Language in Society Gender and Language Use - Assignment Example

Do differences in language use exist in the current world? If so how are the differences expressed from one gender to the other? This article seeks to answer these questions by observing and listening to observations from individuals of a different gender. More emphasis will be on the type of sentences, words, interjections, verbs, articles, and interjections used. Any other differences observed but not mentioned above will also be included in the write-up.

Based on my observation, women are more likely to ask questions in their conversations while men do give directions. For example, a woman would say ‘Does someone need to buy some candies?’ but a man would instead say ‘Let’s go get some candy. This difference shows the domineering aspect of the male gender, the tendency to make decisions and solve problems. The male dominating conversation was also observed in young boys between the fourth and eighth grades.

In the number of words per sentence, women were found to use more words than men in their sentences. This is true even in writing cases. Men use shorter sentences but they take more turns in a conversation compared to women. This evidence is clearer where females and males are involved in the same conversation with each other. It is however not conclusive that one gender uses more words than the other but the male gender is more likely to use more words than their female counterparts according to these findings.

When it comes to specific phrases, females were found to use phrases with more question tags like ‘...aren’t we?’, ‘...don’t they?’ these phrases are related to uncertainty in a conversation and the need of the other person’s opinion. The verb phrases of uncertainty combined with first person singular pronouns such as ‘I wonder when.’ were also common in female conversations. In the same idea, women were more likely to use more polite phrases than men. Phrases such as please, would you mind were also found to be common in conversations involving females.

When focusing on specific words, women have been identified to use modal auxiliary verbs e.g. ‘could that place..?’ men on the other hand swear (damn, ass, bitch) more and use longer words, more articles and refer to locations more in their conversations. The use of the first person singular ‘I’ was found to be common among men. The word I have been associated with self-centeredness or being selfish. Although this attribute could not be confirmed at this level of the study. Females were also found to use the first person singular but not as frequently as their male counterparts.

Emotional words were however used differently by each gender. The male gender was found to use more negative gender words such as anger, and disapproval, more often (e.g. kill, hate). The female gender on the other hand used more positive emotional words such as friends, love, happy, good, etc more often. This finding befits the stereotype of the emotional component of the different gender types. It is also true when it comes to movies and other television programs that women refer to emotions most of the time than men do in their conversations. Women easily communicate their emotional feelings than men do (Holtgraves, 2013).

Generally, women were found to use pronouns and verbs. The use of negotiations and words referring to homes and their components were featured in female conversations more. Men however outnumbered the women in using more words in terms of number, prepositions, and articles. The relationship between these words is also striking. The use of an article will require a preposition (Charness & Gneezy, 2012). For example, ‘to the game’, and ‘does not.’ this means that if a gender uses more articles then it will also use more prepositions.

The differences in language use between males and females have made information sharing through the media take different positions. If a movie or television show has a theme of politics, then in most cases the political scene will be dominated by males. In instances where a show is about family and emotion sharing, then the scenes will be made up of more females. The stereotyping of males and female is, therefore, non-avoidable when it comes to the choice of language used by males and females.

Men generally use words to pass information while women use words as verbal interactions for social needs. In their conversations, males and females do not pay much attention to their word categories. Categories such as cognitive words, emotional words, anxiety, and anger are used in different notes to different genders in language dimensions. In females, their language was more inclined toward social and psychological processes including verbs. In male conversations, their topics were more on current concerns of politics and music. Then it can be confirmed that each gender uses words for different reasons.