could have been nothing more than an insult to Ray, since she was calling him a girl. We see that the latter is true, since the next line spoken comes from Robert who points at Ray and says, “Hahaha! You’re a girl!” Then he looks towards Peggy and says “She’s funny.” The point is, on-screen media is one area in which girl is used improperly in numerous cases. Since this type of entertainment is so widely available to the public, it should be all the more responsible in making sure that its language will not offend any viewers. Ideally, girl should be used to identify young females positively, and when it is used as an insult, it is offensive. There has to be semantic change.
Changing Language
Much of this paper has focussed on the insulting uses of girl, and pointing out why language has to change. What has not yet been discussed is how to actually accomplish such change. This section will therefore outline four ways in which language change can be achieved. First, language can be changed through law and policies; this has been effective for centuries. For instance, in the 1800's, a British Act of Parliament declared that masculine terms, such as ‘mankind,’ would act as generic terms, referring to both males and females. This rule was effective until the late 1900's, when it was then outlawed by legally approved guidelines which prohibited the use of masculine generic terms, such as man, and replaced them with neutral terms like human. These approved guidelines also have rules regarding the uses of the word girl specifically. For example, in APA style, writers may not use girl as a substitute for woman or female. Additionally, The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing notes that the word girl must be avoided in job titles, such as replacing weather-girl with weathercaster or meteorologist. It also stipulates that girl should be used only to refer to females who are in their late teens or younger, and requests that people refrain from using the word tomboy, since this word implies that an active young girl is abnormal for her sex. A down-side to this approach of changing language through law and policies is that this strategy often leaves out the explanations for why the changes have been made. For this reason, policy changes should not stand alone, but be accompanied by explanations, which could be given in a variety of settings, such as staff meetings or in schools when students are learning to write. This way, there can also be open discussion about the effects of sexist language.
Another way to implement semantic change is to have simple daily conversations with people. All one has to do is follow a three-step process: (1) Identify negative uses of girl if and when they arise, (2) Explain why the use was improper, and (3) suggest a word or phrase that could be used instead. Mary Daly says this method is effective in exposing sexism, and calls it ‘making metalinguistic comments.’ She gives an example of this strategy where someone says the phrase, “the girls in the office,” and someone replies, “Do you employ underage females in your office?” Daly’s example is a little more arraigning than the three step method (identify-explain-suggest) that I came up with, but it still gets the point across. A further way to create language change through conversation is by having a conversation about the word girl itself. This will raise awareness of its uses, and studies have proven that raising awareness is just as important – and as effective – as creating language change through law and policies. This is because policies are effective insofar as written language can be monitored, but spoken language is another matter. Spoken language is more difficult to control, let alone modify, especially when people feel their freedom of speech is at risk. This is why raising awareness friend-to-friend is so effective; friends will listen to one another and (hopefully) respect one another’s feelings toward sexist language, thus helping to create a more ‘politically correct’ atmosphere that does not offend anyone. After all, why should one person’s ‘freedom of speech’ override the freedom of other individuals to be respected as a group of people (such as girls)?
A third way to create non-sexist language change is by making personal and conscious decisions about what words you will use and when (for example, using girl for pre-pubescent females only). This method is known as the “role model and solidarity strategy,” in which a person ‘leads by example’ to create language change. This method is the least imposing on others since the individual only has to concentrate on changing their own personal uses of words. I myself have put this method to use throughout my year of study on this topic, and I will admit that it was difficult at first. I resolved to use girl only for females under age 18, and to stop referring to groups as guys. It took about six months before I could do my resolution without fail, but it did eventually become effortless. Other studies have proven that this is true for the majority of people: “After repeated and successful resistance [to using girl in negative contexts], people should be better able to resist on later occasions.” Even though this particular system of language change is personal, it still has an effect on others. For instance, I have noticed that when I refer to someone as “a woman in my class” instead of “a girl in my class,” it generates more respect for the person that I am referring to, not just in my own mind, but in the minds of those to whom I am speaking as well. Furthermore, I have found that people pick up on the terms I am using and use them in their own speech, without being asked to do so directly.
The fourth and final method that this paper will suggest for creating non-sexist language change is to do any of the above three methods in conjunction with other feminist projects. The great thing about language change is that one does not have to devote all their time to accomplishing it. In fact, language change must be done along with other forms of feminist activism in order to be successful. The reason for this is that, even if sexism gets erased from language, it will not automatically erase sexism from society. Please recall from the beginning of this paper that language and society are a two-way street, meaning that they influence one another equally. Hence, semantic change has to happen simultaneously with social change in order for real progress to be made.
