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Language and Gender

In: English and Literature

Submitted By Kattusch
Words 3599
Pages 15
LANGUAGE AND GENDER

1. Introduction

Women speak because they wish to speak, whereas a man speaks only when driven to speech by something outside himself--like, for instance, he can't find any clean socks. (Jean Kerr)

Do men and women speak differently? Can Language be sexist? Is there vocabulary that is more typical for women than for men? My term paper shall try to answer those questions, look at typical forms of language use in relation to gender and I will aim to find possible reasons that explain a gender-based difference.
But first it is important to explain why in sociolinguistics the term gender is used rather than sex. While sex refers to biological characteristics, gender is “a social category that is connected to the roles of women and men in society” (Becker & Bieswanger 2010: 185).
My term paper will start with some general definitions about gender and language like gender-exclusive speech difference, gender-preferential speech features and gender and class. I will focus especially on women´s linguistic behaviour and answer questions like “Do women talk more than men?”. I will try to find explanations for a different linguistic behaviour. After focusing on explanations for a possible different use of language I will finally give features of women´s language that will make differences obvious. At the end of my paper I will also try to explain what is meant by a “sexism in language” and whether or not English is a sexist language and what could be done to reduce it.
I often find myself in a situation were I realize that I sometimes use quite a sexist language and have trouble to avoid it, for example when I am writing a school paper. Because of this, I decided to choose “Language and Gender” as the topic for my term paper.
The main source I worked with to write this paper is Janet Holmes´ “An Introduction To Sociolinguistics”. But I

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