Analysis ofGender Differences in English Language 浅析英语中的性别差异.doc

Gender Differences in English LanguageBy In partial fulfillment of the requirementFor the B. A. degreeDepartment of English School of Language and CultureNanjing University of Information Science and TechnologyApril, 2010ContentsAbstract.11. Introduction22. Gender Differences in English Language2.1 Vocabulary Differences.22.1.1 The use of adverbs, adjectives and expletives32.1.2 The use of adjectives.32.1.3 Selection forms and frequency of popular words and slang.32.2 Gender Differences in Discourse Styles42.3 Gender Differences in Communication42.4 Syntax Differences.53. Analysis of causes of gender differences in English language.3.1 Physiological Factors.63.2 Psychological Factors73.3 Historical Factors.73.4 Social Factors.83.5 Subculture Factors84. ConclusionReferences.10Gender Differences in English Language Abstract: As a symbol system and social phenomena, language is the carrier of human thinking as well as communication tools, inevitably reflecting each side of community life. Gender differences commonly exist in every language, most gender differences in language originated from different social roles they played.The study of the relationship between the language and the gender difference has always been an important topic in the linguistic field. Based on the previous study, the present article, from the sociolinguistic perspective, attempts to find differences in lexicon, style, syntax and communication style between male and female when they are using English. At the same time, psychological, physical, historical and social reasons will be discussed. It is hoped that certain contribution will be made to the further research.Key words: English，gender difference，reason 摘要：语言作为一种符号系统和社会现象，是人类思想的载体，思维工具和交际工具，不可避免的折射出社会价值观，宗教信仰和人们的思维观念，行为习惯，反映了社会生活的各个侧面。性别差异普遍存在于各种语言中，语言中反映的性别差异大多源于男性与女性所扮演的社会角色不同.性别差异与语言的研究一直是语言学界研究的一个非常重要的课题。本文试图从社会语言学的角度出发 ,探求男性和女性在使用英语方面存在着的词汇、 风格、 句法、 交际等方面的差异 ,并探究产生这些差异的心理、生理、 历史和社会等方面的原因 ,以期对这方面的进一步研究有所贡献。关键词：英语语言，性别差异，原因1. IntroductionSince the further development of womens liberation movement in western countries in 1960s, the study of gender differences and languages has been a very important issue in all fields of the society. Some famous linguists began to study some unknown but amazing and even certain relationships exist between gender and language in terms of gender, for example, R1 Lakoff1, P1 Trugill2 and S1 Romaine3 who had do a lot of further researches of gender differences in languages and speeches. They explored gender differences in pronunciation, intonation, vocabulary and discourse styles from the perspective of sociolinguistics, and they analyzed some reasons for the differences and their development. In recent years, research on language and gender has being more and more important in domestic linguistics circles and many papers on this research are published one by one. However, among many of these papers, few can analyze gender differences and their causes thoroughly and in detail. Therefore, this article attempts to explore the differences of vocabulary, syntax, discourse style and speech communication between female and male from the perspective of sociolinguistics and the reasons of these in order to make little contribution to further studies.2. Gender differences in English LanguagesEnglish has been carved with many features which can reflect gender differences in historical and social development as an old language and these gender differences have become important study focuses because exploring gender differences in language is not only the task on linguistic but also the inevitable requirement of social development4. Based on previous studies, we found gender differences in English languages are mainly reflected in the following four aspects:2.1 Vocabulary DifferencesVocabulary differences between female and male are common problems which can easily be ignored in our daily life. Since 1970s, many famous scholars such as Lackoff, Trudgill, Zimmerman 5 and Bolinger 6 have made many researches on vocabulary differences which greatly advanced studies on gender differences in language and vocabulary. According to previous studies, we can see that vocabulary differences between male and female mainly exist in the following aspects:2.1.1 The use of adverbs, adjectives and expletives. Compared with men, women prefer to use some strong language, and high frequency of strong language is a marked characteristic of female English 7. Female prefer to use the following expressions: vastly, horridly, abominably, immensely, excessively, amazingly, so, most etc. we can often hear sentences like these: “The food there was so delicious. He /The star is so excessively cool!”2.1.2 The use of adjectives. Female prefer to use words like adorable、charming、divine、lovely and sweet more than male. Female will use adorable to describe rich clothes, divine to Tempting chocolate, gorgeous to delicious food and so on while male prefer to use neutral terms like great, terrific, cool, neat. The former terms give off the feeling of feminine or even gay. For color, female is doing better than male. Maybe it is because female is more fond of beauty and female is good at using exact words to describe different colors. In spite of those common color terms, female can even use mauve, azure, beige, lavender and aquamarine exactly. At this point, male must admit defeat 8.2.1.3 Selection forms and frequency of popular words and slang. Many surveys of linguists show that most slang is from the mouth of male. In English and American society, under the influence of this double value standardwhat he can do vs. how she looks, in most cases, the vulgar slang, swearing rough language and dirty jokes belong to male discourse patent while female rarely use them. Of course, gender differences in the use of English words are not limited to these aspects.2.2 Gender Differences in Discourse StylesWith the deepening development of gender differences, the focus of gender differences gradually shifted from vocabulary differences to gender differences in discourse styles which greatly broadened the horizons of studies and allowed the researchers to understand and master the relationship between the use of language and gender differences comprehensively and accurately at a higher level. Linguists investigation of discourse situation in social interaction shows that there exist different degrees of differences in the choice of topic, the volume of speech, the mode and strategy of discourse 9. In general, female behaves more cooperatively in conversation, usually they take turns in speech and everybody has chance to speak, individuals rarely takes a long time in speech. When starting their speech, female tends to refer to previous things which others have expressed explicitly and tries to link what she want say to them. They pay attention to maintaining the continuity and smooth of talking. Therefore, they tend to spend more time on the same topic, thus the topics change more slowly. Female pays more attention to the reaction and participation of listeners during conversation and makes this attention reflect on speech (for example, more use of personal pronouns such as we, you which conclude listeners or imperative sentences and tag questions begin with lets). By comparison, male often shows strong competition during conversation, tending to control the choice of topics and chances of speech instead of letting others say, and the result may be someone talking much more than others. When starting their conversation, male rarely refers to previous things which others expressed, instead they only pay attention to their own topic, thus there will be more unexpected topics, jumps and weak continuity in their conversations. As to the listeners, male pays less attention on their reaction and participation. Male reacts slowly when others express their opinions, usually after others speeches, whats more, their reactions are brief, and most are noncommittal with few positive comments. Male interrupts others more than female does during other peoples speech, even with direct and blunt tone and few apologizes. As speakers, male will send a clear protest against those who interrupt them generally while most female keeps silent. Thus, male always keeps high volume of speech during conversation; they tend to attack against each other more easily. Bickering, shouting, cursing, threats, ridicule, etc. are all significantly more than the conversation between different genders.2.3Gender Differences in CommunicationLanguage behavior differences between male and female exist in different social groups, in spite of larger differences in some communities; there are smaller differences in other communities. Generally speaking, compared with feminine language, male language tends to be more straightforward, more confident, and more certain rude while feminine language has characteristics such as polite, euphemistical and non-arbitrary. It is found that male is always in domination during conversation between male and female. Unlike male, female is always a subordinate during conversation between male and female generally 10. For example, during conversation we will often encounter the following situations:1. Men always take initiative to interrupt others topics during conversation in order to get the discourse power in conversation while women are more likely to listen to others who interrupt them; in addition, women take part in the discussion by means of asking questions. 2. Men usually give accurate answers to questions others raised in conversation, or they will turn deaf ears to them in order to strengthen their important roles. However, women often dare not to give their own opinions directly; instead, they give their own ideas under the condition of others approvals and hope to get others support in order to continue their own opinions.2.4 Syntax DifferencesThough the study of gender differences does not have a long history, the difference in language use, spatially in syntax has drawn great attention from writers and linguists which made them attach great importance on syntax differences between male and female while doing literary creation and linguistic studies. In the use of exclamative tone, women often use abridged exclamation that is they always omit infixes and do not finish a whole sentence. When they express themselves, they choose simple sentences which can achieve their purposes. Different from women, men tend to use legitimate forms in connection sentences. Therefore, the average sentence length of female writers is usually shorter than male writers. American social linguist Lakoff has studied that most of the rhetorical questions in English exist in womens discourse as the function of rhetorical questions is between the function of declarative sentence and general question whose tone is quite straightforward and mild in consistent with female gender characteristics. In addition, when presenting their personal opinions or views, women often like adding some modifiers with less positive tone and imprecise meaning. Therefore, it reflects that female discourse is more polite and euphemism implicit from the other side which is quite different from male. In addition, female English has more standard and pure grammar and syntax 6. Compared with sub-standard words in sentence “he walks too slowly” which are common in male discourse, women use more standard sentence “he walks too slowly”. Apart from this, sub-standard sentences like “I done it” rarely exist in female English. Since women pay too much attention to the purity of language forms, there is phenomenon of overcompensation in their discourses. For example, in order to avoid using wrong sentence like “June and her received it from you”, they often say “You gave it to June and she” instead. Thus it can be seen that there really exist many syntax differences in English language 11.3.Analysis of causes of gender differences in English languageGender differences in language is an extremely complex social, cultural, psychological and physiological phenomena which involves factors like the political language, ideological, social status, role relations, language attitude, occupation, educational level, social interaction, scope of activities and neurological, psychological and other factors. But the investigation found that some important factors are physiological factors, psychological factors, historical factors and social factors which lead to gender differences in English language.3.1 Physiological FactorsInnate biological differences between men and women decided that men are different from women. According to the latest medical research, womens left hemisphere becomes mature earlier than mens as to the development of language ability. As a result, girls speak more fluently and with more emotion colors than boys at the first beginning. On the other hand, according to the latest voice experiment, men differs a lot from women in the resonance peak, thus voice and tone quality differ because of gender. Women pursue elegance and norms in the voice and love using rising tones and expressive tone types while men prefer lower tones and less expressive tone types. Whats more, womens vocal organs are different from mens; womens vocal cords are shorter and thinner than mens with a lower degree of relaxation. This will inevitably lead to their different sounds. Thus it is reasonable to say that gender differences in language result from innate factors, and gender differences are certain in the process of personal and social development.3.2 Psychological FactorsSo far, the influential explanations of gender differences in speech act are from the perspective of social psychology linguistics. Men are good at transferring all his power to control others including women; women realize that they are weak in power, they will quite the power struggle in conversation automatically and seek other chances to get self-protection in conversation with men and support from other women in conversation with women, that is elegant and polite language. On the other hand, women are more emotional, they are easy to be evoked. Thus, women are better at using circumflex tones to express intense inner emotions than men in daily life. Therefore, men rarely use circumflex tone. Thus it