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their distribution across gender and sentence types
MARJORIE K.M. CHAN
Department of East Asian Languages and Literatures
The Ohio State University
INTRODUCTION
Sentence-final particles in a tone language such as Chinese often carry much of the meaning and function that intonation does in non-tone languages. The Cantonese dialect of Chinese is no exception, and is, moreover, particularly rich in its inventory of sentence particles. They may occur singly or in clusters of up to three at the end of utterances. Some sources on Cantonese have identified thirty or more basic forms (Kwok 1984), while others have listed as many as seventy-seven (Ball 1924)! Sentence particles often have grammatical functions, such as changing a declarative sentence into an interrogative one. A number of them, however, simply have highly affective value, serving primarily to convey speakers’ attitudes and emotions, and are found in casual conversations only, or in those conversations that take place among people who are close friends or who have intimate relationships. Hence, particles such as je and jek would not be found in formal news broadcasts or in formal speeches.1 These two particles are, moreover, gender-linked in the literature (Chan 1996). That is, they have been cited as particles that are preferred by females, or used exclusively by them to convey certain emotions or attitudes.
The present study investigates gender-differentiated use of these two particles, focussing on their distribution in different sentence types and is an extension of research in Chan (1996). As in the earlier study, the corpus consists of twelve, half-hour, videotaped episodes from a modern television series, Kaleidoscope. The series was produced in the mid-1980s in the city of Canton (Guangzhou) in southern China.2 All the episodes involve everyday people living and interacting informally with each other in a residential neighborhood in Canton. Filmed on location in one such neighborhood, the dialogues are very naturally produced by the actors and actresses performing their roles during the series’ two-year span that produced 103 episodes.3 The episodes are replete with these very colloquial particles. They* are typically not scripted but are simply produced by actors playing their roles, thus accounting for the naturalness with which these particles are uttered in the show. In fact, many of the episodes were scripted in standard Chinese and not even in Cantonese, so that the lines were read for content and spoken in colloquial Cantonese, with its own phonology, lexicon, and grammar, including particles. The conversations in this television series are regarded by viewers as natural and reflective of language use. Whether they reflect gender stereotypes is a separate matter, as is the complex issue of how much stereotypes and attitudes influence our everyday language. [* NB: "They" above referred back to "particles," but was incorrectly changed by the editors to "Episodes" without asking me! I hope there aren't other editorial changes of this kind. -- mc]
In the corpus, females produce significantly more jek utterances than those containing je. Moreover, je is primarily used in declarative sentences and jek in interrogative ones. This distribution of je and jek across sentence types is very salient in the case of females, but is less so in the case of males, who produce je and jek in about equal proportions. The results suggest that the restriction of jek to interrogative sentences is more stereotypical of female speech. Differences between males and females in their use of je and jek with respect to different sentence types and the different contexts will be examined here.
CROSS-GENDER DISTRIBUTION OF JE AND JEK
Chan (1996) observes that both males and females in the corpus use je and jek, as shown in Table 1. In absolute terms, males use more je/jek particles than females do in the corpus. However, as more utterances are produced by males overall – namely, sixty percent or more of the corpus – it is females in fact who use je and jek proportionately more frequently than males. For this study, what is important is the cross-gender difference in the distribution of je and jek in Table 1: males use je and jek in equal proportion, while females use jek much more frequently than they use je, and the difference is statistically significant (p < .01 level). Native Cantonese speakers associate jek with females. The expectation that females use jek more often than males is corroborated by the results of this study, based on scripts that typically do not contain these colloquial sentence particles.
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FEMALES |
MALES |
TOTAL |
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JE Sentences |
30 |
55 |
85 |
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JEK Sentences |
66 |
55 |
121 |
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Total: |
96 |
110 |
206 |
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What has not been discussed or noted in the literature (based on the survey conducted in Chan 1996), is that je and jek might also be distributed differently across sentence types. This is shown in Table 2, where je is quite consistently used in declarative sentences and jek in interrogative ones. This distribution is statistically significant (p < .01 level) for both genders, with the distribution pattern particularly striking in the case of females. Imperative sentences as a category is omitted in Table 2, since there are no imperative sentences containing these two particles in the corpus. (Imperatives are actually rarely produced in the Kaleidoscope corpus, and not a case of their absence in je/jek sentences per se.)
