10 DEFINING REALITY A Powerful Tool Dale Spender .docx

10
DEFINING REALITY
A Powerful Tool
Dale Spender
FOR REASONS I EXPLORE in this essay, too little attenti on
has been
paid to the role of language in the construction of inequality.
This
reluctance on the part of many to consider language and power
issues
is itself worth attention. As evidenced by the essays in this
collection,
there are many ways of approaching the topic of language and
power;
the one I am going to use is that of sketching my own route to
the in-
tersection of language and power . It is an idiosyncratic route,
but one
that helps map out the terrain, and leads to some of the reasons
for the
long tradition of separating questions about language from
questions
about power-a separation that has implications for every
speaker in
every conversation.
To attempt to itemize the properties of language in terms that
would be satisfactory to all those who focus on language as an
area of

research would be to take on an impossible task; to attempt to
categorize definitively the properties of power would be to
assume an
equally impossible task; at the very least this makes language
and
power an area of debate and contention. However, despite the
many
differences of opinion that may exist about the nature of
language and
the nature of power, it may be possible to arrive at a consensus
that
will help formulate the parameters and permit discussion .
For example, it is likely that, regardless of one's background or
in-
terest, there would be little disagreement with the statement that
language is a means of organizing and structuring the world. It
is also
likely that most people would accept both Suzanne Langer's
thesis
(1942, 1976) that language is a means of symbolizing and
representing
experience, and Peter Berger and Thomas Luckman's thesis
(1972)
that it is the vehicle for constructing reality. And perhaps there
would
be little quarrel with a broad definition of power as the capacity
of
some persons to produce effects on others, effects sometimes
contrary
194
Dale Spender 195

to their interests. If these claims can be accepted, then there is a
basis
for bringing language and power together and for formulating
the
focus of this chapter: I will consider how some people affect
others
through the means of organizing and structuring the world,
through
symbolizing and representing experience, through the
construction of
reality.
To begin, I am going to address myself to the issue of men
having
the capacity to have effects on women, through language. I am
going
to discuss the negation of women's experience in a male-
dominated
society fro m inside that framework, from within the context of
male
domination. As a woman, I am going to describe the experience
of
women in a society where women's experience is frequently
denied or
dismissed . If I were a man, speaking for women, or if I were
describ-
ing men 's experience, then my case would probably be seen as
representative, but-because I am a woman, describing women's
ex-
perience , I confront the very problem I am attempting to
address. I
am involved with-as distinct from detached from-my data, and
within our socially constructed schemata this is in itself
problematic,
because convention suggests that I should be reporting on

previously
acquired data and that this essay should not of itself constitute
data .
For many reasons-which will emerge later-I challenge that
conven-
tion and those who are responsible for it.
My initial interest in language and power was broadly with the
realm of meaning. I began with the attempt to find an
explanation for
sexually differentiated meanings in the language: Why did the
English
language possess fewer meanings for women (see Nilsen [1977]
for
documentation of the fewer lexical items for women); why were
so
many of these meanings negative (see Schulz [1975] for
evidence of
the semantic derogation of women); and why were so many of
these
negative meanings concentrated in a few specific areas (see
Stanley
[1973] for the discussion of promiscuous terms for women,
terms that
outnumber the promiscuous terms for men by ten to one)? What
were
the implications of this in terms of organizing and symbolizing
ex-
perience, for the construction of reality?
I was conscious that language does not spring forward into the
World, ready made, but that it is invented, and I was interested
in find -
ing out if explicit reasons had ever been given for these
sexually differ-
entiated meanings. That male grammarians and politicians had

specifically stated that the term ''man'' should be used for
woman, on
the grounds that the masculine gender was more worthy and
compre-
hensive (Snowden, 1913: 143-144; Bodine, 1975), seemed to me
a
..
196 LANGUAGE AND POWER
rather unusual pronouncement, given their data , but it also
helped me
to focus on the sexually differentiated participation that has
occurred
in the making of the language . I began to suspect that , while
both
sexes used the language, it was men who had created the
English that
is codified in our textbooks and dictionaries.
However, it was not just these single units of meaning that in-
terested me; I was also interested in "available sets of meanings
,"
which is the terminology that Michael Young (1975) uses to
designate
knowledge. Within the available sets of meanings that constitute
such
disciplines as anthropology, history, philosophy, psychology,
and
sociology, I found patterns comparable to those manifested in
the
language; women were negated, absent, or noted in a derogative
or
negative manner. I began to appreciate that codified knowledge,

