Стаття до проекту інформаційне суспільство Стоянової Ольги

Gender roles and stereotypes in contemporary English speaking cultures (TP).

Outline

1 The cultural construction of gender 2 The interrelation of language and gender in English: 3 Linguistic gender makers 4 Gender-related conversation styles 5 Gender bias

The biological differences between men and women are the same the world over are obvious. For biological distinctions the terms male and female are used. The contrast in sex provides a basis for constructing the category of gender, for gender distinctions the terms masculine and feminine are applied.

If sex is a biological fact, then gender is a cultural construction. In all societies there is a fundamental separation between a domestic, home sphere of influence and a public realm. Because of woman’s childbearing and rearing responsibilities, their roles are foregrounded in the domestic sphere of influence. Man are to a large extent free from these responsibilities and they have much wider scope to engage in social interactions.

There are differences in the play of boys and that of girls [Maltz, Borker 204]:

1)girls more often play indoors, in small groups, more often in pairs; their play is cooperative and activities are organized in noncompetitive way; friendships involvе intimacy, equality, and loyalty. Basically girls learn to do these things with words: to create and maintain relationships of closeness an equality; to criticize others in acceptable ways. Friendships among girls are formed through talk;

2)boys tend to play in larger groups ; they more often play competitive games. They use speech in such major ways: to assert one’s position of dominance; and to attract and maintain an audience [Maltz, Borker 206].

Second, In all society, gender distinction are expressed through language. Language is just revealed as a partner in generating cultural models of males and females. In English, and in many other languages, speech styles of man and woman gender differences in the use of linguistic forms :

a)differences in pronunciations including prosodic cues, grammatical forms and choice of vocabulary - linguistic gender markers;

bgender differences in conversational interaction such as modes off topic introduction, topic control, supportive or non-supportive mechanisms used by speakers and listeners - gender related conversational style

c)categories in a language itself and the ways that culture attitudes are both expressed and rainforest in grammar and vocabulary gender bias.

A) Pronunciation can act as social linguistic marker. Females tend to use prestigious pronunciation at higher rates than do males off similar age and racial groups. Females Folsom also demonstrate quicker and sharper stylistic shifting toward prestige norms in increasingly formal styles. One explanation is that woman are more conscious of prestige norms and strive to use them because they are judged by their social self- presentation and are socialized to behave in ways considered polite and refined.

A number of grammatical patterns appear in human speech more frequently than in men’s. For example, women use more tag questions than man. According to Robin Lakoff, women are reluctant to make direct assertion. Men often use tags for speaker-oriented goals to obtain and confirm the information for themselves. Woman more often use tags for addressee-oriented goals. Numerous researchers have discussed differences in the choice of vocabulary used by men and women, observing that certain category of birds words appear with greater frequency in the speech of one or the other. For instance women use and recognize more specific terms denoting colors such as turquoise, magenta.

Woman women use more intensifiers and modifiers because society allows them to display emotions. Men are expected control their feelings and therefore to refrain Rome Rome using words that have marked emotional expressiveness postal 1 last area 1 lost area vocabulary differences is that noted tendency for woman to use more words in this curse they create an impression of indecisiveness and lack of clarity although both men and women sometimes employment with tiles linguistic styles characterized by industrious precious MTG gated speech these streets this traits are received to be more typical of women.

B)Topicality is the subject matter of conversation, for example: what movie to see? what you did last night? I

In the area of gender and topics , an early study by Elizabeth Aries  revealed several patents.

First, all-male groups focused on themes of superiority and aggression through sarcastic teasing and talking about movies, books, politics, sports and travel.

Second, all-female groups shared information about themselves, their feelings, their homes and their relations with others. But when female and males talked together, women talked less about home and family and males talked more about themselves and their feelings; in other words each sex modified its topicality in the presence of the other sex.

In Pamela Kiper’s study findings also confirmed and gender pattern in topics. The primary conversation topics among women were focused on home and family, social issues, personal and family finances.

For men, the most frequent topics were work-related topics about specific educational programs, summer jobs and recreation. Men simply did not discuss these topics with one another. A number of the social issues discussed by women by also related to children: drug abuse, the effect of television violence on children.

C) Language is a vechicle for expressing cultural models, in part through the way people , activitates and ideas are named. Words reffering to human beings are often paired for female and male exemplars (взірець), but in ordinary usage, female precedes the female: man and woman, he or she. But there are exceptions: ladies and gentelmen and bride and groom. It is interesting to know that couple bride and groom after marriage transformed into husband and wife. The coumples also can be called the Smith, using the husbunds surname. Another example of males dominanse is that girl's names are deriving from male sources. Robert-Roberta. Also there is a tentency? that man is used not only for males but for people, as in mankind. most verbs can be used for male or female activities but some are restricted to refer to action of females men/women yell, but only women screech or shriek. men/women talk but women chat/gossip. Trough communicative process , cultural models of gender are both portrayed and reinforced, contributing to the socialization of females and males into their expected roles and also creating their ideas about themselves and each other.

To sum up, there are differences between men and women all over the world: the main are the topicality, grammatical manner and linguistic.