WOMEN, LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL ROLES

The article is about language, sexism, linguistic behavior, social roles and how language expresses our culture‟s underlying values and expectation about gender. It shows how sexism and antisexism may be contained in language use, everyday conversation, newspaper reports, and written conversations. Linguistic sexism refers to the ways in which a language devalues members of one sex, almost invariably women. Linguistic sexism involves defining women‟s “place” in society unequally and also ignoring women. Many social factors affect language patterns. Studies on gender and language have shown differences in women‟s and men‟s speech. According to some researchers it should be accepted as natural because of their different position in the social structure, encountering differential opportunities and constraints. Women and men‟s different styles do not occur only in verbal language but also in non-verbal patterns of speech. So the language transmits the messages for women and men by intonation pitch and speed of speaking, hesitation noises, gesture, facial expression etc. Gender difference in communication and social interaction reflect the existence of hierarchical sex/gender system. Men direct the communication rules in a verbal (in conversation) and non verbal way (using of social space). As social structure is changing sexist words describing occupations might also be expected to follow inevitably. Neutral words are to be used as much as possible and the language should reflect this change. But the gender neutrality of a word does not necessarily mean it provokes a nonsexist image or has a nonsexist meaning. Nonsexist language should be accompanied by the non sexist experience. We have to change not only the words we use but also the way of our thinking. Language changes because we change. Language is one part of our lives, language is always with us and we are always under the influence of language.