and
the codified language, had been constructed primarily by men,
that
men considered themselves representative of humanity, and that
this
has had numerous consequences for women.
At this stage I became familiar with the work of Shirley
Ardener
(1975) and Edwin Ardener (1975). Edwin Ardener, for example,
had
noted the propensity among male anthropologists for going off
to
other cultures and consulting only males about the way the wo
rld
worked. He concluded that "Those trained in ethnography
evidently
have a bias towards the kinds of models that men are ready to
provi de
(or to concur in) rather than towards any that women might
provide"
(E . Ardener, 1975: 2). This helped to explain for Ardener why
it was
that "no one could come back from an ethnographic study of 'the
X'
having talked only to women and about men, without
professional
comment and some self-doubt [but that the] reverse can and
does hap-
pen constantly" (p. 3). That ethnographers should seek out
males
when trying to "crack the code" of a particular culture was
under-
standable, however, according to Ardener. The male version of
reali-
ty, he argues, is more readily accessible to anthropologists,

because
males are more articulate, more experienced at bridging the
kind of
gap between themselves and ethnographers than are women, and
tend
"to give a bounded ·model of society such as ethnographers are
at-
tracted to" (p . 2). This represents an analytical problem for
Ardener ,
who says that
if the models of a society made by most ethnographers tend to
be
models derived from the male portion of society, how does the
symbolic
weight of that other mass of persons-half or more of a normal
human
population, as we have accepted-express itself [E . Ardener,
1975 ; 3]?
This was certainly a question that attracted me; but it is not the
only
way the problem can be conceptualized . Ardener assumes that
the
Dale Spender 197
men in societies studied by ethnographers actually do have a
more de-
veloped and accessible version of reality, to which
ethnographers from
our society are attracted; there is an assumption that
ethnographers
from our society are neutral and value free, and no attempt is

made to
analyze the reasons for their attraction to the male version of
reality in
other societies. The problem of getting women's experience into
anthropology, of giving women a voice to articulate the
symbolic
weight of their experience is, as he sees it, a problem of getting
women
into the data of Western anthropologists; it is about making
their ver-
sion of reality more accessible. But perhaps it is the
anthropologists
who need to have their behavior modified.
One thing that Edwin Ardener does not do is examine the
frames of
meaning that Western anthropologists bring with them to the
societies
they study. He assumed that the invisibility of women in an-
thropological explanation and interpretation is a product of the
women's behavior, but I would want to ask whether it might be
the
product of the values of Western anthropologists. For it seems
to me
that English-speaking anthropologists, at least, have a language
that
negates women's experience, and they have codified bodies of
knowl-
edge that negate women's experience (see Spender, 1981), and it
is
therefore "understandable" that they should impose this pattern
of
invisibility or negation on women outside, as well as inside,
their own
society. Whereas E. Ardener assumes that the superiority of
male

models of the world is a product of their particular construction
of
reality, I would want to ask if it might not be a product of their
cultural maleness. Perhaps he was not pointing to a
methodological
problem in anthropology, but to a problem that has its origins in
male
dominance-a problem of language and power .
It was Shirley Ardener who articulated the concept that women's
meanings were blocked at the level of expression in a male-
dominated
society. In my own work on language as the vehicle for the
construc-
tion of reality, I have encountered repeatedly the negation of
women's
experience and the possibility that when it comes to language, it
is men
who have the power, for, although the evidence is to some
extent cir-
cumstantial, it seems unlikely that it has been women who have
been
the producers, the originators, of these devalued meanings about
women and their experience of the world.
When I began to undertake more systematic research in this area
I
found that the problem of expressing the symbolic weight of
women's
experience was not confined to other societies (which
anthropologists
might study) but was a problem consistently encountered by
women
Within our own society (and which anthropologists have not
studied).
That it has never been the central focus of any discipline, that it

