TOPIC: INFLUENCE OF GENDER STATUS ON DISCOURSE BEHAVIOUR OF WOMEN.
ABSTRACT
The focus of this paper is on the role of language as a powerful tool in representing and structuring the world. We will explore how language can help construct stereotype identities and human relationships. Gender being a socially constructed definition of women and men, it is determined by the conception of tasks, functions and roles attributed to women and men in society, in public and private life; whereas power is reflected in every aspect of communication from what the actual topic of the communication is to the ways in which it is communicated. Most researches have focused on the spoken aspect of language giving little attention to the written discourse; this
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These studies show how patterns of interaction between men and women reflect the dominant positions. Some studies however, have taken a different approach by looking not so much at power in mixed-sex interactions. This paper considers power or status in same-sex interactions more specifically, in the written discourse in the already stated magazine. The purpose of this paper is to examine how gender status influences the discourse of women in the selected articles from the Saturday Magazine. Our objectives are: to examine the linguistic forms used by women and determine whether their discourse reinforces or transforms gender status. The scope of this paper will be limited to the textual discourse analysis of the ‘Girl Talk’ in the Kenyan Daily Nation …show more content…
Gender intersects with and is shot through by other categories of social identity such as sexuality, ethnicity, social position and geography (Lazar, 2008). Butler (1990) provides a Critical Discourse Analysis to gender and discusses the concept of performativity whereby gender is constructed through learned behavior governed by the cultural norms that function within a wider discourse. Constantly, gender has to be reaffirmed and publicly displayed by repeatedly performing particular acts. Any language act is viewed as a performance by the speaker or author who is both working to function within the wider discourse which shape the expectations of gender and within specific contexts of utterances or text and its continuing consequences for the position of women in
Of all the 70 scientific studies Tannen could have chosen to talk about, the number of which she releases later in her paper, her choice of these two serves to demonstrate how biased and varied in results the scientific studies on this topic have been in the past. This helps Tannen justify the need for her article on the subject as it gives reason to why the issue on which gender speaks more still has not yet been resolved. Later in her essay, Tannen uses the results of a survey done by Campbell Leaper and Melanie Ayres on the results of 70 studies published in scientific journals several times. Her first use of their results follows her statements on the studies talked about earlier in this paper, noting that they “found that counting words yielded no consistent differences”. She then goes on to say, “Campbell and Ayres note that many studies find women doing more ‘affiliative
The author’s point of view is to prove that young women are using linguistic features to build a relationship. In the text, the author uses an informative tone. He describes the text in a related language that grabs the attention of teens, specifically young women. The text made the young women groups feel more differently than the male gender
A Young Woman’s Voice in a Society That Devalues Femininity In the article “Young Women Shouldn’t Have to Talk Like Men to Be Taken Seriously,” Marybeth Seitz-Brown argues that women should not have to change their voices to be heard by a society that constantly devalues femininity. Seitz-Brown uses three effective rhetorical devices to effectively prove her argument: her awareness of the rhetorical situation, her stylistic choices, and the arrangement of her article. Seitz-Brown’s awareness of the rhetorical situation enhances her argument by tastefully adding to the feminist discourse at the time. Her target audience is all of American society because, at the end of the article, she urges that “we can do better than that” (Seitz-Brown).
Everyday thousands of people communicate with one another. These conversations happen nearly instantaneously between people and are a key to a successful relationship. In Deborah Tannen’s essay, “Sex, Lies, and Conversation” she explains the differences between men and women’s communication patterns. In Tannen’s essay, she uses documented research, vocabulary, and figurative language to help draw in as well as inform her readers’ about different gender communication patterns. “Sex, Lies, and Conversation” is an article about the different communication patterns associated with males and females.
Sex, Lies and Conversation There are many differences between a man and woman, communication is just one difference. Deborah Tannen, a University of California graduate, got her PhD in linguistics at Georgetown University; there she studied the communication between men and women. Tannen has published over one hundred articles and wrote over twenty books, including You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990), which spent almost four years on the New York Times best seller list and was translated into twenty-nine languages. The article Sex, Lies and Conversation appeared in the Washington Post in 1990 and gives insight to how opposite sexes communicate with each other. From an early age we are programed to play and be friends with the same gender as our own.
