Do Males and Females use Glottalisation Differently?

Glottalisation amongst Female and Male speakers

Most people when they hear the word “Gottalisation”, they think it is a complex or dauting linguistic terminology. However Glottalisation is relatively a simple phonological process, Glottalisation (ʔ)is simply the restriction of airflow between the glottis and Vocal Cords, for instance pronouncing Butter as Bu”uh”er, where the speaker substitutes the alveolar plosive “/t/ for an /uh/ vowel produced at the back of the tongue. Glottalisation is a prevalent linguistic feature within accents and dialects such as Multicultural British English, Cockney, Estuary English and many more. Glottalisation within speech tends to be underestimated by society, it a catalyst to our linguistic status and identity within society. Basic Phonology like the Glottal stop can contribute to wider sociolinguistic stereotypes and default assumptions, causing social variation of accents within the UK. Glottalisation is a broad idea, but within my Research I am specifically looking at the use of Glottal Stops across female and male speakers.

The idea of specifically looking at how Glottal Stops is varied amongst gender intrigued me. There are many linguistic studies on how Gender speech styles can vary, such as Lakoff (1940’s) and Deborah Tannen (1990) that provides ideas of Gendered Speech through both Dominance and Difference lenses. However, I feel there is little spotlight on the phonology behind Gendered Lexicon, that helped me within my research. My study was carried out by analysing the pronunciation of three polysyllabic words, Butter, Football and City. This was done by printing out the words on sheets of paper for the participants to read off. I specifically chose these words to be simple as participants would subconsciously pronounce these words instead of focusing on how to pronounce each syllable more naturally. Moreover, I interviewed 9 Males and 9 Females within the age range of 20–70 from varied ethnicities within Covent Garden, London. I aimed to interview participants from varied ethnicities, and this would enable my data to be less biased and more representative of both male and female participants, to identify how frequently Glottalisation would occur within their speech.

Resultants found are shown below:

• 6/9 (66.6%) of the Male Participants did not pronounce Glottal stops across each word.
• 3/9 (33.3%) of the Male Participants pronounced Glottal stops across each word.
• 4/9 (55.5%) of the Female Participants pronounced Glottal stops across each word.
• 3/9 (44.4%) of the Female Participants did not pronounce Glottal stops across each word.
• 1/9 (11.1%) of the Female Participants did not pronounce Glottal stops across 2 words (Butter and City) but pronounced it for the word Football.

Most importantly, I ensured that my data would not invoke a prescriptivist mindset (that there is only one correct way of speaking), for instance that Males were linguistically superior compared to Females or vice versa. However, my data reinforced that us as humans are linguistically diverse, as there is a multitude of ways to pronounce certain words, not just one correct or overt way of speaking. Within society, it easy to discriminate or judge one’s accent (accentism) as evidenced in Giles’ Matched Guise test or the COMRES survey, which found that eighty percent admit to making discriminatory decision of who to employ within the workforce. Let’s not forget that accents is a prominent part of one’s linguistic identity within society.

These findings recorded suggested that female participants used Glottalisation more frequently than male participants. This contrasts with conventional default assumptions regarding gendered speech and demonstrates that phonological variation cannot be easily predicted based on gender alone. My research contradicted Peter Trudgill’s Norwich Study (1970) of the velar Nasal “ng”. Male participants were found to clip the “g” phoneme at the end of words such as “talking” which became “talkin”, whereas female participants would pronounce the velar nasal “ng” completely. This could have been due to female speakers being conditioned to conform to societal standards of prestige within linguistics, despite there being a rigid social structure. It is interesting, as female participants within my research would, divert from these “linguistic norms” by pronouncing the glottal stops, reinforcing a sense of linguistic diversity. Although the sample size was relatively small, the results indicate that gender may play a role in patterns of Glottalisation among young speakers.

However, it is important to understand external factors that may impact my research. Initially, sociolinguistic factors such as ethnicity, class and age etc could contribute more to use of Glottal stops rather than gender, this could be due to the fact that participants are spending time with more people within their discourse community and in group, that would lead them to converge and emulate their phonology of certain word. Another factor that was perhaps less subtle to notice was Social Performativity. For instance, upon asking one of my participants, who was an American Tourist visiting London, he asked “Should I pronounce these in American English or British English”. To this I responded, “whatever feels more natural”. By allowing the participant to pronounce this more naturally, it would provide with a fairer representation of his Glottalisation. Although this, it would be more challenging to notice any sort of performativity, so I assumed participants responses were natural, that could lead to my results being inaccurate.

Overall, despite female participants pronouncing the Glottal Stop more than males, my results collected on Glottalisation reinforced the importance of linguistic diversity within society, something that I truly believe should be both celebrated and understood more. While this study suggests female speakers may use the Glottal Stop more frequently than male speakers, the results further demonstrate that patterns of Language variation cannot be determined by Gender alone. Differences in the use of Glottalisation should not be perceived as an incorrect linguistic behaviour but rather, natural examples of language variation. Phonological features such as the Glottal Stop play an important role in shaping our linguistic identity within society, it represents our social, regional or cultural group that we are part of, even if it means that we must diverge with one another. Regardless of how differently we speak our linguistic choices often reflect our ancestral roots, region and collectively, our identity, so take pride in it.

Written by Milo Ryan (Year 12 Student)