Gender Differences In Gender Language

such a powerful tool that both men and women use it to build their boundaries and these boundaries are some of the reasons for the variation in the classification. The differences in gender language are determined by culture/ethnicity, relationship, age, geographic origin, job/societal status, sexual orientation and education of men and women (Wright 2002:5). Times are changing rapidly; the world is fast becoming a global village. As a result, it will be out of place to assume that the classification of gender in society A should be the same in societies B and C. This therefore implies that in every society, there is always an adopted way of doing things that differs from that of another culture. Research has shown that Gender classification

When I moved out of Cameroon, I discovered people act differently depending on their societies then I started asking some questions. Being someone who admires certain morals and values of West (Anglophone) Cameroon such as, how women are trained to respect their husbands or men in general among other things, I was still inquisitive to know some issues like: why do we have more girls educated in schools today yet less women in leadership positions, why are certain categories of jobs meant for a particular sex, how is language contributing to these segregations? With all these questions in mind, I decided to carry out a research in West Cameroon and I will attempt by the end of the paper to give an idea of how (a) ideologies are different from the realities in terms of gender classification (b) the role of language in it (c) to find out whether anything can be done from both the gender and linguistic side of the problem which are probably entangled with each

In his effort to bring out a working definition, he pointed out some important points about Gender as follows;

 Gender is the dividing of people into kinds, similar to ‘sex’ and commonly following the same lines of division as sex.

 Yet gender and sex are not synonymous.

 The boundary line between sex and gender is the recognition of their different characters. The formal is biological while the former is psychosocial.

 There are some transactions between gender and sex across this boundary but the nature of these is debatable (Bolich 2007:13).

He therefore defines gender as the set of experiential and presentational characteristics associated with and culturally arising from pairing with a particular sex (Bolich 2007:14)

To Scott, gender is a constitutive element of social relationships based on perceived differences between the sexes, and gender is a primary way of signifying relationships of power (Scott, 1998)

Language

Language to me is simply the means by which individuals and animals express their emotions or and send out information. It could either be verbal, nonverbal or body