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FEMALES |
MALES |
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Declarative S’s |
Interrogative S’s |
Declarative S’s |
Interrogative S’s |
JE |
27 |
3 |
43 |
12 |
JEK |
5 |
61 |
13 |
42 |
Subtotal: |
32 (33%) |
64 (67%) |
56 (51%) |
54 (49%) |
Total: |
96 |
110 |
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Table 2 also shows that males and females do not exhibit the same pattern with respect to distribution of je and jek in their production of declarative and interrogative sentences. For females, two-thirds of their je/jek sentences are interrogatives, with the distribution statistically significant (p < .01). Moreover, almost all of these sentences are produced using jek. For males, on the other hand, half of their je/jek sentences are declaratives and the other half interrogatives. While they are somewhat more willing to produce jek in declaratives and je in interrogatives, the difference in distribution of je and jek is nonetheless statistically significant (p < .01).
From the above observations, the use of je/jek in interrogative sentences – and more precisely, that of jek, in such sentences – appears to be more stereotypical of female speech. At the same time, it is not simply the case that females produce more jek questions than males per se; males and females often do not produce je and jek sentences in the same contexts to convey the same emotions and attitudes. This topic will be explored in greater detail here. First, however, some background on the use of je versus jek is in order.
JE AND JEK
The two sentence particles, je and jek, took turns during this century of being identified in the literature as being more associated with female usage. Je was used earlier this century, as per literature survey conducted by Chan (1996), when sources almost exclusively mention only the particle je, with no mention made of jek in the Cantonese inventory of sentence particles. Qiao (1966) may have been the first to identify sentence particle je as a gender-exclusive, modal particle. This gender-linked usage of je was replaced by jek as being marked for female usage in more recent years (Light 1982). Today, je (phonetically alternating with jek) functions mainly as a delimitative marker with the core meaning of ‘only, just’, as in (1a) from Cheung (1972). That readily extends to using it to downplay or trivialize an amount or quantity, as in (1b) from Qiao (1966). For the delimitative or diminutive function of je, emphasis can be added by lengthening the syllable or adding an unreleased, velar stop coda to produce the variant form, jek. (CL = classifier/measure, PRT = particle)
| (1) | a. | Neih yauh gei go saimanjai a? you have how-many CL child PRT? ... "How many children do you have? ... Ngoh yauh yat go je. I have one CL PRT "I have only one." |
b. | Ngoh ji haih mahn yat seng je. I only be ask one sound PRT "I'm only just asking." |
In addition, je (with jek as a stronger variant) is used for minor complaints. Je or jek may be used to convey impatience, as in (2), or boastfulness, as in (3). (ASP = aspect marker.) Je and jek are analyzed by Rao et al. (1981) as conveying the speaker’s tact and agreeableness. They treat je as expressing defence of oneself or refuting, and jek as expressing definiteness or offering advice. They consider jek to be gender-linked in being used more by girls. In the literature (Chan 1966), jek is also analyzed as conveying definiteness in a mild and tactful manner, as in (4). Other uses of je include contexts involving some kind of turn in the course of events, or offering an explanation or clarification, or expressing something reasonably, reflecting politeness on the part of the speaker.
| (2) | Heui bin jek? go where PRT "Where’re you going?!" |
(3) | Ngoh maaih-jo bun jek! I buy-ASP CL PRT "I bought one (of them)!" |
(4) | Mhhaih jek. not-be PRT "It’s/that’s not so." |
Some uses of jek do not alternate with je (Leung 1992, Fung 1998). A succinct description of jek is provided in Matthews and Yip (1994:355): "Jek has a highly affective value, and is characteristic of children’s and younger women’s speech; it suggests a degree of intimacy, and is only used between close acquaintances." An example is given in (5a), uttered by a wife to the husband. A second example in (5b) is based on an example in Chinese from Cheung (1972), where jek in sentences such as those in (5) is treated as gender-exclusive, insofar as it has the effect of making the speaker sound soft-spoken, with a coquettish air. As a result, he notes that males do not use it.