Ending Remarks
In summary, the word girl affects and is affected by the way girls are viewed in society. This is problematic since girl can be used negatively in a number of ways. Thus, feminist attention to the word girl, as well as feminist action concerning its uses, are required. Non-sexist language change has already begun in Canada and the United States through a number of different methods, but we can see from popular media (such as magazines, television, and film), as well as the opinions of 70 questionnaire participants, that negative uses and connotations of girl are still very much alive today. This negativeness appears in a variety of contexts, including politics, sports, court-rooms, and workplaces. In addition to being used negatively, the word girl is sometimes removed from use altogether, leaving female persons hidden behind masculine generic terms, like guys. This too has damaging consequences on the way girls and women are regarded in the English language; females are forgotten, and by accepting masculine generic words as gender-neutral, society learns that this is okay.
The good news is that girl does not have to be negative. Together, we can continue to create positive and non-sexist language change. Three ways we can accomplish this are through laws and policies (for written language), and through daily conversations and personal word choices (for spoken language). It is also necessary that language change occurs simultaneously with other feminist endeavours, since the link between language and society cannot be broken.
I suggest that further research be done on the uses of the word boy in comparison to girl to point out any further inequalities that went unnoticed in this paper. It will also be useful to know why the word boy replaced the term knave girl to refer to a male child. I would also suggest further research into the uses of girl in media, since the media is such an influential institution in English-speaking countries. Particular attention should be paid to the use of the word girl in music and songs, since the uses of girl may vary between musical genres, or even between the types of songs themselves (ie. girl might be used more in songs about relationships than songs about political issues). I was not able to include the uses of girl in music in my own research.
In conclusion, my hypothesis was correct (there are negative meanings behind the word girl that make it insulting), but it was also incomplete. At the beginning of my research, I failed to take into consideration the importance of context, age-specificity, and other such factors. I now realize that words are not evaluated by their definitions alone, and girl does not have to be insulting if we work together to create language change. I hope that this paper has sparked a desire in readers to join me in the struggle for non-sexist language reform. Remember that language is always changing, it just changes slowly. I also hope that this paper successfully exposed the sexist uses of the word girl in English, and effectively proved that constant and persistent efforts are needed to make girl a purely positive term.
Works Cited
Dictionaries
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 4th Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English Volume 1. Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor (eds.) New York: Routledge, 2006.
The Oxford English Dictionary VI. n.p: Follow-Haswed, 1989.
Books
Bilger, A. “On Language: You Guys.” Bitchfest. L. Jervis, A. Zeisler (eds.) New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
Lakoff, R. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
Mills, S. Language and Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Longman, 1995.
Pauwels, A. Women Changing Language. University of London: Longman, 1998.
Rawson, H. Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present. New York: Crown Trade Paperback, 1989.
Spender, D. Man Made Language: Second Edition. London: Pandora, 1980.
Weatherall, A. Gender, Language, and Discourse. n.p: Routledge, 2002.
Journal Articles
Battistella, E. “Girly Men and Girly Girls.” American Speech Vol. 81, No.1, Southern Oregon University, Spring 2006: 100-112.
Cralley, E.I.; Ruscher, J.B. “Lady, Girl, Female, or Woman: Sexism and Cognitive Busyness Predict Use of Gender-Biased Nouns.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology Vol. 24, No. 3, Sage Publications, September 2005: 300-314.
Sigley, R.; Holmes, J. “What’s a Word Like Girl Doing in a Place Like This? Occupational Labels, Sexist Usages and Corpus Research.” Language and Computers Vol. 17, New Frontiers of Corpus Research, 2000: 247-262.
Media
Corrina, Corrina New Line Cinema, Rated PG, 1994: 115 minutes in length.
Cosmopolitan Vol. 243, No. 4, Hearst Magazines, October 2007.
“A Date For Peter.” Everybody Loves Raymond Season 9, Episode 9, January 3, 2005.
Ms. Vol. 15, No. 3, Liberty Media for Women, Fall 2005.
Playboy Vol. 51, No. 10, n.p., October 2004.
The Sandlot Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, Rated PG, 1993: 101 minutes in length.
Urban Male Magazine Vol. 10, Iss. 3, P&G publishing, Fall 2007.
Gehlert, H. “Can ‘You Guys’ be Girls?: And if so, Why Can’t We Say ‘Hey, Girls!’ to a Bunch of Guys?” Chicago Sun-Times Controversy Section, B5, March 4, 2007: 906 words.
Policies
Gelfand, H.; Walker, C.J. Mastering APA Style: Student’s Workbook and Training Guide 5th Edition. Washington D.C.: The American Psychological Association, 2002.
McMaster University Policy and Procedures on Sexual Harassment. Hamilton: McMaster University, October 2001. Accessible at www.mcmaster.ca/senate/hrgenrl/sxharass.h
Miller, C.; Swift, K. The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1980.
Unfortunately, I can't get the footnotes to post along with the final paper, so all of my findings appear to be unsourced, but they really do have sources. If you would like to know the specific source for a specific sentence, please leave a comment, and I will send you the appropriate footnote reference. If you want to know the sources I used in general, see the bibliography at the end of the paper.