has
198 LANGUAGE AND.POWER
been rendered invisible or trivial, that it has been negated ,
despite the
fact that it has been consistently expressed for centuries by
represen-
tatives of half the human population, was data in itself. There is
a
long, varied tradition of women's protest against male power
(see
Spender, 1982, 1983a, 1983b ), and the fact that it is not part of
the
conventional set of meanings, that it is not readily accessible, is
more
an indication of the way women's voice is "denied , dismissed,
distorted"' than it is evidence that women have not protested.
From
Christine de Pisan in the fifteenth century, through Aphra Benn,
Mary Astell, Mary Wollstonecraft, Frances Wright, Harriet
Marti-
neau, to Matilda Joslyn Gage, Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Mary
Ritter
Beard, and Simone de Beauvoir (to name but a few), women
have
been encoding an experience as women-as subordinated women-
an
experience that men do not have; and men have been denying
the
authority and significance of that experience, on the precise
grounds
that it is an experience they do not have. After all, they are
ostensibly

representative of humanity!
Between the sexes there has been no parity, no exchange of ex-
perience, no dialogue; on the contrary, the limited experience of
one
sex has been legitimated as the complete human experience, so
that
those who do not endorse it are marked as not fully human , as
the de-
viants from humanity.
By such means is a significant segment of human experience
deemed
not to count; it is categorized as nondata. And the experience of
reality of those who dominate, of those who have power,
dominates.
It is men who are the arbiters of convention, said Virginia
Woolf
(1929), and when a woman presents her version of experience,
she will find that she is perpetually wishing to alter the
established
values-to make serious what appears insignificant to a man, and
trivial
what is to him important and for that, of course, she will be
criticized:
for the critic of the opposite sex will be genuinely puzzled and
surprised
by an attempt to alter the current scale of values, and will see in
it, not
merely a difference of view, but a view that is weak, or trivial,
or sen-
timental, because it differs from our own [Woolf, 1972: 146].
Women have experience of the world that men do not have; this
is

not just the experience associated with the biological condition
of be-
ing woman, it is the experience of having one's life and values
con-
stantly negated. It is the experience of being permanently, and
by
definition, in the wrong. Individual men can make use of this
negation
of women's experiences, in order to discredit women's
arguments.
Few women writers/philosophers have not commented on this
fun-
Dale Spender 199
daJDental denial of their experience and the implications it has
for
their dialogue; in 1949, Simone de Beauvoir summed it up when
she
said,
In the midst of an abstract discussion it is vexing to hear a man
say:
"You think thus and so because you are a woman"; but I know
my only
defence is to reply: "I think thus and so because it is true,"
thereby
removing my subjective self from the argument. It would be out
of the
question to reply: "And you think the contrary because you are a
man,'' for it is understood that the fact of being a man is no
peculiarity.
A man is in the right being a man; it is the woman who is in the
wrong

(de Beauvoir, 1972: 15].
Contemporary feminist writers describe the same phenomenon,
although they may use different terminology. Mary Daly (1973)
for
example, has declared that women have had the power of
naming
stolen from them, that they have no names that accurately
symbolize
their experience of the world, but are obliged to use the names
that
men have produced. And the names that men have produced
describe
a world from a position women do not occupy; women's
perceptions
are often " precisely those perceptions that men, because of
their
dominant position, could not perceive" says Jean Baker Miller
(1976:
6). But because men's partial view of the world is decreed to be
the
whole, men's terms are inadequate and false (Daly, 1973).
It would appear that both sexes generate models of the world,
but
where there is a discrepancy between the two, the issue is
resolved in
favor of men (S. Ardener, 1975). By this process, women's
experience
is negated, declared to be nondata, decreed as nonexistent, as
unreal.
Were both sexes to enjoy the power to legitimate their own
meanings,
then there could be a multiplicity of symbols to represent the
different
views of the sexes on substantive issues, but while only one sex

possesses the power to legitimate meanings, its meanings
become the
totality, its partial meanings are accepted as complete. By such
means
does one sex have the capacity to produce an intended effect on
the
symbolizing and structuring activities of the other sex; by such
means
is sexual inequality constructed, reinforced, and perpetuated.
Men
have defined themselves as more central, as more worthy, more
com-
prehensive (and so on), and they have checked only with other
men to
validate and authenticate their meanings.
The exclusion of women is structural; the negation of their ex-
perience is probably the inevitable outcome of such a structure.
No
matter what women do or say, no matter how they represent
their ex-
perience, in these terms, if it is not also the experience of men,
it will
be consigned to the realm of nondata. I can still remember my
rage
(hardly an acknowledged virtue among researchers) when I
under-
stood the implications of the then-fashionable questions and
answers
in relation to "tag questions" and "women's language deficiency
.':