| (5) | a. | Ngoh gamyaht leng-mh-leng jek? I today pretty-not-pretty PRT "Do you think I look good today" |
b. | Ngoh hou hahn sihk tong jek! I very hate/crave eat candy PRT "I love (to eat) candy!" |
A final gender-linked use of jek is given in Christensen et al. (1995:27), where it is noted that jek is "usually used by women to express their dismay." This is exemplified in (6). While the Kaleidoscope textbooks provide translations of the scripts, glosses and translations given here, as in (6), are the present author’s, since it is often preferable to provide a more literal translation of the isolated sentences, but still retain the colloquial flavor of the language used. In the example, the speaker (DG), an attractive young lady who was tending her mother’s neighborhood clothing stall, was both dismayed and exasperated. The female customer (LK) had accused the speaker of having done something wrong, but had not revealed what that misdeed was. The coding used in this paper for examples from the corpus is as follows, with (6) serving as example: sex of speaker (F), speaker-to-hearer (DG to LK), and episode together with sequence of the jek sentence in that episode (10:02).
| (6) | Gauging ngoh jouhcho, dihnghaih gongcho yeh jek? after-all I do-wrong, or speak/say-wrong something PRT "Just what did I say or do wrong?!" |
(F: DG to LK. 10:02) |
With this brief background on the semantics of these two particles, as well as emotions and attitudes accompanying their use, we turn to gender-linked use of these two particles in declarative sentences and then in interrogative sentences.
GENDER-DIFFERENTIATED USE OF JE AND JEK IN DECLARATIVES
Both males and females use je extensively in its delimiting and downplaying functions in the corpus, and these are typically found in declarative sentences. Thus, it is not coincidental that sources simply gloss je as meaning ‘only, just.’ The genders also do not differ in the use of je in situations in which they are explaining or clarifying some matter. In half a dozen or so cases where je is involved in some turn in the course of events in an utterance, or the speaker is refuting something, these quite typically are uttered by males. An example is given in (7), with Uncle Sing (Sing Baak, SB), explaining that retirement has its disadvantages as well.
| (7) | Leih tai ngoh a dakhaahn je, ngoh dakhaahn dak laih a hou sanfu ga. |
(M: SB to AC. 1:02) |
| you see me PRT have-free-time PRT, I have-free-time able come PRT
very uncomfortable PRT "You see me with so much free time, but having so much free time can be really miserable." |
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While further scrutiny of the data may reveal other, subtle gender differences in the use of je, given the gender-linked uses of jek reported in the literature, we will focus on the latter particle in the remainder of this section, and mention je only where it is a variant form of jek. With this in mind, females in the corpus, by and large, rarely use jek in declarative sentences. As indicated in the tables, there are only five instances in the corpus. The delimitative function of jek (alternating with je) is found in (8), in a wife’s exasperated comment to her husband, referring to his new duties and position as that of a minor, insignificant official (literally, a ‘sesame seed, mung-bean official’). Sentence (8), however, is not simply a case of jek having the meaning of ‘only,’ as the utterance includes both exasperation and sarcasm. And, as one can see, this TV series is not a soap opera, and females are not necessarily portrayed as sweet, docile creatures! Nonetheless, males make greater use of jek to express impatience and exasperation.
| (8) | Leih a, jouhjo go jimah luhkdauh gun jek, | (F: AF to WY. 4:05) |
| you PRT, do-ASP CL sesame-seed mung-bean official PRT, gaaudou ngoh jau san dou mhdakhaahn. make-reach I whole body all no-free-time "You, having merely been made a minor (insignificant) official, are keeping me thoroughly busy!" |
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In the corpus, one does not find jek being used by females simply as a stronger variant of the delimitative function of jek, or for merely downplaying an amount or quantity. For males, these are the primary uses of jek in declarative sentences. Sentence (9) exemplifies the use of jek with the meaning of ‘only’ to delimit an amount. Observe that (9) also reveals some bragging on the part of the speaker (SB) at being able to buy a pair of shoes for his wife at a very low price, and at a big department store, no less! Other cases of je and jek in declaratives that involve a sense of pride and some boasting on the part of males are found in the corpus. No corresponding cases are found for females.
| (9) | Sahp-saam man jek, juhng hai daaih gongsi maaih ga! | (M: SB to friends. 6:02) |
| thirteen dollars PRT, even locate-at big department-store buy PRT "Only thirteen dollars, and they’re even bought at a big department store!" |
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Males’ use of jek as a stronger variant of je to downplay an amount or event is exemplified in (10), where the neighbors try to minimize a misunderstanding to restore harmony. Note that je is uttered by Uncle Sing (SB) with noticeable vowel lengthening for emphasis, as an alternative to producing jek.