Abstract
In this paper, I question how the word girl is used as an insult for both females and males in the English language. I identify the insulting uses of girl as a problem of sexism in language, since girl as an insult encourages sexist attitudes and will require feminist action to create semantic change. For this research, scholarly works, dictionaries, magazines, style guides, and my own questionnaire results from 70 participants have been gathered and analysed. My research reveals that girl is considered to be insulting in certain contexts, and when spoken by certain people. Hence, girl will be examined in a variety of situations throughout my paper, such as sports and workplace settings. I believe this research is beneficial since it continues the academic discussion about the relationship between societal sexism and language use.
Introduction
In 2006, I worked at the McMaster University Student Centre setting up furniture and other materials for events that took place in the building. One day I was asked to give a new staff member a tour of the building. My boss had asked us to drop off some rather heavy boxes along the tour, so when we reached the drop-off area, I started to lift the boxes onto the high shelves where they belonged. Instead of helping me, the trainee stared at me with his mouth hanging open. Then he said the words that would begin my year-long research endeavour: “You’re pretty strong...for a girl.”
I told him that he had insulted me, and he insisted that he did not mean it “that way,” but I remained upset. What was it about being called a girl that upset me? Was I offended simply because I identified as a 20 year-old woman, and not as a girl? Would I have been insulted if I were not majoring in Women’s Studies? I hypothesized that there must be meanings behind the word girl that made it insulting, and I set out to conduct my research under the guidance of an experienced and knowledgeable linguist, Dr. Marzena Walkowiak.
This paper will etymologically and semantically analyse the word girl in English. It will focus on my own questionnaire and magazine research results, but will include theory and observations from other scholars as well. In addition, this paper will address language change, and offer some suggestions for how to use girl in positive ways. Before all this, however, it is necessary that I clarify why this research is important, not just for me on a personal level, but for all users of the English language as well.
The meanings behind the word girl influence and sometimes even determine how girls are regarded in society, as well as how they understand themselves. Treating girls positively in language may help them to be identified positively in society, while attaching negative stereotypes to the word girl might cause girls to feel negatively about themselves. Of course, there are other factors that also contribute to how girls feel about themselves, but language is a very important one since it influences the way people think, behave, and communicate their ideas to one another. When girl is used as an insult, it encourages the idea that males are more valuable than females. This concept – that boy is better than girl – is, in my opinion, the underlying core of all sexism. It is this concept that gives males more rights, freedoms, and respect than females, and it is this concept that must be abolished. Therefore, because this concept is still alive today in language, semantic change is needed in the task of eliminating sexism. If sexist language is left unaddressed, it not only has the potential to perpetuate and maintain sexist attitudes, but may also re-create them, even after political and other types of progress have been made. Hence, in order to ensure that women are working towards equality in all areas, language too must become non-sexist. Finally, it is important to address this topic since sexist uses of girl will not go away on their own. Since language will always exist in this world, so will sexist language, until it is dealt with directly.
Methodology
To begin this research, my supervisor suggested that I start looking in dictionaries to understand the etymology of the word girl. After studying the word’s history and its many definitions, I moved on to reading a variety of peer-reviewed journal articles, newspaper articles, and books, some of which will be referenced in this paper. The articles and books pertained to either the issue of sexism in language, or the word girl specifically. For my primary research, I studied the uses of the word girl in popular magazines, and I conducted an online questionnaire.
The questionnaire featured ten questions and was available for two and a half months. It was conducted over the internet in order to ensure confidentiality. The questionnaire was advertised on Facebook, in classrooms at McMaster University, and by general word-of-mouth. Altogether there were 79 participants, but nine people chose not to complete the questionnaire and their answers were discarded, leaving a total of 70 participants. The questionnaire was voluntary, and ethical information (such as risks or benefits associated with the questionnaire) were presented to the participants before they began. The participants were not asked for any personal information other than their age and how they identified their gender (the options available were: man, woman, boy, girl, transgendered, or other). This information was used for demographic data only; the results of my questionnaire were organized according to similar answers, not by age or gender. When sorting responses, particular attention was paid to adjectives that people used to describe and define the word girl. The majority of participants (77%) identified as women, and 70% of participants were aged 18-25. The male participants varied in age from 18-60, and only one (female) participant was above age 60. Although the questionnaire was open to children, no one under 18 completed it. No one identified as a boy, and only two people identified as girls, one was aged 18-25, and the other was 26-45. There was one transgendered respondent and two people whom identified as other. The results of the questionnaire were open to the public in an oral presentation I gave on February 29, 2008 at McMaster University.