Briefly, the belief was that there was something wrong with
women 's
language, and this was reflected in the lack of confidence and in
the
hesitancy and tentativeness of the way women used language.
Robin
Lakoff (1975) has suggested that the source of this "deficiency"
was
in women's use of tag questions. Now apart from the linguistic
problem of identifying a tag question, 2 I was open to the
possibility
that there might be something in this hypotheses . So were
others.
Dubois and Crouch (1975) tested women and men for tag
questions in
a conference setting and found that, far from women 's being the
culprits in the ostensibly deviant usage, it was men whose
language
was prone to such productions. I waited-as a reasonable
research-
er-for the discussion of the findings. I waited-with great glee-
for
the logical development and the finding that as it was men who
used more tag questions than women, perhaps it was men who
had the hesitant and tentative speech . But no. Instead of a
discussion
about the deficiencies in male language, I was entertained with
the
"sweet reason" that obviously the source of women's lack of sel
f-
confidence was not contained in the tag question. Men' s
language,
once more, went on its way unchallenged, while the primary
task of
locating the source of women's deficiency continued-in another
place, of course . This is the bias of the discourse.

American, Australian, British, Canadian, and French women
have
all attested to this phenomenon; they have been describing it for
cen-
turies (it is present in Mary Wollstonecraft's Vindication of the
Rights
of Women [17921), but because it has not been the experience
of men,
it is not part of the tradition-which is supposedly our tradition
but
which is more accurately described as men's tradition. (Had it
been
the experience of men, feminists have argued, it would have
been a
central philosophical issue, as would menstruation have been
the
locus for glorification had it been the experience of men).
Women have been excluded "from a full share in the making of
what becomes treated as our culture" says Dorothy Smith (1978
: 283),
with the result that women's meanings and experience have been
omit-
ted or excised from the culture's meanings, and thus from
conver-
sations. What consequences does thi s have for women? In part,
it
helps to construct their inequality and dependency , to convince
them
of their own "inferiority." It is possible, for example, for wom
en to
feel strong and autonomou s but with no means of representing
this
concept through language (there are no words for women's
strength;

Dale Spender 201
see Miller and Swift [1976]); they cannot voice that strength
and
autonomy. They may even begin to doubt the validity of the
concept
for women; if women can feel strong and autonorp.ous, why has
there
been no need to encode words to represent this state of
existence?
Women might feel sexually healthy-and autonomous-but again,
there are no words that can carry the weight of this meaning.
Men have validated their own sexuality with virility and
potency,
but there are no equivalents for women; women are offered a
choice
between the equally offensive terms "frigidity" and
"nymphomania"
(and it is signi ficant that there are no semantically equivalent
terms for
men). With no means of symbolizing a positive, healthy sexual
ex-
istence, why should women not doubt their own authenticity,
par-
ticularly when almost every aspect of social organization
reinforces
their lack o f authority. The list could go on and on.
It is not an accident that I have chosen to include autonomy in
both
the examples cited; this is a fundamental aspect of the negation
of

women, fo r they are defined in our society, in relation to men,
as a
derivative o f men (even to the extent of deriving from Adam's
rib).
Linguists have categorized them in this way; in his
componential
analysis of the English language Geoffrey Leech (1969) divides
nouns
into ( + male) and (-male) indicating the semantic dimensions of
the
language, as he sees them. As Julia Stanley (1977: 48) says,
women are
defined negatively:
[O]u r behaviour is that which is not masculine. The definition
of the
word mannish explains to us that women who possess such
attributes as
strength, fortitude, honesty, courage, directness and bravery are
"aber-
rant."
Women can only aspire to be as good as man; there is no point
in try-
ing to be as good as a woman.
Shirley Ardener (1975) has used the terms "dominate" and
"muted " to designate the different relationship of the sexes to
langu age and reality. Males, as the dominant group, can impede
the
free expression of alternative models of the world which
women, as
the muted group, may express; she suggests that males may
even in-
hibi t the generation of models from the muted group, who, for
exam-

