Gender and Language

Lexical Analysis of Gender and Language Theories

Muna Mohammed Abbas
College of Engineering/ Babylon University

1. Introduction The major thing that distinguishes human beings from animals is basically our way to communicate with each other by using language. We have words for specific things, emotions, expressions and it appears as though we have words for everything when thinking about it. In each language; words are constructed in a certain way. When working with language, it is quite possible to determine whether a word belongs to one stem or another just by looking at it even if the person has no clue of the word’s meaning which is quite fascinating. The question, Do men and women use language differently? played a central part in the emergence of feminist socio linguistics more than two decades ago, and it casts a long shadow. This paper focuses on the literature that has contributed to the understanding of the major research questions underlying two major strands, language and gender, concentrating on the development of the literature from the deficit and dominance models to the social constructivist era of post-modernism in order to provide a context for recent developments in language and gender theories.

2. Definitions of Sex Versus Gender In defining gender, the concept of sex, male and female with their accompanying nations of masculinity and femininity are also included within this definition. Eckert and McConnell – Cinet (2003) argue that sex is a biological categorization based primarily on productive potential, whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex. In their view, the definition of males and females, people’s understanding of themselves and others as male and female is ultimately social. They also show that gender is a learned behaviour which is both taught and enforced, and leading to the conclusion that gender is collaborative in the sense that it connects individuals to the social order. By this,

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