The magazine data I collected came from four types of magazines: a feminist genre, a women’s genre (“The #1 Women’s Magazine”), a men’s genre (“The Best Canadian Magazine for Guys”), and a pornographic genre. To gather information from these magazines, I went through each of them, page by page, and highlighted every time the word girl was used. For the analysis, attention was given to a number of factors. First, I looked at who was using the word girl, a male or a female. Secondly, I examined whether girl was being used as a self-reference or to identify someone else. I also observed the age of the person being called a girl, and took note of whether the word boy was also being used in the same context. My findings from both the questionnaire and the magazines will be discussed in the upcoming analysis.
Etymology
To really understand the present uses of girl and suggest future changes, it was necessary for me to learn the origins of the word. Unfortunately, the exact origins are unclear, so we can only work with theories about how the word came about. The two most popular theories will be presented here. First, girl might have come from the Middle English term girle or gurle, which would have been used commonly in spoken language, but was not formally written down until the 13th century, when girl first appeared in a document. The second theory is that girl originated from the Low German word gor or goere, and was later translated into English and modified in spelling and pronunciation. What is interesting is that both the Middle English girle/gurle and the Low German gor/goere meant the same thing: a child or young person of either sex. To distinguish between the sexes, male children were referred to as knave girls and female children were gay girls. From 1290 to the late 1400's, this was the only meaning and usage of girl. It was not until 1530 that girl was used to designate females only, and even in this case, it was only used to refer to children and unmarried females. However, since females got married much younger in the 1500's than they do now, these unmarried females could probably still be considered children by today’s standards.
Dale Spender, an accomplished linguist, has written in the past about a ‘semantic rule’ that she notices in English. This ‘rule’ entails that words that are marked for the female gender will develop negative meanings over time, regardless of their original definitions. I found that girl was no exception to this rule. In 1668, girl was considered to be an offensive term used to refer to maid servants, irrespective of their age. This usage remained for a long time, possibly up until the 1950s, as evidenced in the film Corrina, Corrina, in which the middle-aged maid (played by Whoppi Goldberg) is called a girl, and is so insulted that she quits her job. By the early 1700's, girl was being used as a term of reference for sex workers. In the 1800's, girl became a word used to insult black women, such as in A.W. Tourgee’s 1879 written work, “you must remember that all colored women are ‘girls’.” By 1921, the term girlie (a variation on the word girl) was used to refer to naked women or women in erotic contexts, such as a girlie magazine, or a girlie show. In 1986, effeminate males were referred to as girls in order to insult them, especially in sports. After this time, however, feminists started to acknowledge the negative uses of girl and decided to create some positive uses, some of which entered into the dictionaries. For instance, in 1995, girl became a term of endearment among lesbians, and in 2000, girl wonder became a phrase referring to “an extremely talented and accomplished young woman.” Therefore, although girl started out as a gender-neutral word, it soon changed in usage to refer to females only. When this happened, girl developed all sorts of negative meanings. Luckily, there have been people who have recognized this as a problem, and have been working towards creating positive meanings for the word girl.
Analysis
If there is one thing I have learned from doing this research, it is that context is the most important factor used to determine whether girl is being used as an insult or not. It would be incorrect to say that a word is negative or positive in all times and places. After all, no word is inherently insulting, but becomes insulting due to the meanings that are attached to it. The good news about this is that all words have the ability to be reclaimed and changed in meaning. Such can be done with the word girl. For example, one questionnaire participant told me that her baseball team reclaimed the word by writing on their uniforms, “you only wish you could throw like a girl.” In this situation, girl is a positive term. Nevertheless, other contexts may use the same phrase (“throw like a girl”) negatively, and so context must be taken into consideration.
To properly evaluate the context of girl, one must consider a number of factors. First, attention should be given to the user’s attitude, tone, and identity. Obviously, if the word girl is used with a disgusted tone or a sneer, it will not be taken positively. Identity is also important since the gender of the person using girl can make a large difference in how the word is understood. This is because of “in-group status,” the idea that a term is less offensive if the user of the term could also be referred to by the term. For example, a woman “referencing other women as girls could be viewed as a privilege of the ingroup,” while a man referencing other women as girls could be seen as sexist. Questionnaire participants also managed to point out that the gender of the speaker matters, even though they were not told about the “in-group status” theory. Participants were asked to consider the phrase You go girl!, and twenty of them commented that the closer the speaker is to the referent in age, gender, race, class, and so on, the more acceptable this phrase becomes. A second factor to consider when working with context is the identity or characteristics of the person who is being referred to as a girl. 22% of questionnaire participants agreed that, even if girl was being used in a negative way to begin with, it would be more insulting for males to be called girl than for females. This is not simply because males are not girls by modern definition. If this was the case, then girls would be just as insulted to be called boys, but we know that this is not true. In fact, calling a girl a tomboy is an acceptable custom in Canada and America, and can even be considered a compliment. It is therefore the negative stereotypes attached to the word girl that make it a term of abuse for males. Consequently, both the gender of the user and the referent certainly matter when determining if the word girl has been used offensively or not.