ple, may become so convinced of their dependence that they
cease to
generate any notions of independence for themselves. It may be,
says
Shirley Ardener, that the muted group is even relatively less
articulate
because they are required to express themselves through an
idiom not
of their own making; it may be that they "are silent on matters
of
202 LANGUAGE AND POWER .
special concern to them for which no accommodation has been
made"
in the idiom of the dominant group (S. Ardener, 1975: xii).
For women to speak on the issue of women's silence in language
and culture is to invoke many of those penalties that have
helped to
keep women silent on this matter; for, while this representation
of ex-
perience may "ring true" for many women, it may remain
"meaning-
less" for men. Within the legitimated frame of reference in
which we
operate, it would be perfectly consistent for men to dismiss this
issue
as nondata, as trivial or insignificant. It would be predictable if
they
were to claim that the substance of this argument escapes them
for, as
Joan Roberts has said,
Because of female exclusion from thought systems, the hardest

thing for
a man to know is what a woman thinks. But it is harder still for
him to
listen and to accept her thoughts because they are certain to
shake the
foundation of his beliefs [Roberts, 1976: 19] .
What are the implications for a male when a woman asserts that
there
is "something wrong with a man" who cannot accept the
authenticity
of a woman's view of the world? What are the implications for
men
when women insist that men and male power are a problem ;
when to
men it does not feel as though their sex and their power are a
problem?
They may be discomfitted by this assertion, they may be
confused,
they may even feel that they are being confronted with a doub le
bind;
for, if they accept the authenticity of women's experience, then
they
accept that their sex and their power constitutes a problem .
Yet, if
they deny the validity of women's assertions and dispute that
their
sex and power is a problem, they are doing nothing other than
demonstrating that they are the precise problem that women's
ex-
perience encodes; they are acting as the dominant group
incapable of
granting legitimation to experience outside their own.
A no-win situation? Certainly-and one constructed when
someone

with experience other than their own assumes the right to name
the
world. And if men feel the constraints of this double bind, if
they feel
damned if they disagree, then I am sure that the sympathy of
many
women will be with them. For let me assure them that, while
this maY
be an isolated and novel experience for men, it is the daily
reality of
women's lives. Women can know what it is like to be damned if
they
agree with the prevailing definitions of womanhood, and dam
ned if
they disagree.
This is the unfortunate outcome of a structure that permits only
one perceptual order. I could stop here. I could say that for
centuries
men have imposed their view on women; now it is time for
women to
-------------------
Dale Spender 203
have a turn and impose their view on men so that we can retain
a
uniform perceptual order but simply change the sexual origin of
the
world view. But I have reservations about this stance.
I have no compunction about using such reversals to make a
point,
no reluctance when it comes to providing a learning experience

for
men. But replacing the tyranny of one sex with the tyranny of
the
other is not for me a long-term solution: I do not want to insist
that
equality between the sexes depends on women's meanings pre-
dominating ; I do want to insist that women's meanings should
be
allowed to coexist, that they should be accorded equal validity.
In
other words, I am seeking a radical solution: I want a woman's
word
to count as much as a man's, no more and no less. Then neither
sex
will have their reality circumscribed by the experience of the
other;
neither will have their existence structured into a double bind.
What I want to do now-very briefly-is to (a) acknowledge the
partial·nature of my view, and (b) suggest appropriate
generalizations
that might be made from it. I think the marginality of women
can be
productive; I think this experience of women as a negated,
deviant,
deficient group can be utilized to provide insights into the
operation of
language and power in society and can help to eliminate those
divi-
sions between dominant and muted groups. It is my contention
that
tyranny emerges only when one sex (or group) has sole access
to the
legitimation of experience and that (at the risk of
oversimplification),
if it could be accepted that there is more than one way of

