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Gender
Abstract
The differences between men and women in using language have been studied long time before.
This paper mainly discussed the differences from the aspects of pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary, syntax,
manners, attitudes, and non-verbal differences in using language between men and women. Besides the
differences in various aspects, the paper tries to record the changes of these differences. On the basis of these
differences and changes, the paper also tries to make some explanation to these differences and changes.
Introduction
Gender studies and language studies are both interdisciplinary academic field. The study of language
began from thousands of years ago, while the study of gender is quite short. “Gender studies have developed differently,
achieving the greatest influence in North America; the „era of feminism‟ that began in the late 1960s and affected
academic and public life as well as „high‟ and popular culture has been instrumental in shaping the historical and
scholarly context of its generation. Feminist work has entered and had an impact upon almost every academic discipline
Male female differences in their using language
Difference intonation
Women often like to speak in a high-pitch voice because of physiological reason, but scientists point out that this also
associates with women‟s “timidity” and “emotional instability”. Besides the high-pitch voice, women prefer to use reverse accent as well.
Example: Husband: When will dinner be ready?
The wife is the only one who knows the answer, but she answers her husband with a high rise tone, which has the
meaning “will that do”. This kind of intonation suggests women‟s gentility and docility. The husband will surely feel his wife‟s respect. Lakoff (1975) says that women usually answer a question with rising intonation pattern rather than
falling intonation. In this way, they can show their gentleness, and sometimes this intonation shows a lack of confidence.
As a contrary, men like to use falling intonation to show that they are quite sure of what they are saying. Falling
Differences in vocabulary
We can notice that men and women tend to choose different words to show their feelings. For example, when a
woman is frightened, she usually shouts out, “I am frightened to death”! If you hear a man says this, you‟ll think he is a
coward and womanish.
The differences in vocabulary can be shown in the following five aspects:
a. Color Words
There is special feminine vocabulary in English that men may not, dare not or will not use. Women are good at using
color words that were borrowed from French to describe things, such as mauve, lavender aquamarine, azure and
magenta, etc, but most men do not use them.
b. Adjectives
In our everyday life, we can notice that women like to use many adjective, such as adorable, charming, lovely,
fantastic, heavenly, but men seldom use them. When a woman leaves a restaurant, she will say “It‟s a gorgeous meal”.
If a man wants to express the same idea, he may only say, “It‟s a good meal.” Using more adjectives to describe things
and their feelings can show that women are more sensitive to the environment and more likely to express their emotions
with words, which makes women‟s language more interesting than men‟s sometimes.
c. Adverbs
There are also differences in the use of adverbs between men and women. Women tend to use such adverbs like
awfully, pretty, terribly, vastly, quite, so; men like to use very, utterly, really. In 1992, Jespersen found that women use
more so than men do, such as, “It was so interesting” is often uttered by a woman.
d. Swear words and Expletives
Maybe because women are gentle and docile, they usually avoid using swear words and dirty words. They believe
that these kinds of words will not only make others uncomfortable and give an impression of “no civilization”, but also
destroy the relationship between her and others. Women always pay more attention to the grace of themselves and their
use of language. We rarely hear that women utter such words like “damn, fuck you, hell,” instead they use “oh, dear, my
god” to express their feelings. Let us examine the following examples:
Woman: Dear me! Do you always get up so late? It‟s one o‟clock!
Man: Shit! The train is late again!
We can often here similar ways of expressing shock in every day life. Men tend to use more swear words than men.
Women pay more attention to their manners and politeness of using language.
Difference pronunciation
Phonological differences between the speech of men and women have been noted in a variety of languages. Usually
women‟s pronunciation is better than men‟s, such as the pronunciation of “-ing”. Shuy (1969) made a study in this field,
and he found that 62.2% of men pronounced “-ing” in a wrong way, but only 28.9% of women didn‟t pronounce right.
This can also be shown in the learning of the second language. Usually female students have better pronunciation than
male students, and that can explain the reason why more girls choose to learn language as their major than boys.
Generally speaking, girls exhibit a better ability in language.
Difference in SYNTAX