Aside from gender and other individual characteristics, a third factor to be considered when evaluating the word girl is the setting in which girl appears, since different language rules apply to different settings. For example, when writing a paper, there are specific guidelines to follow, and in the majority of styles available to writers today, certain uses of girl are not tolerated, such as using girl as a substitute for woman. Also, many professional settings have rules about language use, such as McMaster University, which upholds a ban on the use of sexist language in its sexual harassment policy. These types of settings differ greatly from settings in which no defined language rules apply, such as on the street or in someone’s home. Thus, the setting in which girl is used also determines how the word girl is understood.
The uses of girl as an insult today probably appear the most in sporting contexts. Here it is considered shameful for a person to run like a girl, throw like a girl, or do anything like a girl. This is evidenced in numerous cases. For instance, a Texas A&M football coach became famous for calling his team girls after they had been outplayed, and in the film, The Sandlot, boys are yelling insults at each other until one boy says, “You play ball like a girl,” which ends and wins the argument, since the other boys are stunned into silence. Phrases like these suggest that females are never considered as ‘good’ as males when it comes to sports. Dale Spender asks, “What happens if you are as GOOD as a female? It’s laughable isn’t it. . . .You just can’t capitalize on being female.” To see if Spender’s comment was true, I asked participants of my questionnaire how they would interpret the phrases you run like a girl or you throw like a girl. An overwhelming majority (84%) said that these phrases are meant to be insults, and that they imply there is something “wrong” with the athlete. But the only thing that could be “wrong” in the case of these statements is that the athlete is not male, or is not behaving in a “manly” way. Forty percent of participants said that these phrases mean that girls are not as ‘good’ at sports as boys, thus confirming Spender’s message above. Interestingly, there were seven women who claimed they would not feel insulted by these phrases, since they can admit that they are bad at sports. Only one of the seven then wrote down that she realized, by claiming this, she only affirmed the idea that being a girl means being ‘bad at sports.’ What is more, only four questionnaire participants identified these phrases as “sexist.” Perhaps these statistics stand as evidence that, even though people recognize these uses of girl to be insulting, they fail to see why they are problematic. Fortunately, not every use of the word girl in sports contexts is negative. In fact, eleven questionnaire participants said that it could be positive if one’s attitude towards girls are positive. Moreover, nine people wrote about cases in which they have reclaimed phrases such as the ones above. For example, one participant said that if someone told her she ran like a girl, she would respond, “I am a girl” with pride. However, the issue still remains that the majority of people think girl is a negative term of address in sports. Either sports contexts must rid themselves of these phrases, or the majority of people must develop positive attitudes towards female athletes.
Another context in which girl has been used frequently as an insult is in the workplace. Even though girl in this context has been rapidly decreasing in recent years, and the uses of woman have been on the rise, girl can still be found in the workplace, particularly in lower status jobs, and jobs that focus on appearance. For instance, in my research, Urban Male Magazine (UMM) referred to burlesque dancers and Gillette models as girls, never as women. Other jobs of lower status use the word girl in the occupational title, such as “coat-check girl,” even if the jobholder is an adult. In my opinion, using girl to refer to any adult woman is an insult, especially in the workplace where respect is based on status. Using girl for an adult “denies [her] competence and independence, and relegates [her] to subordinate status.” This is because girl is often associated with youth, immaturity, and appearance more than capability. Another problem with girl in the workplace is that it establishes a linguistic version of the glass ceiling; those who are called girls never get to grow up. For example, Holmes and Sigley wrote about a woman in her seventies who is called, “Wapping’s oldest office girl.” Clearly, using girl in this context makes her sound a lot more irresponsible than if she were called “the oldest woman in the office” or “the oldest office worker.” Thus, using girl in the workplace to refer to adult women implies that these women are irresponsible, or valued for their appearances instead of their capabilities.
Luckily, there has been public attention given to the use of girl in the workplace. In 1983, a Supreme Court Justice was punished for calling an attorney a “little girl,” since people recognized that girl was meant to demean the lawyer. More recently in 2004, there was public outrage when the governor of California called his opponents “girly-men” when they failed to finish the budget on time. Feminist groups and others said the statement was misogynist since it blamed women and “wimpy men” for being the “only reason the budget [was] stalled.” The governor refused to apologize and insisted that the phrase was funny. Thus, even though there has been considerable effort to eliminate the word girl from the workforce, there is still room for progress to be made.