looking at
the world, the current male monopoly could be undermined. It is
a
multiplicity of meaning rather than monodimensional meaning
(Daly,
1978) that needs to be cultivated. Perhaps because they have
had more
experience in dealing with multiple realities (their own as well
as that
of men), women are in a more advantageous position in this
respect
and can help to lead the way.
Gender , of course, is not the only dimension along which we
divide
the world into unequal parts; class and ethnicity are also used in
this
way. The case for the negation of experience could be equally
ap-
plicable for working-class or Black people who are also outside
the
white, middle-class, male, legitimating circle. (The coinage of
"Black
is beautiful" was surely an attempt to subvert the legitimated
mean-
ings.) But the list is not complete with the nomination of sex,
class,
and ethnicity; they are not the only bases for the criteria for
entry to
that circle in which reality is defined. "Others" are those who-to
name but a few characteristics-are not white, middle- or upper-
class,
middle-aged, heterosexual, able-bodied, or male. It would seem
that
those who are the legitimators have indeed only a partial view
of the

World!
Frequently it is the context that determines the structuring of
dominant and muted groups . In my own work within education,
for
example, I can characterize teachers as the dominant group with
the
power to define the reality of the classroom, and students as the
muted
group who consistently have their experience negated. T he
spectacle
of teachers as decreeing that their view of the world is the view
of the
world-while the experience that the students have (and that is
dif-
ferent from the teacher's) is declared nondata-is not an
uncommon
one. I have listened to tapes in which teachers have
systematically con-
structed the dependence of their students by insisting that they
de ny
their own experience and accept as valid only that which the
teacher
presents. I have listened to myself doing this!
Obviously, in a hierarchical society, people find ways of
construct-
ing stratification . But there has been no extensive work
undertaken on
the part played by language in the construction of inequality,3
and on
the ways that the negation of women's experiences and words

dif-
ferentially structures women's and men's linguistic resources
and ar-
guments for the expression of personal power. Terms such as
"role
playing," "internalization of oppression," and "conditioning"
have
been coined to label this phenomenon whereby people come to
believe
in and accept their own inferiority/superiority,
dependence/inde-
pendence, but there has been no real focus on how this process
works. If this had been an issue in language study, then it is
possible
that language researchers would be displaying great interest in
women
who are involved in the modern women's movement, that they
would
be looking to such women as a source of data and would be
inspecting
the cultural factors that enhance or suppress the power of
individual
speakers. I think it highly significant that virtually no research
has
been undertaken on consciousness-raising, despite the fact that
it has
been an activity in which thousands of women have been
engaged, and
in whic}l many of the conventions of language and power, as
they have
been outlined here, have been repudiated.
Joan Cassell (1977) has stated that through consciousness-
raising,
women "switch world"; Mary Daly (1973) has stated that they
begin

to recycle the symbols for the structuring and ordering of
experience;
Jo Freeman (1975) has stated that they experience a growth in
self-
esteem and confidence. I would argue that they cease to operate
as a
muted group, that they begin to validate and authenticate their
own
meanings, which frequently contradict and subvert the
legitimated
meanings. They cease to role play, to internalize their
oppression; they
become "resocialized" (Cassell, 1977). They begin to define
them-
selves and to negate the negation of their experiences. The
"effects
Dale Spender 205
contrary to their interests" can no longer be relied upon to take
place.•
That this change is occurring at the moment is incontestable;
that it is
not the substance of "serious" research in language and power is
un-
fortunate-but understandable. To start looking at women as a
source
of data in this way could well begin to establish them as
representative
of humanity.
N OTES

1. A forth co mi ng issue of Women's Studies International
Forum devoted to this
topic is entitled "Gatekeeping: The Denial, Dismissal and
Distortion of Women."
2. While " I ' ll be home after supper, all right?" is a tag
question, the British "We
don't want any wo men in the club, all right?" is not a tag
question, despite the fact that
they possess comparable linguistic features.
3. There have of course been descriptions of language and
inequality. See particular-
ly the work of Labov (1972a, 1972b).
4. There is still a long way to go, and women frequently
acknowledge the resistance
of the language to their efforts to change it; there is still no
word in general circulation
for women 's strength, for example. But there are new words
that do "alter the balance
of power" and that women have coined (see Daly, 1978;
Spender, 1981).

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