Gender and Sociolinguistic Variation

by Eckert

We cannot consider gender an independent variable, but must consider it in relation to other variations such as socioeconomic status, identity, and regional variation.

Eckert challenged Labov's generalization that women's speech is more conservative than men's by examining two groups of white teenagers at a Detroit high school. The groups were the jocks and the burnouts, who together accounted for about half the school's populations.

Eckert examined phonological variation among jock and burnout males and females. She found that there was a complex relationship between nonstandard vowels and identity, concluding that we cannot look at gender differences without examining the communities of practice in which the women and men use language.