Language And Gender Flashcards
Idiolect
An individual’s personalised speech style
(E.g. Gender, sexuality, age, occupation, ethnicity, social class, region, country)
Identity
Who someone is
Variation
Difference in language use
Sociolect
A language style associated with a particular social group
Genderlect
A style of speech used by a particular gender
Sue Lees (1981)
Men control female sexual behaviour through derogatory terms - sexist language
(E.g. Slut, cougar, minx)
Terms of address
Words or titles used to address another person
Caitlin Hines (1994)
Women are often referred to as desserts - terms of address
(E.g. Cupcake, screetie, tart)
Lexical asymmetry
Pair of words which should be equal but aren’t
E.g.
Male: bachelor, wizard, lord, master
Female: spinster, witch, lady, mistress
Muriel Schulz (1975)
Suggested that pairs of words that would normally be seen as equivalents often exhibit asymmetry when they are about gender
Diminutive suffixes
Using ‘-ess’ or ‘-etté’ as a suffix to make words feminine and therefore smaller or weaker
Pejoration
The process of a word gaining more negative connotations over time
Patronyms
Names that reflect male lines of inheritance
E.g.
Son: Thompson, Samson, Richardson
Mac: McDonald, Macdougal
O: O’Brian, O’Leary, O’Hagan
False generics
Words which claim to include everyone but do not
(E.g. Mankind, man-made, man’s basic needs)
Julia Stanley (1979)
Women are not linguistically represented in our language
Dale Spender (1980)
The ‘male as norm’ rule makes male dominance seem natural
Language reflectionism
The belief that language reflects our thoughts