An overview of the Language and Gender module from AQA's English Language A-Level, covering a wide array of theories and research from experts. This document is a good starting-point for those just beginning their Language and Gender revision for upcoming exams.
AQA English Language A-Level; Language and Gender
Revision Overview
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
Created by:
❖ Edward Sapir
➢ A linguist in the 1920s
❖ Benjamin Lee Whorf
➢ A psychologist in the 1950s
HYPOTHESIS: the structure of a language determines / greatly influences the modes of
thought and behaviour characteristic of the culture in which it is spoken.
➢ When we acquire language, we acquire ways of thinking
o We don’t consciously notice because they feel natural
▪ It’s like viewing the world through a particular pair of sunglasses
Anthropomorphism
❖ Giving something a human shape
➢ Human beings feel the need to project ideas of humanness onto the inanimate
world
▪ This also includes animals
Gareth Morgan (1986)
❖ Noted a number of qualities typically associated with men or women in Western
society
➢ Men: logical, rational, aggressive, exploitative, strategic, independent and
competitive
➢ Women: intuitive, emotional, submissive, nurturing and cooperative
▪ Morgan summarises these as implying that man is ‘a leader and decision-maker’
while woman is ‘a loyal supporter and follower’
Jennifer Herriman (1998)
❖ A study based on the cobuild corpus
• A collection of language texts of all kinds, totalling 50 million
words
➢ The study found that words for physical attractiveness were used most frequently
in association with women, whereas terms describing height, abilities and
personality traits were most frequently associated with men
Socialisation
❖ The language we use to talk about men and women is gendered
, ➢ The way we talk about the sexes indicates that we have a shared understanding of
the traditional roles, and what is deemed masculine and feminine
▪ This shared understanding is part of our social knowledge
▪ The framework we use to interpret the world
• The process by which we acquire social knowledge is called socialisation
The Process of Socialisation:
❖ We do not learn this knowledge explicitly
➢ The process includes all the things we see and hear from society
▪ The people we meet, what we read and see on television, the things we’re told,
etc.
• All these things shape our ideas of what it means to be a man / woman
Marked and Unmarked Terms
❖ We categorise people into groups, where some group members are seen as more
typical / representative than others, even though in reality they may be in the
minority
➢ We then construct a simplified and limited model from a few group members and
apply these to the whole group
▪ This is called stereotyping
• STEREOTYPING: the process of applying a simplified model to a real,
complex individual, often to negative / derogatory effect
❖ When we ‘mark’ or modify certain phrases, we are labelling departures from the
‘norm’ or typical situation
SEMANTIC DEROGATION
❖ Another form of marking is adding suffixes such as ‘-ess’ and ‘-ette’
➢ It has been claimed that terms marked in this way when referring to women have
a strong negative connotation to them, compared to the corresponding term used
to refer to men
▪ Mills (1995), following previous research by Cameron and Schulz (1975)
highlighted examples of lexical pairs where the male term suggests a positive
attribute and the female term suggests a negative one
• E.g. Master and Mistress, Governor and Governess
Liberal Feminist Tradition
❖ Miller and Swift’s The Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing (1981)
➢ A moderate, liberal approach
➢ They think it is possible for language to be made more representative of different
groups
▪ This sometimes means inventing new terms where old ones won’t do
• One are they suggest needs attention is ‘discriminatory job titles’
For example:
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