Extensive research has been conducted on the diversity in the relationship between language and gender. Differences in the ways women and men speak or use language have been of interest for a long time, specifically in the field of linguistics. Studies tend to revolve around matters concerning whether men and women speak a 'particular' language in different ways. From childhood, boys and girls learn different approaches to language and communication, where Tannen calls them genderlects. According to Tannen, females engage in rapport-talk, or a communication style meant to promote social affiliation and emotional connection, while men engage in report-talk — a style that is more focused on exchanging information with little emotional import. Eventually, this is what results in misunderstandings between men and women, Tannen claims. In this paper, I am interested in exploring why men and women use language differently and how. I intend to find out how culture has an influence on the relationship between language and gender through a field work on Lebanese university students at AUB with discussions on formal and informal topics to observe different aspects of language use.
See Full PDF See Full PDFThis article presents a short overview of how men and women differ in male–female conversations. It also tests gender differences as well as three linguistic tools: tag questions, hedges and controlling talk. The article shows differences on the basis of gender and that men and women alter their strategies to increase their power through talk. Men practice their power overtly, while women do so politely. The article also presents a solid outcome of the different significant linguistic devices in multi-modal text analysis.
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As the title indicates the study deals with gender within the language. We also called it as sexism. Sexism in language represents one of the major issues in sociolinguistic studies. As a phenomenon of society, sexism is reflected through language that expresses inclination in favor of one sex and treats the other one in a discriminatory manner. Characteristically, the bias is in favor of men and against women. Thus, the language is presented as a powerful tool of patriarchy. Even though in English speaking countries all the people are considered equal, discrimination against women exists and this fact is observed in language. The objective of this study is to define the concept of sexist language; To identify and evaluate the cultural factor, social factor, physiological factor and psychological factor which influence the existence of sexism in English language, and showing and explaining the concepts of gender in speech discuss if the following differences between men and women in speech : a) women talk more/less than men; b) women break the ‘rules’ of turn-taking less than men c)women use more standard forms than men; and d) women’s speech is less direct/assertive than men’s, and what is the relationship between gender and politeness. The hypothesis is focusing on Kurdish, English-, Spanish-, French-, and German- languages to inanimate objects. Results from Spanish and French speakers indicated effects of grammatical gender on classification; results from German speakers did not. Results showed that there does not seem to be a distinguishable difference with respect to the usage of language by men and women potentially due to the establishment of an informal atmosphere and to a sense of solidarity among participants, which enabled them to make use of the code to maintain conversation. We will identify the role language plays in the society and how it influences the social attitudes of human beings.
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Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
In a reanalysis of women's language, Holmes (1995) has argued that women's use of hedges expresses interpersonal warmth and not, as many researchers have maintained, linguistic tentativeness. It is typically men, she suggests, who employ hedges to convey imprecision and incertitude. In this study, we investigated the use of the hedges sort of and you know in a sample of South African students. Holmes's method of analysis was applied to hedging behavior in 52 dyadic conversations. The study consisted of a 2 (Speaker Gender: Male/Female) X 2 (Audience Gender: Male/Female) X 2 (Condition: Competitive/Noncompetitive) between-subjects experimental design. The results showed that contextual influences eclipsed the effects of gender; in fact, no main effects were found for speaker gender. Fewer hedges were deployed in the competitive condition than in the noncompetitive condition. Moreover, perhaps reflecting differences in social status, both sexes used sort of to express tentativeness more frequently when talking to male addressees. When speaking to female addressees, on the other hand, men deployed facilitative you know hedges more readily than women.
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In: Andersen, G. and Aijmer, K. (eds), Pragmatics of Society. Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 53-78
This chapter will explore the interrelationship between gender identity and pragmatics in the context of casual conversation between friends. It is structured into four sections. The first section will provide a review of the work that has been carried out on pragmatics and gender differences since the 1970s to the present day. Section 2 will put forward a description of the data under exploration and will highlight the problems encountered in using a corpus-based approach when investigating pragmatics. Section 3 will present a corpus-based exploration of male and female casual conversation which will look in detail at the pragmatics of insults in the construction of male identities. While differences will be highlighted across genders, a dynamic view of gender which is based on a social-constructionist perspective will also be drawn upon to interpret the findings. Section 4 will summarise the findings and point to future directions.
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