| (10) | SB: | Oh, gam haih nghwuih ge je! PRT,so/thus be misunderstanding PRT PRT "Oh, then it’s just a misunderstanding." |
(M: SB to friends. 8:07) |
| AC: | Hai, nghwuih laih ge jek! yes, misunderstanding come PRT PRT "Yes, it’s just a misunderstanding." |
(M: AC to friends. 8:20) |
Another use of jek by females is given in (11). It is produced by Giu Ma (Giu’s mother) in talking with her friends in the neighborhood about the foul odor emitted by a nearby factory that is polluting the air. During the conversation she tries to persuade or coax her neighbors (males), such as Director Wu (Wuh Fojeung), to go to the factory and represent the neighborhood in addressing the problem. Giu Ma is definite, tactful, and even complimentary in assessing the respect bestowed on those neighbors who can serve as leaders of their small community. This is the only example in the corpus that seems to fit Rao et al.’s (1981) description of this gender-linked use of jek.
| (11) | Ngohdeih Maahnfa Hong le, haih A-Sing Baak tuhng we Maahnfa Lane PRT, be A-Sing uncle and leih Wuh Fojeung wah dak hah ge jek. you Wuh Fojeung say able CL PRT PRT "In our Maahnfa Lane, only Uncle Sing and you, Director Wu, can speak (and be heeded/listened to)." |
(F: GM to friends. 12.08) |
One final use of jek in declarative sentences produced by females in the corpus is given in sentence (12), in which Mrs. Wu confidentially tells her husband a piece of news that she has just heard, and which she does not wish the neighbors to know. There is, in (12), a sense of intimacy in Mrs. Wu’s relating her news to her husband. Mixed with it is some degree of pride in having obtained that information, namely that even those people (such as themselves) who have health care cards would soon be required to pay for their medicine. (In other words, with that foreknowledge, they could take advantage of the system and get some medicine before the new regulation is implemented.) There is no real counterpart in males’ speech.
| (12) | A, Louh-Wu ah, ngoh tengdou go siusik jek. a, Old Wu PRT, I hear-arrive CL news PRT "Hey, Old Wu, I just heard some news (a piece of news)." |
(F: WT to WF. 11:04) |
To summarize, with respect to je/jek in declarative sentences, males and females alike use of je for delimiting or downplaying, and in contexts involving explaining or clarifying some matter. At the same time, while jek is used by both genders to convey impatience and exasperation, that use is employed more frequently by males. There are other interesting, gender-linked differences. The corpus suggests the possibility that it is males who tend to use of je for turn in the course of events or refuting, although this has not been noted in the literature. The corpus also shows that it is males who tend to use jek as a stronger variant of je to delimit a quantity or amount, to downplay a situation, and to brag a bit in expressing their pride. Females rarely use jek in declaratives, and when they do, there are some contexts, such as intimate confiding, in which use of jek is gender-linked. For neither gender does one find cases of jek in declaratives expressing dismay. Such cases occur in interrogatives sentences only in the corpus, as we shall see in the next section. Lastly, there are no cases of the coquettish use of jek in declarative sentences; they also do not surface in interrogative sentences in the corpus. The results suggest a three-way difference in the use of je and jek in declaratives: neutral use (by both genders), male-linked usage, and female-linked usage.
GENDER-DIFFERENTIATED USE OF JE AND JEK IN INTERROGATIVES
Je in interrogatives is used almost exclusively by males (12 out of 15 cases). It occurs in WH-type questions that are information-seeking questions as well as rhetorical questions that include an element of impatience. Je may also be embedded in tag questions and other question forms. Jek, on the other hand, is used more by females than by males (61:42), even despite males speaking more in the overall corpus. Unlike je, which can be glossed as having the core meaning of ‘only, just,’ jek does not have such basic meanings. Both females and males use jek in general information-seeking questions as well as rhetorical questions that may be tinged with sarcasm and exasperation on the part of the speaker.
