Language and Gender

Paper Summary:

This paper argues that language, a highly social tool, reflects the social reality men have created. It discusses how, by reassessing their power, women have begun the battle for linguistic equality, thus triggering change and variation in language. The paper attempts to give an overview of the evolution of this particular area of research, and in the second part of the paper, details the linguistic androcentricity.

From the Paper:

"But before going into further detail, the notion of gender must be defined precisely, because it is at the heart of our discussion. Gender is a very complex concept that is completely different from that of biological sex; while the latter is something given when a baby is born, the former is a construct, something that a person develops all along his/her lifetime. In The Second Sex, Simone De Beauvoir famously wrote, "one is not born a woman, but becomes one." It could actually be argued that it is the same for a man. This quotation exemplifies the notion of gender inasmuch as it shows that it is a social construct, that an individual will 'receive' from the social order an idea of what it is to be a man or a woman, and he or she will take what s/he judges good. "

Sample of Sources Used:

• Coates, Jennifer, Women, men, and language: a sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language. 3rd edition, Harlow, England ; New York : Pearson Longman, 2004.
• Eckert, Penelope and McConnell-Ginet, Sally, Language and gender. Cambridge, U.K.; New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003.
• Hellinger, Marlis and Hadumod Buszmann (eds.), Gender across Languages Volume 3. Amsterdam; Philadelphia: J. Benjamins, 2001-c2003.
• Lariviere, Louise-L., Pourquoi en finir avec la feminisation linguistique ou A la recherche des mots perdus. Boreal, 2000.
• Wolfram, Walt and Schilling-Estes, Natalie, American English, Dialects and Variation (2nd edition), Blackwell Publishing LTD, 2006.

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