社会语言学学期论文

Abstract：Gender difference plays an important role in the uses of language and the gender

differences in language are studied in many disciplines as well as sociolinguistics. This paper

explores the gender differences in language from three levels os phonology, lexicology, and syntax

and analyzes the discrimination against women in language uses based on the linguistic examples

of both Chinese and English.

Key words: gender language gender discrimination

1. Introduction
The uses of language, in a broad sense, are influenced by many factors. Gender,

as one of the important factors, has attracted many sociolinguists to do relevant

researches to find out the inner reasons and relations between them.
In 1920s, Otto Jefferson, the Danish linguist, illustrated the features of female

language in his book Language and Its Nature: Origin and Development. With the

development of sociolinguistics and the rise of the feminist movement in the 1960s,

the study of gender differences in language entered the period of rapid development.

Famous linguists like Labov, Lakoff, Trudgill, Zimmerman & West, have done a great

contribution to the research of language differences with the main focus on the

extrinsic gender language differences and the inner social origins of them.
According to the search results of the CNKI database, nearly 700 relevant papers

have been published in the past decade with the different topics including gender

difference, gender discrimination, gender language, female language and so on.

However, the study of gender differences in language still has a long way to go in

Chinese compared with western researches in terms of the number of relative papers

and monograph, the ranges of topics covered etc. Therefore, it is believed that the

gender differences in Chinese still has much room for further exploration. And this

paper will explore such differences based on examples from both Chinese and

English. 2. Gender Differences in Language

2.1 Vocabulary
 The first thing that draws my attention on the male and female language varieties

is the differences in vocabulary. Some words are specifically spoken by one gender

while people of the other gender who speak it would usually be laughed or regarded

as impolite and strange.

For example, it is one of the features of female language variety that females

usually have a good command of a wide range of color words such as “lavender”,

“beige” and “azure” while males seldom use these words, which might because they

are not as sensitive to colors as females biologically.

Also in Chinese, words like “小心心”（如“给你比小心心”，是“比心”

的一种更可爱的说法），“怕怕”（即“害怕”），“人家”（如“人家想吃

巧克力”，代指自己）， are commonly used by females, and males seldom use

these words with potential meaning of loveliness and tenderness.

On the other hand, females and males also speak the same language differently in

terms of the type of words. For example, females usually tend to use words with

exaggerated meanings in their speeches to express their strong emotions while males

not.
Here are some utterances of Mrs. Bennet from the novel, Pride and Prejudice,

excerpting from the dialogue between her and Mr. Bennet when she heard that

Netherfield Park was taken by a rich bachelor.

“… that he was so much delighted with it that he agreed with Mr. Morris immediately.”

"I desire you will do no such thing. Lizzy is not a bit better than the others…But you are

always giving her the preference."

"My dear, you flatter me. I certainly have had my share of beauty, but I do not pretend to

be anything extraordinary now.”

We could find Mrs. Bennet used a lot of words with exaggerated meaning like

“so much”, “not a bit”, “always”, “my dear”, “extraordinary” etc. to express her

excitement about the coming of Mr. Binley and anger at her husband. And such words

seldom appeared in Mr. Bennet’s speeches.

2.2 Pronunciation
Besides vocabulary, the differences can appear on the pronunciation. Usually

women have higher-pitched speaking voices and use a wider pitch range than men,

which might be what gives rise to the stereotype that women are more emotional and

excitable than men. For example, in Chinese when we described people with beautiful

voices, the words we use for males and females are quite different.
Male:“低沉”，“浑厚”，“沙哑”，“富有磁性”，“爽朗”，“温润”

Female:“甜美”，“清脆”，“婉转动听”，“细声细语”，“银铃般”

Also, women are found to be more sensitive to the standard pronunciation of

language, which is corresponding to my personal experiences. On the first day I came

to college, I met my new roommates from different provinces. It was quite interesting

that the previous moment I was still talking with my parents in my dialect, the next

second I changed to mandarin to say hello with my roommates. Besides, I have found

that I would subconsciously avoid using my dialect in public due to the strange

feeling of shame. However, once in the campus I encountered one of my high school

students who shared the same dialect with me. And he started the conversation in our

dialect quite naturally. Such experiences made me have a deep understanding about

women’s sensitivity to standard language than men.

2.3 Syntax
Furthermore, there exist distinct differences between male and female languages

on syntax.
It is found that women rather than men are more likely to use tag questions

during their speeches. Although I have read that some scholars hold that it reflects

women’s lacking of confidence, I prefer another explanation that women use these

questions to show their politeness and encouragement to the listeners based on my

personal experiences.
On the other hand, women also tend to use those syntactic forms with polite and

euphemistic meaning such as “I think you’d better…”, “It would be better if you…”,
“would you mind if I…” for example, here is one of my conversation with my

classmates I recorded when I tried to offer my advice on her presentation in class.

我同学：“你觉得我刚才的表现怎么样？”
我：“我觉得你可以把语调放轻柔一些，或许效果会更好。”
However, it doesn’t mean that men don’t or hardly use these syntactic forms.

They also use them but not as frequently as women.

3. Discrimination against Female in Language uses
When talking about the gender differences in language, it is necessary to talk

about the discrimination against female in language uses. Such discriminations appear

in language in different forms including the word order of feminine words and

masculine words, changes in lexical meaning of female words etc. It is quite easy to

find evidence in different languages showing the discrimination against women.

For example, in English, the word “he” is used to refer to both man and woman;

the meaning of words like “lady”, “mistress” are contaminated with impurity while

“gentleman”, “mister” still possess their original meaning throughout the ages.(Zhu

Yue, 2015)

In Chinese, the characters composed by“女”often represent bad meaning such

as“ 奸、娼、妓、婊、妖、奴、妖、姘、嫉、妒…” . In ancient times man

usually called their wives as “贱内、糟糠、内人、内子、内助、贱妾、婆娘、家

里 的 、 屋 里 的 、 孩 子 她 娘 … ” , which showed the low status of women. Also

words like “妇人之见”，“女人头发长见识短” showed us that women were

regarded as uneducated and ignorant in ancient times.

The feminist movement beginning in 1960s has made a lot of efforts to change

such an unfair situation for women in language uses so that they created many new

words and tried to change the meaning of some word which only refer to man to both

man and woman. However, it is important for all of us to recognize that the language

discrimination against women is just the reflection of social reality that women have

long been regarded as being subject to men. The key point to remove gender
discrimination in language uses is to achieve equal social status between male and

female. Only in this way can women achieve true equality.

4. Conclusion
Until today many researches have been done to figure out the reason of gender

differences between male and female, based on which a lot of theories have been put

out, among which there is a theory called “community of practice theory” which put

forward the idea of “mutual participation”. It claims that there are no direct or inner

relations between language and gender, but people of different genders participating

in the same practical activities tend to behave similarly in their ways of speech. This

theory emphasizes the influence of the social practices towards human behaviors

instead of Psychological or physical factors. Personally, I also believe that people

learn to speak in the process of social practices, during which they shape their ways of

thinking and form their own way speaking.

However, It is necessary for us to realize that the gender differences in language

uses are general conclusions generated form the whole male and female groups and

thus might not be exactly right to individual especially in today’s multicultural

society. But I still learned a lot through leaning these differences. It helps me to think

of the daily conversations happening around me from the perspective of

sociolinguistics and try to explain those utterances with the theories I have learned,

which I think is the meaning and pleasure of leaning these theories.

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