In an effort for people to correctly identify themselves, languages adopt and replace numerous terms over time. When it comes to terms to define one’s gender, there is a correlation between the terms and a person’s age. Anne Curzan’s article “Guys and …?” explores the issue of finding age appropriate terms to describe women. The article discusses how this dilemma is prevalent for female college students, as at times neither “girl” nor “woman” seems suitable.
The reality is that most societies in the world either explicitly or implicitly believe in this belief. This leads to girls being taught from a very small age on how to behave in public, and how to act around boys. The conversations in the play scenes of the novel are indicative of the practice of “teaching” children how to enact their gender in society. The connection between the performances in the novel to Butler’s work is now easier to make. Gender, for Butler, is performative.
“Doing Gender” by West and Zimmerman is similar to Butler’s “Performative Acts and Gender Constitution.” However, West and Zimmerman build upon the ideas that Butler puts forth. Butler focuses on gender as performance and how gender is made up by specific actions. While West and Zimmerman take the concept of performance and constitution and applies it to a new concept, the sex category and how sex categories and gender are intertwined in society. Sex categories and gender, according to West and Zimmerman, are different and interconnected.
The status of women has been gradually improving. Still women’s struggle for equality to prove they are just as hard working and loyal as men in Japan. With this in mind, women’s speech is seen as less than compared to men speech because of the views women had during Heian period. With this it makes the movement more complex when there is a division between men and women’s language. Since there is already complexity between the male and females.
Morghan Renfrow Instructor C. Shackelford English 1113, Section 101 1 September 2016 Analysts of “How Male and Female Students Use Language Differently” An essay written by Deborah Tannen called “How male and females students use language differently”, is describing how they talk and interact with others. The writer presents different studies on how language changes based on a certain person. The essay states that men are more aggressive and talkative, while women are calm and modest about talking about the views they share.
Corinne LaLonde Professor Creighton CWP 102 8am March 8th, 2018 Critical Analysis of Men and Women in Conversation is Cross-Cultural Communication The issue of differences between men and women in conversation has been a subject of overreaching research, with various scholars in the subject of linguistics providing different views and conclusions. The current paper criticizes an excerpt of Deborah Tannen’s work, Men and Women in Conversation is Cross-Cultural Communication. In the exceprt of her work, Deborah Tannen, a professor of Linguistics, addresses linguistic differences as they relate to intimate male and female relations (Githens). While Tannen contributes significant literature to the study of linguistics, his work lacks clarity and
The Genderlect Theory: Explaining Communication Between Men and Women Communication is an essential part of everyday life. People encounter some form of communication with others on a daily basis, whether it is face-to-face, electronically, etc. However, communication is not universal in that everyone interacts with each other through these several methods. Thus, numerous studies about communication from different viewpoints have been conducted.
When the topic of gender bias comes up, it’s usually within the context of women being the victims and that is going to be my main focus in this essay. Gender bias has a lot of implications on society which greatly affects the world as a whole and this is related to language because, language is the most common form of communication and it is a very powerful tool, which more often than not, is misused and misunderstood. The different media forms, as well as different media in countries, has an effect on our perception of gender. A new study conducted by The United Kingdom’s Economic and Social Research Council found out that
Kramarae (1981:145), on the other hand, states that ‘men specialize in instrumental or task behaviours and women specialize in expressive or social activities’. Society’s sex-stereotyping of jobs influence girls’ behaviour and expectations, and encourage positive attitude towards language learning while society’s division of tasks and assumptions according to sex is transferred to boys and girls through formal and informal instruction. This alliance between society-education may explain boys’ and girls’ different concerns, attitudes and expectations. Girls’ communicative skills are enhanced if not maximised because of their expected patterns of interaction. Consequently, girls may develop a liking for languages.
Stereotyping is a way of categorizing certain groups of people or types of individuals with regards to gender, race, culture, religion etc. Stereotyping arises from prior assumptions due to influences by the media, history and personal experience. The statement: “To gain an understanding of the world we need to make use of stereotypes,” appears that stereotyping is required in order to really understand the world, and knowledge issues can be drawn from this statement: Does stereotyping prevent us from knowing someone truly and how are stereotypes created in the first place? One way to examine and discuss the knowledge issues is to look at different areas of knowledge, which in our case will be History and Human Science.