{"id":618,"date":"2023-01-14T15:40:56","date_gmt":"2023-01-14T15:40:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=618"},"modified":"2023-01-14T15:40:56","modified_gmt":"2023-01-14T15:40:56","slug":"genderlect-in-hemingways-hills-like-white-elephants","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/?p=618","title":{"rendered":"Genderlect in Hemingway\u2019s \u201cHills Like White Elephants\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

I recently read for the first time Earnest Hemingway\u2019s novel The Sun Also Rises, <\/em>and was struck by several dialogues in which the author presented his interpretation of a female voice. I remember thinking at a certain point that all the women in his novel seemed rather disagreeable in their speech, and furthermore, that I have never known a woman to talk like the women in the story. It drew my thoughts toward our genderlect studies, and the interesting literary situation of a female voice created by a male author (and vice versa). Thus, I found the Hemingway piece that we have read for class which contains a back and forth dialogue between a man and a woman. In this story, the female dialogue that Hemingway creates appears to be characterized by a slightly hybrid female-male voice. While it is grounded with female speech-mannerisms, such as soft hedges, questions, directives, and empathetic emotion, the sentences and insertions carry with them subtle hints of masculinity by interruption, competitive insult, and short and direct statements. The following paragraphs are an analysis of this dialogue based on the genderlect studies and findings by Jennifer Coates in her book, Women, Men, and Language, <\/em>particularly those found in chapter 6 titled, \u201cGender Differences in Conversational Practice\u201d (Coates 85).  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hemingway accurately captures the female genderlect in his \u201cgirl\u201d character most poignantly through her use of questions, directives, hedges, and empathetic emotion. It is with a question that the female voice begins the story\u2019s dialogue, \u201cWhat should we drink?\u201d (Hemingway 1032). This linguistic act follows Coates\u2019 findings that women tend to \u201cexploit questions\u2026in order to keep the conversation going\u201d (Coates 93). She continues throughout the very short story to insert fifteen more questions (both regular and tag questions) into the dialogue, strongly demonstrating the feminine speech mechanism of supporting the other speaker in conversation by way of the question-invitation. In this opening moment, she then proceeds to suggest to the man \u201cLet\u2019s drink beer,\u201d using a soft directive (\u201cLet\u2019s\u201d) rather than a command\u2014another typically female device. Throughout the story she uses a significant amount of diction with similar implications such as \u201ccould,\u201d \u201cwould,\u201d \u201cmaybe,\u201d and \u201cwe\u2019ll see,\u201d indicating gentle, collective, and non-assertive suggestions that leave room for the other speaker\u2019s consideration and participation. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The female speaker\u2019s use of hedges to soften her speech is similar to the two devices explained above, and contains aspects of both. She adds questions to the end of her statements to cushion her speech, making them seem less like opinions and more like indifferent observations, evident in these examples: \u201cI said the mountains looked like white elephants. Wasn\u2019t that bright?\u201d and \u201cThat\u2019s all we do\u2014isn\u2019t it\u2026?\u201d (Hemingway 1033). She also includes empty words to refrain from excessive harshness and distance herself from what she is trying to convey: \u201cCan we maybe stop talking?\u201d (Hemingway 1035). It is also evident, through the work of these devices, that her speech is inlayed with more explicit emotion than the man. It is easy to hear concern in her voice through the uncertainty expressed by her questions, \u201cAnd you think then we\u2019ll be alright and be happy?\u201d \u201cAnd if I do it, you\u2019ll be happy and things will be like they were and you\u2019ll love me?\u201d (Hemingway 1034). These doubtful sentiments compared to those of the male character\u2019s \u201cWe\u2019ll be fine afterward,\u201d and \u201cI know we will,\u201d accurately portray Coates\u2019 observations of the male tendency to express certainty in conversation due to an inherent inclination to use \u201cstrong directive forms to demonstrate control\u201d (Coates 95). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Thus, by these representations Hemingway creates very accurate aspects of both male and female conversational speech. However, there are several instances in which generally masculine speech-mannerisms come out in the female voice. First, Coates presents that \u201ccertain elements of competition enter into all male-talk\u201d (Coates 104). In the beginning of the story, the female creates a competitive environment when she tells the man her assumption that \u201cNo, you wouldn\u2019t have [seen a white elephant before],\u201d to which he promptly replies \u201cI might have\u2026just because you say I wouldn\u2019t have doesn\u2019t prove anything\u201d (Hemingway 1033). Throwing him a competitive insult in this manner is not generally a feminine quality of speech, demonstrating a slightly masculine quality within her voice. Similarly, where overt interruption tends to occur more prominently in male speech, the female character in this story is the only interrupter within their conversation, demonstrating more hints of masculinity in her speech: (M) \u201cI don\u2019t want you to do anything you don\u2019t want to do\u2014-\u201d (F) \u201cNor that isn\u2019t good for me\u2026\u201d (M) \u201cAll right, but you\u2019ve got to realize\u2014-\u201d (F) \u201cI realize\u2026\u201d (Hemingway 1035). The interruptions serve to place control of the conversation in the female character\u2019s hands, an authority she seems to possess through the course of the whole story. While her sentences do contain feminine emotion as expressed in the preceding paragraphs, they are characterized by short, limited, and somewhat indifferent statements such as \u201cI don\u2019t care about me,\u201d and \u201cI feel fine\u201d (Hemingway 1034-35). By the end of the story, she appears to withhold her true sentiments, and is ultimately the one who seeks to keep the conversation short and shallow, all aspects which give her speech control over the man\u2019s and render her voice an interesting mix of feminine and masculine genderlect. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

21 October 2019<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Works Cited:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Coates, Jennifer. Women, Men, and Language, 3rd Ed. <\/em>Pearson Education Limited, Edinburgh, 2004.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Hemmingway, Ernest. \u201cHills Like White Elephants.\u201d The Norton Anthology of American Literature, Shorter 9th Ed. <\/em>Edited by Robert S Levine, W. W. Norton & Company, Inc., New York, 2017.  <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I recently read for the first time Earnest Hemingway\u2019s novel The Sun Also Rises, and was struck by several dialogues in which the author presented his interpretation of a female voice. I remember thinking at a certain point that all the women in his novel seemed rather disagreeable in their speech, and furthermore, that I…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[657,672,669,670,661,663,665,619,428,656,667,660,662,671,658,580,655,664,357,668,666,659],"class_list":["post-618","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-critical-analyses","tag-coates","tag-conversational-practice","tag-directives","tag-empathetic-emotion","tag-ernest","tag-female","tag-feminine","tag-gender","tag-gender-differences","tag-genderlect","tag-hedges","tag-hemmingway","tag-hills-like-white-elephants","tag-interruptions","tag-jennifer","tag-linguistic-analysis","tag-linguistics","tag-male","tag-masculine","tag-questions","tag-speech","tag-women-men-and-language"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=618"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":654,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/618\/revisions\/654"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=618"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=618"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bexroden.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=618"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}