Describe The Relationship Between Gender and Language in 250 Words

Is speech sexist? Research on the differences in language use between men and women is based on this question.
The link between the language used by men and women is known as language and gender. It examines their differences in attitude and living style in addition to the differences and/or similarities in their speech. Men and women are said to have a different “language,” and they are not meant to step into one other’s space.

For example, “handsome” is used to describe males and “pretty” to describe women. As a result, it would be inappropriate to remark to a woman, “I think she’s handsome,” just as it would be inappropriate to say, “He’s gorgeous.” Sociolinguistics, feminist studies, or feminism and psychology research on language and gender is a relatively new topic of study. To learn how men and women view the world and communicate that in their language, several techniques have been used.

Men desire to be leaders, whilst women are content in their subservient roles; men communicate bluntly, whereas women speak subtly and discreetly. Expression of sentiments is crucial for women, but males sometimes conceal or hide their emotions to avoid appearing feminine. The frequency of female voices has been discovered to be twice as high as that of male voices, according to research on the variations between male and female voice quality.

Several linguistics works discuss the distinctions and/or parallels between male and female language. In 1973, Robin Lakoff wrote Language and Women’s Place, in which she advanced the notion of “female language,” which eventually became a major topic of investigation. She demonstrated, among other things, how women prefer neutral hues like mauve, beige, and yellow.
Men talk in harsh tones, such as “shit or damn it,” whereas women use expletives in a gentler tone, such as “go to hell.”

For example. Humour is thought to be less prevalent in women than in males. No female comic figures are compared to Mr Bean and Charlie Chaplin since they are considered as more comedic characters in Hollywood films. The main character in Things Fall Apart by China Achebe, Okonkwo, believes that women are only capable of emotion and weakness, and he disapproves of his son for exhibiting these traits. He prefers his daughter Ezinma above his son because she is more manly.

Three terms are used in English to identify gender, masculine, feminine, and neutral. Gender is used to characterise how words are seen in terms of sex in English. The pronouns “he” and “she” are used for the masculine while “it” is used for the feminine in biological phrases like father-mother, son-husband-wife, brother-sister, grandfather-grandmother, and so on.

However, when it comes to treating inanimate objects like ‘ship’, ‘country’ etc, there we come across no well-defined rules ‘ship’ is ‘she’ and when you refer to a country like India, it is again feminine. The pronoun ‘he’ is exclusively used for male power and in any discussion or writing, it is the first word that comes to mind.

As a result, feminists have been working hard to neutralise gendered terminology. For instance, they advise using Ms in place of Miss and Mrs; chairperson in place of chairman; salesperson in place of salesman; and firefighter in place of a fireman. Similar to this, new gendered terms have recently begun to appear, such as stateswoman, sportswoman, humans, and human beings. There are currently efforts underway to change curricular writing assignments, theses, and school textbooks to remove sexism from the vocabulary and to make them gender-neutral.