The approach of difference suggested that women and men have been brought up differently and so naturally there is bound to be a difference in their linguistic forms. Women never had a ‘room of their own’ to formulate a language of their own and hence it was perceived lower, and men’s language was always the benchmark. There were two answers, difference and dominance.Īlso read: The Need For A Feminist Language Reform To Tackle Casual Sexism Post Lackoff’s claim, a debate started as to why women’s language has such a subordinate form. This suggests that there is a need to be acknowledged or a presumption that they can be wrong. He argued that women generally use linguistic forms which are lower/subordinate to that of men with the use of tag questions (isn’t it?, am I?), questioning expressions or mitigators (sort of, I think). Robin Lakoff was the first linguist to start the discourse of the relationship between gender and language in his article called ‘‘Language And Woman’s Place” (1972). I would like to analyse the inter-relation between gender and language and how the two interchangeably affect each other. The genders are thus affected by the language they speak.
Since language is highly dependent on the culture around it, it is in many senses a performative act as well. One needs the knowledge of social conventions of a particular culture to make meaning. However, linguistic competence is not enough to make sense. The linguistic competence of a speaker is their knowledge/ability to produce or recognise meaning. Language is a communicative practice which influences and is influenced by cultures. Gender, as opposed to sex, is a social construct and it is constructed by various cultural practices or societal customs. Gender is not something we are born with, it is something we perform. Simone de Beauvoir said “one is not born, but rather becomes a woman”.
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