Influence of Gender Status on Discourse Behaviour of Women

Abstract

The focus of this paper is on the role of language as a powerful tool in representing and structuring the world. We will explore how language can help construct stereotype identities and human relationships. Gender being a socially constructed definition of women and men, it is determined by the conception of tasks, functions and roles attributed to  women and men in society, in public and private life; whereas power is reflected in every aspect of communication from what the actual topic of the communication is to the ways in which it is communicated. Most researches have focused on the spoken aspect of language giving little attention to the written discourse; this paper will consider how gender is reflected in the written media. Therefore the purpose of this paper will be to examine the influence of gender status on the discourse behavior of women.  The objectives of this study will be to examine the linguistic forms used by women and to determine whether they reinforce or transform gender status. The Socio-Constructionist Theory will be adopted for this study together with the Critical Discourse Analysis. It is hoped that the findings of this study will shed light to prove whether Lakoff 1975’s view that ‘women’s register’ serves to maintain their inferior role in the society and that they tend to use linguistic forms that reflect and reinforce a subordinate role is justified. This study also seeks to give response to the question whether language differences are related specifically to gender or to status and power of an individual. Secondary data which will be collected from eight randomly sampled Daily Nation newspapers more specifically the Saturday Magazine inside the Daily Nation of the few selected months and various linguistic behaviors will be picked to support the findings and conclusions arrived at by this study.