Submitted To:Sir Haseeb Nasir

Submitted By :Nida shaukat

Section :4B Afternoon
Roll#Af-19757
Topic:Language And Gender

Date :
Language And Gender
  Synopsis

 Introduction

Language and gender refers to the relationship between the language of male and
female. Gender difference is not only a reflection of the speeches between male and
female, but also a reflection of their different living styles and attitudes. Gender
difference is a popular research in many fields, such as in psychology, in
sociolinguistics, and in female study. In these fields, the differences between male and
female in many aspects have been studied from different angles with different
methodologies.

 Statement of problem

Language is used as a tool for human communication, it is inevitably featured by

gender.But there are certain differences in language of both genders in terms of
amount of talk, the amount of turns and distribution .This research paper will focus on
all of these aspects and differences among both gender`s speech.

 Research questions

The research questions will be of the following types:

1. What are the differences between men and women in the amount of talk?
2. Whether there are differences in the amount of turns and distribution of them?
3. What are the reasons of this problem?

 Research objectives

The main objectives will be of the following

 To find out the differences in the amount of turns and distribution of them.
 To find out the reasons behind this difference.
  Research significance

This paper or research will help to find out the reasons behind the difference in the amount of
talk and turns and the distribution of them by comparing the amount of talk of both genders .

 Formulation of hypothesis

 Limitation And Delimitation

The limitation of this research paper is that the data or the sample is not large enough. And
the study will be delimited to a well-known American series. the proposed research only
focuses on the most typical aspects in Desperate Housewives. In the analysis of the amount of
talk, it only studies the amount of words and sentences.

 Literature Review

When we look at the linguistic literature, two different types of studies have been
made .The first study tries to look at the societies where there are very clear
differences in the language used by gender. The second one examines the society
where there are preferential speech features in using language by gender. Those two
 types of studies cover all of the sociolinguists’ studies in the field of language and
gender.

Research Methodology

Research design
The data used in this research is exclusively from the well-known American TV series,
Desperate Housewives. I randomly chooses one episode of each season as the subject of
study not only because it is popular with viewers all over the world, but also because it
contains many daily conversations among men and women. This makes it suitable for the
study of language and gender. In terms of data collection, the study randomly selects one
episode of each season for the sake of scientific and objective purpose. In order to gain the
exact and proper data, I first downloads the 8 episodes of the eight seasons from the Internet.
Then I played over and over again via the media player. Meanwhile, relevant speeches and
conversations between men and women are written down on paper for later observation and
analysis.

 Data Collection

The methods used in the proposed research can be classified as a case study with the
combination of quantitative and qualitative analysis. The quantitative approach is to
use tables and figures to show the differences in the amount of talk and turns. The
qualitative approach is to give a systematic description of the data.
 Theoretical framework

Deficit theory will be used to support this study. According to this theory there are
differences in the way men and women speak and the reason for these differences is
that men are superior to women or women are considered to be subordinate to men in
society . Lakoff (1975) is among the sociolinguists that support this theory. He
mentions that men’s speech was stronger, more prestigious, and more desirable.
Female speech was seen as a sign of subordination that should be rejected.

 Findings

The findings of this research are as follow.

 In terms of the amount of talk, men use more words to compose more sentences.
Among the 3045 words, there are 2107 used by males, accounting for 69.2%,
while 928 used by females, accounting for 30.8%. In terms of the amount of
sentences, males use the 2107 words to compose 274 sentences, taking up 61.2% of
the total number. However, females only compose 174 sentences, taking up 38.8% of
 the total number. This clearly manifests that men speak far more than women in
conversations
 They are much more talkative than women.
 In the aspect of the amount of turns, men are inclined to take the turn floor for a
longer time. Among all the turns in the eight episodes, males occupy 52.3% while
females 47.7%.

Conclusion
So the conclusion is that In terms of the amount of talk, the proposed research finds that men
occupy a higher rate. Their word and sentence amounts take up 69.2% and 61.2% of the total
in all eight episodes respectively, while women’s only 30.8% and 38.8% respectively. The
statistics show the fact that men are more talkative than women on some occasions. Analysis
of turn-taking concerning gender in Desperate Housewives mainly centers on the amount of
turns and distribution of them. Among all the turns in the eight episodes, males occupy 52.3%
while females 47.7%. Though the gap is small, it also demonstrates that men are inclined to
take the turn floor for a longer time when they have a conversation with women