Gender Stereotypes and Gender Differences in Language Usage

Gender Stereotypes and Gender Differences in Language Usage

BOSKOVIC, Valentina
ALCAKOVIC, Slavko

Key words: gender language equality, male/ female titles, language usage, speech differences ABSTRACT Along with various social, cultural and political factors, language is one of the biggest conveyors of prejudices. As speakers of a specific language, consciously or subconsciously, we tend to depict all our beliefs, values and expectations via our choice of vocabulary, speaking style, register etc. Moreover, the attitude of speakers towards diverse social issues, such as gender equality, can be visible through our language usage. Therefore, this paper will present the idea of gender (in) equality seen from a sociolinguistic and applied linguistic perspective, using the language as the main means of gender stereotypes. The paper highlights the influence of the society and the area in which the language is communicated as one of the main contributors to the speech differences between men and women, which later on contribute to their social differences. In other words, the differences (or similarities, if existing) between male and female speech characteristics will be presented in the paper, taking into consideration the attitude of speakers and their communication habits and characteristics. The paper also presents a brief research (survey) including 20 men and women who give their opinion on this topic and who answer relevant questions regarding language usage and language policy. The survey includes the group of nouns denoting titles and professions in male/ female gender and their usage, as it has been shown in some languages that most of the titles and professions are used mainly for male gender. In the end, the paper depicts potential solutions to the problems of gender (in) equality in languages and gives examples of how this issue can be solved.

Article
PeerReviewed

IBU Publishing

2013-05-03

1967