Communications: Gender Differences in use of Linguistic (Essay Sample)

Gender Differences in use of Linguistic
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This research was conducted to establish whether men and women are different with respect to the use of tag questions, intensifiers and hedges in English and Persian. This study, based on Lakoff ideas regarding linguistic differences that exist between males and females were considered. In order to capture the most natural-like data, 8 Persian and 6 English and film scripts with a social and family theme were selected from amongst all the situations accessible in two libraries of the University. After all 9,280 utterances were deliberated; the results were then grouped into four major categories (Eckert & McConnell-Ginet, 2013).
Same gender and cross culture, cross-gender and the same culture, cross culture data and, cross-gender and cross culture was evaluated. The final results of the 21 Chi-squares calculated indicated that no significant difference between the four groups in the use of tag questions intensifiers and hedged. The answers of the study did not support Lakoff’s opinion concerning gender-bound language at least in the three areas and the corpus examined in this research.
It is evident that men and women from same social class and speech community may use different linguistic forms. The linguistic methods used by men and women normally contrast to some degree in all speech communities. For instance, the Amazon Indians’ language used by a child’s mother is totally different from the one used by his father and every tribe is separated by a different language. In such community, males and females communicate in different languages.
From many researchers, Lakoff proposed principles on the reality of women’s language. Her book ‘Language and Woman’s Place’ is a basis for many researchers on the subject (Pennebaker, Mehl & Niederhoffer, 2003).
To study Lakoff’s hypothesis, the scholars picked three grammatical categories namely tag questions, intensifies and as the basis of analysis. The hypothesis in Lakoff’s work stated that women use intensifiers, tag questions, and hedges more than men do in English and Persian. This resulted in three null hypotheses listed as follows:
There is no main difference that exists between the clusters under study on the usage of hedges.
There is no major difference between the clusters under study on the usage of intensifiers.
There is no major difference between the clusters under study on the usage of tag questions.
To perform the study, the researchers made used English film scenarios that included Out of Sight, Blood Simple, Taxi Driver, China Town, American Beauty and My Beautiful Launderette. On the other hand, the Persian film situations used ʃæbe sæmu:r (The Sable’s Night), æz kærχe tɑ: rɑɪn (From Karkheh to Rine), si:b (The Apple), bæʧehɑ:ye ɑ:semɑ:n (Children from the Heaven), otobu:s (The Bus) eʤɑ:re neʃinhɑ: (The Tenents), nu:n o goldu:n (Bread and vase), æru:si-ye xu:bɑ:n (The Wedding of the Nice People) and Both scenarios selected had family and a social theme.
The researchers used of scenarios found in media so, as to receive results that could depict the linguistic outcomes of normal people in natural environments. In their study, they understand that data established from scenarios were very similar, if not the same, to natural data. Poems from different sources were not used, because they were understood to be quite different from the normal language especially with respect to structure and sequences of elements. It’s funny that there are communities where women and men speak the same language; however some different linguistic features appear in their language. Such differences range from vocabulary, to pronunciation or morphology (Taiwo, 2010).
Scientists refer to Japanese, where distinct words, which have the same meaning, are used characteristically by men and women. For instance, in Japanese when a woman wants to refer to ‘water’, she says ‘ohiya’ while a man uses the ‘term ‘‘miza’. Men’s language is normally considered to be assertive direct, adult, and while women’s language is hyper-formal immature, non-assertive and polite (Spitzberg, 2006). To show clears example of intensifiers, hedges and tag questions the researchers reviewed each expression and jointly decided if an example of a tag question, hedge or intensifier had been investigated. Some verses were investigated from a book where relevant data was collected; the investigators first read English and Persian scenarios with great care. Afterwords, the number of sounds in the book was counted. The utterances further they were divided into two sections, those produced by males and those produced by females.
Data Collection Procedures
To collect the important data, the researchers read all the English and Persian scenarios with great care then, the number of utterances in every book was calculated. Afterwords, the utterances were separated into two sections, those produced by males and those produced by. The data presented in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Frequency of tags, Intensifiers, Hedges as produced in English and
Persian case by Males and Females.
English scenarios

Persian scenarios

Males (U=2827)

Females (U=1306)

Males (U=3781)

Females (U=1366)

T

44 (1.55%)

8 (0.61%)

9 (0.23%)

9 (0.65%)

I

110 (3.89%)

78 (5.97%)

110 (2.9%)

74 (5.4%)

H

150 (5.3%)

77 (5.89%)

72 (1.9%)

74 (5.4%)

I= Intensifier, H= Hedge, T= Tag, U= Utterance
In this research, utterance was applied as the unit of speech, because there were a number of scenarios in Persian cases where a sentence did not stop in a full stop rather it stopped with a comma (Spitzberg, 2006). On the other hand, three or two sentences were joined by a conjunction like ‘and’. Additionally, the description of the sentence was vague. The investigators considered ‘utterance’ to be a good device to follow up a comparative study (Hargie, 2010). All linguistic production of every person is considered as a sole utterance (For instance, in the extraction, John: How are you Jack? Jack: Fine, thanks )
Findings and Results
Results of data will be obtainable in four groups. In the first section, assessments are made between cross-gender, same culture data. Secondly, same gender, cross culture data. Additionally, cross gender, cross culture data will be worked on. Lastly in the fourth part contrasts are made between both genders.
Statistics on Cross Gender, Same Culture Data
As indicated in the table, no Chi-squares calculated can reject the null-hypothesis. It is clear that there is no difference existing between English females and males with respect to the use of the three linguistic mentioned. Same results were created by Persian females and males
Table 2: The outcome of the Chi-square as Computed for Cross Gender, Same Culture Data.

Cross gender, same culture


English scenarios

Persian scenarios


Males vs. Females

Males vs. Females

T

X= 0.4 NS

X= 0.2 NS

H

X= 0.03 NS

X= 1.32 NS

I

X= 0.43 NS

X= 0.75 NS

NS= Not Significant P> 0.05
Statistics on Same Gender, Cross Culture Data
The main reason was to establish and compare the outcome of each gender in Persian and English scenarios concerning the use of Tags, intensifiers and hedges differently. Consequently, comparisons were established between the utterances made by males in English and Persian Table 3: The Results of the Chi-square as Computed for Same Gender, Cross Culture Data.

Same gender , cross culture


Males

Females


English/Persian scenarios

English/Persian scenarios

T

X=0.97NS

X=0.001NS

H

X=1.6NS

X=0.09NS

I

X=0.97NS

X=0.001NS

NS= Not Significant P> 0.05
Table 3, the hypothesis similar and cannot be rejected regarding English an...