Differences in men’s and women’s speech People will consciously and unconsciously perform each identity. Language is a form of performance. The conventions of linguistic behaviour of men and women are strained from the performance of the felt and desired gender identity of a person. The above-mentioned conventions are based on natural discourse of the genders as well as on the ideologies of gendered speech behaviour within a society. Feminist movements realized that language was one of the instruments of female oppression by males.
One of these perspectives is analyzing communication through gender. In the book, You Just Don’t Understand, Deborah Tannen (1990) popularized the term “genderlect” to describe the way in which men and women communicate with each other. She suggested that men and women have different styles of conversing, forming two distinct dialects. In a review of Tannen’s book, DeFrancisco (1992) attributed the differing communication styles of men and women to the respective cultures in which they grow up. Because of such gender differences, misunderstanding between men and women creates a gap in the communication process.
This is to say that these social constructs, while affiliated with particular genders, can be utilized by speakers as they see fit. Language and Gender The language of men and women often, there are obvious differences between the language typically used by women and those used by men. The different words used by men and women are obviously a part of their culture and of a biological difference between them. Moreover ,there is no determine explanation whether we are talking about the differences biologically or culturally. In past years, many people have expressed various opinions on the terms "sex" and "gender", although in ordinary usage these terms overlap.
Gender stereotypes are over-generalizations about the characteristics of an entire group based on gender. While gender stereotypes have been popularly perceived as having negative connotations, they can also have positive ones as well. Gender stereotypes are the results of social practices, habits, and traditions that have long been acceptable to a great number of people and societies. These traditional roles are attached to male-female relationships furthermore derived by the image of the male as breadwinners and head of the family. On the other hand, the female gender is traditionally bounded as a support to the male gender.
These social norms guide parents, teachers, and peers in helping shape each individual gender identity through rewards and punishments. These social norms and expectations can lead to gender role strain, which in men has been linked to an increase in negative views towards women and sexual assault. This is discussed in the article, “College Men’s and Women’s Masculine Gender Role Strain and Dating Violence Acceptance Attitudes: Testing Sex as a Moderator” () states, “masculine gender role conflict and masculine gender role stress are two gender role strain constructs
ICESI UNIVERSITY LANGUAGE AND CULTURE PROFESSOR: RAMÓN VERSAGE JUAN DAVID CABALLERO GENDER AND LANGUAGE: THOUGH PIECE It is remarkable how gendered language affects perceptions in our society. This phenomenon has been a research topic for many years. Sociolinguistics have shown interest in describing the differences in language use between women and men, and studies of the cultural roles ascribed to gender. This paper gender of language of Holmes and Meyerhoff aims at explaining the distinction between language and gender and how language supports, enforces, and maintains attitudes about gender in general and women in particular. Before starting off, it is of utmost importance to make a distinction between gender and sex to gain a better
Mills (1995:21) is of the opinion that words could only be sexist depending on the context. However, she argues for the importance of analysing texts at a word-level by stating that certain word-uses reflect gender differences. The tradition of viewing men as the norm in language is evident at word-level by the use of generic words. Generic words are often the same word that is used when describing the masculine variant (Pauwels 2003:553). Mills (1995:87-89) states that the most common examples are when “he” and “man” are used for referring to both women and men.
The differences between men and women’s friendships were explored for a long time. Men and women historically differ from each other in various aspects. They differ from biological, sociological, psychological, physical and other points of view. The research of this topic is essential for sociologists and psychologists. Gender differences in patterns of friendship show the way of female and male’s communications, their attitude to friendship, their sociological point of view and psychological features.
The greater of emotional or physical abuse in a dating relationship also elevates the overall psychological distress. Gender Role Conflict According to Hayes and Malik (2000) cited by Blustein (2014), gender role conflict is a great predictor of psychological distress. Gender Role Conflict A study conducted by Christensen and Heavey (2012) which focused on the effects of gender and social structure on the demand/withdraw pattern of marital conflict revealed that the wives who were usually the demander pressures the husbands reacted in a way of withdrawal and defensiveness This research studied gender role conflict in 88 college-aged men and 89 middle-aged men. Multivariate analysis of variance results showed that middle adult men were less stressed in terms of success, power and competition compared to early adult men. However, the previous age group were more conflicted between work and family duties than the latter group (Courner and Mahalik,
Further Swallowe (2003) reviewed the literature on differences between men and women in the use of media for interpersonal communication, etc. Furthermore, Lakoff (1975) said that the speech of women is characterized by unique linguistic features such as specialized vocabulary, tag questions, intonation, hedges, and hypercorrect grammar. This