Language Variation In Men And Women

Languages reveal much about an individual's belief systems, political ideologies, thinking process and perceived social order. Languages therefore can be defined as a mirror which shows how communities see the world around them and in turn, see their roles within it both individually or collectively.

Some language families have definitemasculine and feminine genders for each and every single noun for example French whereas other language groups have no grammatical genders at all for example English. Specifically Old English had grammatical genders but modern English havepronounsthat is heandshein order to differentiate between male and female.

Languages evolve in relation to the variation and changes in societal norms and values. This is quite prominent in English language.

For example we no longer refer to the individual who delivers our mail, as amailmanbut rather as aletter carrier. There are many semantic changes that occurred from old English to modern English period. The words that changed its meaning include: Box, earlier was used as a small container but now it is refered to as any kind of box. Similarly the word lovely, presently, sensual, etc went through a transformation.

Even the language spoken by men and women are categorised distinctly based on the manner of their speaking. It is often stated that females use more compromising and polite tone while speaking whereas males on the other hand are considered to use competitive and harsh tone. It has been observed that female speech is evaluated as more prestigious and less slangy whereas Men are more likely than women touse socially-stigmatized forms.These distinction vary from time to time and from place to place.

Therefore Linguistic sex varieties arise because language is closely related to social attitudes. Men and women are socially different in that society with different social roles set for them and they also expects different outcomes from them.