by Elsi O. Tutu
Definition:
Habitus refers to how individuals are predisposed to act, speak and think in conditioned environment by social structures.
Description:
The significance of habitus to language and culture is that habitus is so subtle that individuals don’t notice it due to it being an ingrained habit, caused from cultural influence. People who speak different languages grow up in different cultures and from a very young age, are raised in a unique social structure that shapes them.
Language stems from cultures with different aspects of habitus that influences an individual’s thought processes and behavior concerning gender, race, and other components of society. They learn how to behave, think, and speak in their culture as they engage in everyday conversation with members of their society and are exposed to the actions of other individuals. This concept provides insight on how we can shape and be shaped by our social and cultural surroundings.
Although we are influenced by our culture, habitus is essentially an intrinsic habit that makes it difficult, but possible, for individuals to change. So many of our habitual ways of speaking – like accents – are shared by habitus and is done automatically by us without thinking. Habitus does however, open up capabilities for change and reinforcement through the old and new generation. A connection can be made between linguistic habitus and language socialization, due to the fact that habitus is used to describe how people socialized in certain ways, often share many values and perspectives, as well as styles of eating, talking or behaving.
Habitus is a circle of cause and effect that predisposes us to act, speak, and think in a certain manner based on our environment. This can eventually lead to a transformation of those conditioned structures as different generations emerge. An example of habitus is how at a young age, young children are taught that girls wear pink and boys wear only blue. You are conditioned to this status quo that it progresses through adulthood where at social events like baby showers, everybody automatically assumes that the color blue represents a baby boy and the color pink represents a baby girl.
Application:
A current issue that I want to use habitus to illuminate is the ongoing language inequality in the United States of America. An example is the gender inequality occurring through gender binary pronouns, which is used in multiple languages. People of different ethnicities who speak different languages are at times constrained by the grammatical structures of their language but with different generations emerging, they are able to produce different utterances within those constraints. Languages, like cultures, change over time with new things getting added unto it. Because we are predisposed, and not predetermined on how we act, speak, or think, it allows for our behavior to be influenced by social structures, and still leaves room for the possibility to act in opposition to the structures and norms that have influenced us.
In the English language, people unconsciously connect individuals to either male or female pronouns because as young children, we have been taught that an individual who has certain qualities that deem them as females should be immediately referred to using the pronouns, she, her, and hers. Some languages have all male pronouns which suggests that men represent everyone while other cultures, like the Ghanaian Ashanti language, Twi, don’t use gender binary pronouns. By doing so, it doesn’t pit both genders against each other, by making one gender more dominant than the other, and leads one to see the world as a place where all genders are equal and not defined by pronouns.
In languages with gender binary pronouns, The LGBTQIA+ community and other younger generations are recreating gender binary pronouns by including multiple pronouns that allow for people to identify in whatever manner they wish to. There have been different terms that have been plugged into our language so as to respect the different genders that people identify as. By introducing more gender neutral pronouns into the English language, people’s perspectives of the world around them are changing, therefore causing them to place the importance or irrelevance on certain things.
Take for example Sweden, where a new non-gendered pronoun dropped in the Swedish language in 2012 with a third gender-neutral pronoun hen, proposed as an addition to the already existing Swedish pronouns for she (hon) and he (han). The pronoun hen, similar to the English gender-neutral pronoun they, can be used when an individul’s gender is unknown or irrelevant (to them), and as transgender pronoun for people who don’t identify with any gender binary pronouns.
Research was done where native Swedish speakers were tested to see if they would include the new pronoun into their language, or just identify the cartoon that they were provided with as a male or female. The results showed that people had begun to accept the word and used it frequently. As if now, the Swedish community use the new pronoun instead of assuming one’s gender, meaning that they have incorporated it and added it to their culture.
Using appropriate pronouns has become a very popular trend in America, especially in colleges like the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Professors and students who introduce themselves for the first time, attach their pronouns to their introductions, so that others don’t assume and actually learn more about each other. It begins right away at Orientation sessions when different people from different backgrounds are getting introduced to each other, and even on Spire, students have many options for pronouns they want to use (with Professors also having the same opportunity). It creates an environment where individuals are respectful of each other, giving one the ability to control their own identity and causing people to be more conscious of their surroundings.
The younger generation can continue to apply this in society while also passing along this new language/cultural change to the next generation, which will eventually be embedded into the English language and our vocabulary without any resistance. We could start with the youngest generation, being kids in preschool and kindergarten by incorporating the different pronouns in the classroom, so that they grow up knowing these things. This makes it easier for them to adapt to the new changes and use it in their social surroundings. It will evolve into our social norm without people thinking that it is weird.
The culture in the community, and the way you grow up makes it difficult or easier to adapt to it, especially using pronouns. If we are going to start normalizing gender neutral pronouns, we have to change the societal structures of it, like facebook providing more options for gender pronouns, the census, detectors at airports. Overall habitus does not completely eradicate but simply reforms and adds on ideas in our community, by beginning with language, because it is through that which gender ideas develop and grow.
In conclusion, habitus helps us understand how individuals grow up using certain social norms, like gender binary pronouns, but have the ability to change them.