In addition to exploring contexts in which girl has been used, it is also necessary to study cases where girl is not used. I am referring here to the use of a popular masculine generic: guys. There are some people who will argue, before I even begin my discussion, that we cannot compare the use of girls to guys, since the opposite of girls is boys. But the fact of the matter is that, in modern language, guys is used as an opposite to girls just as much as boys. Guys and girls are frequently used in contrast to one another, such as in Cosmopolitan’s guys vs. girls hotness contest. The word guys becomes problematic when it is used to refer to both males and females simultaneously. Why is girls the word that always gets dropped? One answer to this question is that girls is a gender-specific word, whereas guys is not. Twenty-seven questionnaire participants agreed that guys is a gender neutral term. This ignores the fact that guys is used to refer only to males in many instances, including the Cosmopolitan example above. As scholars have noted in the past, guys is not a gender neutral word: one guy is masculine, and so are the guys. The gender neutrality seems to lie with the phrase you guys, but even this phrase can be gender-specific, such as with the website heyyouguys.com which refers to itself as “the man’s search engine.” The use of this masculine generic term makes women invisible in language since it enforces the idea that ‘male’ is normal, and ‘female’ deviates from that norm. Despite this damaging effect of rendering women invisible, there are still some people who insist that saying guys to a mixed-gender group is no big deal, and that we should not waste our time worrying about it. However, “we ought to ask what we are protecting when we claim that you guys is no big deal.” Clearly, all that is being protected is the sexist attitude that women do not matter, and this is why it is ‘no big deal’ for them to be invisible in language.
So what should we do about this? It would not be a good solution to simply switch the term guys with girls when referring to mixed-gender groups. Girls is a gendered term, so replacing one gendered term (guys) with another would solve nothing. What is more, girls would not be considered an acceptable term since it has so many negative meanings attached to it. It would be “a mistake and an insult to refer to a group which contains even one male as gals” or girls unless it is some type of joke. To prove that people attach negative meanings to the word girl, here are some adjectives that questionnaire participants used to describe the word: weak, emotional, helpless, dependent, immature, wimpy, sissy, submissive, powerless, inferior, and out of control. What group of people would want to be referred to in this way if it means that they posess these qualities? To solve the problem of using guys, we need REAL gender neutral terms to use for addressing groups of mixed-genders. Some suggestions from questionnaire participants are: you all (or y’all), people (or peeps), folks, pals, friends, everyone, or even using numbers (such as, “hey you two!”). With so many alternative terms to choose from, the use of guys for mixed-gender groups is hardly necessary.
Next, many of the questionnaire participants commented that they struggled to understand the difference between a girl and a woman. The majority agreed that the difference had something to do with age, but they were hard-pressed to state at which age one was no longer a girl. It is important that we know the difference, since girl connotes an air of immaturity and irresponsibility (as evidenced in the above list of adjectives), and we would not want to refer to a mature individual in this way. As Robin Lakoff says, “You don’t send a girl to do a woman’s errand (or even, for that matter, a boy’s errand).” Perhaps it would not be so bad for girl to have negative connotations if boy implied the same things, for then everything would be equal. Similarly, if boy were used to refer to adults just as often as girl, it would arguably not be sexist because the uses would be balanced across genders. However, corpus data proves that this is not the case. Currently, girl is three times more likely than boy to refer to an adult. Also, while women of all ages have girlfriends, “men do not – in a nonsexual sense – have boyfriends.” These examples show that the uses of girl are unbalanced with boy when discussing adults. Thus, gender equality in semantics does not yet exist. This is probably linked to the fact that the age boundaries between girl and woman are not clearly defined, and this is what requires feminist concern.
Ms. magazine has answered this call for a defined boundary between girls and women, by establishing a rule in their magazine that girl will only refer to females under age 18. This is a good distinction, in my opinion, since it complies with the North American legal age-distinction between children and adults. Still, this rule would not be applicable everywhere since there are social norms that allow for some women above 18 to be referred to as girls, such as college students. There might also a problem with people who are unaware of the in-group status rule, since they might overhear women above 18 calling themselves or their friends girls, and infer from this that women do not mind being called girls at all. These issues aside, I think there should still be a general age-boundary to follow when distinguishing between girls and women, so that most mis-uses of girl can be avoided.
Speaking of girl being mis-used, on-screen media is a major culprit for using girl as an insult. When questionnaire participants were asked if they have ever heard girl used as an insult in television or movies, 18.5% said there were “too many [cases] to count,” and many made vague references to football, sports, and military movies, as well as shows like Family Guy and The Simpsons. A specific example can be seen in the popular American sitcom, Everybody Loves Raymond. In the episode that I have cited, Frank says to Peggy, “I think it’s hilarious you beat Ray up, because you’re a girl.” Peggy, who is actually a middle-aged woman, and a mother on the show replies, “It wasn’t easy, Ray was quite a girl himself.” This statement from Peggy may be meant to imply that girls are strong and not easy to beat up. On the other hand, it could have been nothing more than an insult to Ray, since she was calling him a girl. We see that the latter is true, since the next line spoken comes from Robert who points at Ray and says, “Hahaha! You’re a girl!” Then he looks towards Peggy and says “She’s funny.” The point is, on-screen media is one area in which girl is used improperly in numerous cases. Since this type of entertainment is so widely available to the public, it should be all the more responsible in making sure that its language will not offend any viewers. Ideally, girl should be used to identify young females positively, and when it is used as an insult, it is offensive. There has to be semantic change.
