Language and Gender in the Military: Honorifics, Narrative, and I ...

On the contrary, American military identity is part of American identity in that it influences the American masculine construct and has affected 26 million veterans and their families, as well as those who may not be in the military but work with and near military members and installations on a regular basis. Also unique to this study and my analysis of “ma’am” and “sir” is an approach which does not necessarily examine how women and men use language, but how those in their community use language to address them as women and men. Further, that community—characterized by rigorous rites of membership, wearing of uniforms which contextualize interactions, and mutual respect between superior and subordinate—is a community of paradoxes. While the hierarchical nature of the military as an institution may actually offer high-ranking women advantages of power that might be less attainable or less clear outside of the military, women’s exclusion from, and low rate of representation in, many jobs, including combat-related jobs, caps the heights to which women can rise. While women want to be known as “soldiers” and “sailors,” not “female soldiers” and “female sailors,” the nongendering of women cloaks their wide and valuable contributions, since the American image of the prototypical soldier or sailor is most definitely male. And yet, while the military can be argued to be one of the most masculine of American institutions, analysis of the language used to communicate the institution’s ideologies reveals that either military men can be tremendously nurturing, or that that is how nurture is done in a masculine way.

There is much still to be said about gender and military discourse. Different services use language differently, as do different communities within each of the services. However, no matter their service or job specialty or rank, military women are caught in an interesting in-between state: they are members of an institution which abides by a hierarchy that affords them power, yet by virtue of their sex-class they cannot necessarily participate fully in that institution—whether due to combat restrictions, or (even if combat restrictions were removed) by virtue of the organization’s definitively masculine nature. However, it is clear in these data that feminine style nurturance of both colleagues and community is an important element of the solidary nature of hierarchical military communities.