Language and Gender

Aidan King

Language & Gender

Women Studies



What we say has so much to do with who we are... or at least who we are in the eyes of the world. Language makes up so much of how someone else judges our character. But it is very clear that we get our language from our surroundings. How we learn to speak first is from our parents talking around us as infants. Then we grow up and learn to speak like the other people our age do.

Between men and women, there is a clear difference in how each other speak and write. Women learn to speak and write certain ways and goes on to affect their whole lives.

Women tend to speak with less assertion where men are taught the exact opposite. Basically, in language, men are loud and women are quiet. Breaking this and a woman becomes 'shrill' or a 'bitch'.

In writing, men tend to tell stories of personal achievements or conquest but women tell stories of relationships and bonding. These tendencies in writing also affect the workplace. Bosses writing reviews for men tend to mention their accomplishments. But when writing about women it's more general. They will talk about how she is a great addition to the workplace and how she is good for the environment-- similar to how someone might describe a decorative plant. The problem is plain. But this way is embedded into people, like I mentioned earlier, we are taught how to speak.

This all ties into the question about the dictionary. Should dictionaries be proscriptive or descriptive (pro means giving the hard rules for how language was intended to be used, de means giving how language is used in society)? It's a hard question. Because on one hand, language change and meanings of words change. On the other side though, does showing people how language is used in modern society potentially perpetuate bias?