In the corpus, females produce many jek interrogative sentences that seek information from someone they know well, whether they are friends or in closer, spousal relationships. Such questions marked with jek, in any case, would not be used with strangers or in formal settings. Elicitation of information using jek presupposes sharing between, or among, friends and/or close relatives. In (13), for example, Daaih Giu (DG), a pretty young lady, whispers to her friend, A-Kwan (AK), who has brought her to the home of a rather eccentric photographer.
| (13) | Wai, Kwan a, keuih hai douh jouh me jek? PRT, Kwan PRT, he be-at place do what PRT "Hey, Kwan, what’s he doing there?" (whispering) |
(F: DG to AK. 10:10) |
Note that a question such as Me sih jek? "What’s the matter," could be posed with anxiety by the speaker, or out of worried concern for the addressee. Or it may be asked brusquely, in an impatient tone of voice. In the corpus, all four wives had at least one occasion to ask their husbands that question, or a similar question. More generally speaking, females had on one or more occasions posed that question to friends, siblings, and/or spouses. Of the interrogative sentences containing jek in females’ utterances, about twenty of the sentences, or roughly one-third of the corpus, are question-posing, information-seeking. And of these, ten (16%) are questions concerning ‘What’s the matter?’ or ‘What’s happening?’ Males, on the other hand, use jek in neutral information-seeking questions, and tend to avoid using it in contexts suggesting some intimate sharing. Significantly, on the three occasions that they did so, such questions were directed to females and not to other males.
For both males and females, a sizeable proportion (about a third) of the jek interrogative sentences in their respective corpus are rhetorical in nature. These sentences are often, though not always, accompanied by impatience or exasperation, as exemplified in (14). Giu Ma (GM) retorts sharply in response to A-Cheung’s (AC) complaint that the tailored shirt that he has ordered from her, and is trying on, does not fit (despite the name tag on the shirt).
| (14) | Leih haih maih Hoh Cheung jek? you be not-be Ho Cheung PRT "Are you or are you not Cheung Ho?!" |
(F: GM to AC. 6:04) |
What is absent in the present corpus is the affectedly sweet use of jek by females that is noted in the literature. It may be due to the fact that the corpus does not contain any courting scenes, conversations in intimate settings, or dialogues between fathers and stereotypical spoiled, pampered daughters, where such coquettish behavior is more likely to manifest itself. The closest the series comes to that use of jek are cases involving a softer and more intimate style. One example is (13), given earlier. Another is (15a) below, in which Aunt Sing (SS) is somewhat wistful as she tries on a pair of stylish, low-heeled shoes that her husband (SB) has just bought for her at a department store. A more intimate style is generally not observed in the corpus for males. Nevertheless, such a style might surface in more intimate conversations, as suggested by (15b): the husband shows concern and tenderness for his wife, who has had a long, hard day at work.
| (15) | a. | Haih maih jan haih pihng jaang ga jek? be not-be truly flat heel PRT PRT "Are they really flat-soled?" |
(F: SS to SB. 6:01) |
| b. | Dim a, Fong, guih mhguih jek? how PRT, Fong, tired not-tired PRT "How’re you doing, Fong, are you tired?" |
(M: WY to AF. 3:06) |
With respect to the gender-linked use of jek to express dismay by females, cases of this is less common than rhetorical ones in the corpus. Only four cases are found: one was given earlier in (6), and another is given in (16), involving a conversation between spouses. Aunt Sing (SS) is upset when the heel broke off from her brand new shoes. In all these cases, dismay is combined with a feeling of helplessness on the part of the speakers.
| (16) | Aiya, leih cheut seng la, gam dim syn jek? aiya, you put-forth sound PRT, so/then how calculate PRT "Aiya, say something! What shall we do?!" |
(F: SS to SB, 6:08) |
Examples such as (6) and (16) are absent in the male corpus; the closest that one can find are (17). In (17a), A-Kwan (AK) is uneasy and unhappy – that the cost of hiring a singer and her band for a neighborhood event would be higher still than the already high, original quote; and in (17b), the husband is exasperated and protests in needing to move many pieces of stereo equipment from the house. Use of jek with some tone of protest is not found in the female corpus, nor is it noted in the literature. It is thus gender-linked in males using it to express their protest, the closest male counterpart in the data of female use of jek to express dismay.
| (17) | a. | Gam yiu ga gei do jek? so need-to add how much PRT "Then how much more (will this cost)?" |
(M: AK to SG. 8:15) |
| b. | Gam do, ngoh yat go yahn dim tok dak dihm jek? so many/much, I one CL person how carry able satisfactory PRT "So much, how can I carry all that by myself?!" |
(M: FG to BJ. 7:11) |
The distribution of je and jek across sentence types with respect to neutral (non-gender-linked) and gender-linked usage is summarized in Table 3.
across gender and sentence types.
