Sociolingustic Differences Between Men and Women

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Recommended: Relationship of Language and gender

The most important aspect that separates humans from animals is our means of communication through language. Each language holds unique characteristics that reflect its respective society to a certain extent. This leads to the question: Do men and women use language differently? How does language use relate to their role and society? Plainly stated, gender is a social elaboration of the biological sex. Essentially this means the definition of males and females are people’s understanding of themselves combined with the idea of masculinity and femininity which ultimately is socially constructed. This shows that gender is a learned behaviour that is both taught and enforced, leading to the conclusion that gender is a collaborative event that it connects individuals to the social order. Research into this sociolinguistic variation first begins with language that is influenced by social structure rather than defining the relationship of gender and language specifically.

Women have become secondary creatures to their male counterparts because of submissive linguistic behaviour enforced since childhood. Research of gendered language show that language places social constraints creating a social order that systematically advantages some while disadvantaging others. Social order is established through language with the evolution of words, semantic pejoration, and gendered terms. With the help of gender ideologies language has managed to establish, maintain and reflect an asymmetrical relationship between women and men.

“The personal identity of women thus is linguistically submerged; the language works against treatment of women, as serious persons with individual views,” stated by Robin Lakoff (1975). Language has the power of ...

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...en are cooperative. Even grammar morphemes have gender as apart of its content. The noun is modified to obtain gender related undertones. Morphological variations in these words are gender markers: actor versus actress, congressman versus congresswoman, policeman versus policewoman, comedian versus comedienne, etc.

In conclusion, when trying to understand the effects of language one will find that it can serve as the structure of a society as well as determine the ways in which individuals are viewed and valued within that society. In this case, the social construction of gender are responsible for the differences in women's linguistic behavior and how it relates to their secondary place in the male-dominated world. Because of such distinguished roles, different linguistic strategies are acquired by female and male subcultures in culture and social organization.

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