Changing Language
Much of this paper has focussed on the insulting uses of girl, and pointing out why language has to change. What has not yet been discussed is how to actually accomplish such change. This section will therefore outline four ways in which language change can be achieved. First, language can be changed through law and policies; this has been effective for centuries. For instance, in the 1800's, a British Act of Parliament declared that masculine terms, such as ‘mankind,’ would act as generic terms, referring to both males and females. This rule was effective until the late 1900's, when it was then outlawed by legally approved guidelines which prohibited the use of masculine generic terms, such as man, and replaced them with neutral terms like human. These approved guidelines also have rules regarding the uses of the word girl specifically. For example, in APA style, writers may not use girl as a substitute for woman or female. Additionally, The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing notes that the word girl must be avoided in job titles, such as replacing weather-girl with weathercaster or meteorologist. It also stipulates that girl should be used only to refer to females who are in their late teens or younger, and requests that people refrain from using the word tomboy, since this word implies that an active young girl is abnormal for her sex. A down-side to this approach of changing language through law and policies is that this strategy often leaves out the explanations for why the changes have been made. For this reason, policy changes should not stand alone, but be accompanied by explanations, which could be given in a variety of settings, such as staff meetings or in schools when students are learning to write. This way, there can also be open discussion about the effects of sexist language.
Another way to implement semantic change is to have simple daily conversations with people. All one has to do is follow a three-step process: (1) Identify negative uses of girl if and when they arise, (2) Explain why the use was improper, and (3) suggest a word or phrase that could be used instead. Mary Daly says this method is effective in exposing sexism, and calls it ‘making metalinguistic comments.’ She gives an example of this strategy where someone says the phrase, “the girls in the office,” and someone replies, “Do you employ underage females in your office?” Daly’s example is a little more arraigning than the three step method (identify-explain-suggest) that I came up with, but it still gets the point across. A further way to create language change through conversation is by having a conversation about the word girl itself. This will raise awareness of its uses, and studies have proven that raising awareness is just as important – and as effective – as creating language change through law and policies. This is because policies are effective insofar as written language can be monitored, but spoken language is another matter. Spoken language is more difficult to control, let alone modify, especially when people feel their freedom of speech is at risk. This is why raising awareness friend-to-friend is so effective; friends will listen to one another and (hopefully) respect one another’s feelings toward sexist language, thus helping to create a more ‘politically correct’ atmosphere that does not offend anyone. After all, why should one person’s ‘freedom of speech’ override the freedom of other individuals to be respected as a group of people (such as girls)?
A third way to create non-sexist language change is by making personal and conscious decisions about what words you will use and when (for example, using girl for pre-pubescent females only). This method is known as the “role model and solidarity strategy,” in which a person ‘leads by example’ to create language change. This method is the least imposing on others since the individual only has to concentrate on changing their own personal uses of words. I myself have put this method to use throughout my year of study on this topic, and I will admit that it was difficult at first. I resolved to use girl only for females under age 18, and to stop referring to groups as guys. It took about six months before I could do my resolution without fail, but it did eventually become effortless. Other studies have proven that this is true for the majority of people: “After repeated and successful resistance [to using girl in negative contexts], people should be better able to resist on later occasions.” Even though this particular system of language change is personal, it still has an effect on others. For instance, I have noticed that when I refer to someone as “a woman in my class” instead of “a girl in my class,” it generates more respect for the person that I am referring to, not just in my own mind, but in the minds of those to whom I am speaking as well. Furthermore, I have found that people pick up on the terms I am using and use them in their own speech, without being asked to do so directly.
The fourth and final method that this paper will suggest for creating non-sexist language change is to do any of the above three methods in conjunction with other feminist projects. The great thing about language change is that one does not have to devote all their time to accomplishing it. In fact, language change must be done along with other forms of feminist activism in order to be successful. The reason for this is that, even if sexism gets erased from language, it will not automatically erase sexism from society. Please recall from the beginning of this paper that language and society are a two-way street, meaning that they influence one another equally. Hence, semantic change has to happen simultaneously with social change in order for real progress to be made.
Ending Remarks
In summary, the word girl affects and is affected by the way girls are viewed in society. This is problematic since girl can be used negatively in a number of ways. Thus, feminist attention to the word girl, as well as feminist action concerning its uses, are required. Non-sexist language change has already begun in Canada and the United States through a number of different methods, but we can see from popular media (such as magazines, television, and film), as well as the opinions of 70 questionnaire participants, that negative uses and connotations of girl are still very much alive today. This negativeness appears in a variety of contexts, including politics, sports, court-rooms, and workplaces. In addition to being used negatively, the word girl is sometimes removed from use altogether, leaving female persons hidden behind masculine generic terms, like guys. This too has damaging consequences on the way girls and women are regarded in the English language; females are forgotten, and by accepting masculine generic words as gender-neutral, society learns that this is okay.