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| 1. Declaratives | |||
| Neutral: |
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| Female-linked: |
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| Male-linked: |
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| 2. Interrogatives | |
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| Neutral: |
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| Female-linked: |
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| Male-linked: |
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* There are only two cases of rhetorical Q’s and one case of je embedded in a tag Q. |
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During these past three decades, there has been an explosion of publications on language and gender, including recent ones that focus on men’s language (e.g., Johnson and Meinhof 1997). Very few studies, however, have been on the Chinese language (see Chan 1998). The present study is thus an exploration into a topic that has barely been investigated, a topic that should be of general interest, given the different political as well socio-cultural settings in which the Chinese language is spoken today. The founding of the People’s Republic of China in 1949 brought with it
optimism of the emancipation of women, who, after all, "hold up half of the sky."* However, as this century comes to a close, sharing of political and economic power remains a dream yet to be realized. Indeed, opportunities for gender equality may even have declined as a result of social, economic and political changes during the 1980s and 1990s (cf. Jacka 1997).
[* NB: One line was omitted in the published article such that part of the quote and part of the following sentence do not appear in the published article. -- mc]
Gender inequality in China today can be gleaned from statistics on education, the door to job opportunities, higher income, and political participation in government. Females, who comprise 48.55% of the total population in 1980, received progressively less education than males as the education levels go up: females make up 44.6% of the student population at the primary level, dropping down to 39.4% by secondary level, and to merely 23.3% by tertiary level. The picture is only slightly brighter about a decade later: in 1992, females comprise 46.6% of the student population at the primary level, 40.9% at the secondary level, and just 33.7% at the tertiary level.4 The subsequent two years for which statistics are available do not alter the picture.5 This is despite a compulsory education law that was put into effect in July 1986 that extended compulsory education from six years to nine years, thus including three years of secondary education (Jacka 1997). The statistics are only the tip of the iceberg, since they do not indicate other information such as how regularly females attend classes. In the current post-Maoist era, women are taught to accept their ‘inferior’ biological makeup; their worth is measured against males as the norm.
Against this backdrop, the Kaleidoscope television series is actually relatively free from strong stereotyping of gender roles. Gender-linked uses of je and jek are scattered in the twelve episodes. A close scrutiny of the corpus reveals that there are both cases in which there is neutral ground, where both genders use je/jek freely, and cases where je or jek is used exclusively, or almost exclusively, by one gender versus the other. The gender-linked preferences do fall into patterns of gender-appropriate, stereotypical uses. For instance, males are more likely to produce utterances that convey boastful pride, while females’ uses of je and jek are sometimes soft-spoken, sometimes solicitous and caring, and sometimes quite emotional, with outbursts of dismay. In sum, the present study provides a window into societal expectations of gender-appropriate use of sentence particles je or jek. This study also offers a glimpse into gender construction and the socialization process in one dialect region and one segment of modern Chinese society.
1. Yale romanization, minus tone diacritics, is used in this paper. The particles je and jek are pronounced in high level tone. [BACK]
2. See Chan (1996) for a detailed description of the corpus. For a literature survey, see Chan (1996) as well as Fung’s (1998) useful summary as part of her semantic study of je and jek. The two studies are based on the same Kaleidoscope corpus that we had jointly compiled. [BACK]
3. The twelve episodes selected for this study form the core of the five-volume textbook series (Walker, series editor, 1994-1997) Kaleidoscope: A Course in Intermediate to Advanced Spoken Cantonese. [BACK]
4. Thanks go to our Chinese Studies Librarian, Guoqing Li, for providing the statistics for 1992 (and 1993 and 1994) (email of 4/22/98). 1990 statistics are from Robinson (1992). [BACK]
5. The statistics for the People’s Republic of China (PRC) contrast dramatically with those for the U.S. in which half or more of the student body at the tertiary level is composed of females. Thanks go to OSU reference librarians and staff at the University Registrar for the U.S. statistics. [BACK]
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