The good news is that girl does not have to be negative. Together, we can continue to create positive and non-sexist language change. Three ways we can accomplish this are through laws and policies (for written language), and through daily conversations and personal word choices (for spoken language). It is also necessary that language change occurs simultaneously with other feminist endeavours, since the link between language and society cannot be broken.
I suggest that further research be done on the uses of the word boy in comparison to girl to point out any further inequalities that went unnoticed in this paper. It will also be useful to know why the word boy replaced the term knave girl to refer to a male child. I would also suggest further research into the uses of girl in media, since the media is such an influential institution in English-speaking countries. Particular attention should be paid to the use of the word girl in music and songs, since the uses of girl may vary between musical genres, or even between the types of songs themselves (ie. girl might be used more in songs about relationships than songs about political issues). I was not able to include the uses of girl in music in my own research.
In conclusion, my hypothesis was correct (there are negative meanings behind the word girl that make it insulting), but it was also incomplete. At the beginning of my research, I failed to take into consideration the importance of context, age-specificity, and other such factors. I now realize that words are not evaluated by their definitions alone, and girl does not have to be insulting if we work together to create language change. I hope that this paper has sparked a desire in readers to join me in the struggle for non-sexist language reform. Remember that language is always changing, it just changes slowly. I also hope that this paper successfully exposed the sexist uses of the word girl in English, and effectively proved that constant and persistent efforts are needed to make girl a purely positive term.
Works Cited
Dictionaries
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language 4th Edition. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2000.
The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English Volume 1. Tom Dalzell, Terry Victor (eds.) New York: Routledge, 2006.
The Oxford English Dictionary VI. n.p: Follow-Haswed, 1989.
Books
Bilger, A. “On Language: You Guys.” Bitchfest. L. Jervis, A. Zeisler (eds.) New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2006.
Lakoff, R. Language and Woman’s Place. New York: Harper & Row, 1975.
Mills, S. Language and Gender: Interdisciplinary Perspectives. London: Longman, 1995.
Pauwels, A. Women Changing Language. University of London: Longman, 1998.
Rawson, H. Wicked Words: A Treasury of Curses, Insults, Put-Downs, and Other Formerly Unprintable Terms from Anglo-Saxon Times to the Present. New York: Crown Trade Paperback, 1989.
Spender, D. Man Made Language: Second Edition. London: Pandora, 1980.
Weatherall, A. Gender, Language, and Discourse. n.p: Routledge, 2002.
Journal Articles
Battistella, E. “Girly Men and Girly Girls.” American Speech Vol. 81, No.1, Southern Oregon University, Spring 2006: 100-112.
Cralley, E.I.; Ruscher, J.B. “Lady, Girl, Female, or Woman: Sexism and Cognitive Busyness Predict Use of Gender-Biased Nouns.” Journal of Language and Social Psychology Vol. 24, No. 3, Sage Publications, September 2005: 300-314.
Sigley, R.; Holmes, J. “What’s a Word Like Girl Doing in a Place Like This? Occupational Labels, Sexist Usages and Corpus Research.” Language and Computers Vol. 17, New Frontiers of Corpus Research, 2000: 247-262.
Media
Corrina, Corrina New Line Cinema, Rated PG, 1994: 115 minutes in length.
Cosmopolitan Vol. 243, No. 4, Hearst Magazines, October 2007.
“A Date For Peter.” Everybody Loves Raymond Season 9, Episode 9, January 3, 2005.
Ms. Vol. 15, No. 3, Liberty Media for Women, Fall 2005.
Playboy Vol. 51, No. 10, n.p., October 2004.
The Sandlot Twentieth Century-Fox Film Corporation, Rated PG, 1993: 101 minutes in length.
Urban Male Magazine Vol. 10, Iss. 3, P&G publishing, Fall 2007.
Gehlert, H. “Can ‘You Guys’ be Girls?: And if so, Why Can’t We Say ‘Hey, Girls!’ to a Bunch of Guys?” Chicago Sun-Times Controversy Section, B5, March 4, 2007: 906 words.
Policies
Gelfand, H.; Walker, C.J. Mastering APA Style: Student’s Workbook and Training Guide 5th Edition. Washington D.C.: The American Psychological Association, 2002.
McMaster University Policy and Procedures on Sexual Harassment. Hamilton: McMaster University, October 2001. Accessible at www.mcmaster.ca/senate/hrgenrl/sxharass.h
Miller, C.; Swift, K. The Handbook of Nonsexist Writing. New York: Barnes and Noble Books, 1980.
