Chapter - I: Introduction 3

impact of gender on language, enabling linguists to describe accurately

the language (linguistic necessity) and second, helping sociologists to
accurately study the gender status and its interaction in the formation
of the relationships in society (sociological necessity).

According to Nick Lund, gender is one of the social and cultural

aspects of languages at the level of the other components like social
class and ethnic background. According to Lund, this aspect of
language is effective both in content and style, and in differentiating the
speech of both male and female. These differences begin at the early age
(4-5 year old children) and reflect the gender differences among adults.

Deborah Tannen studies gender linguistics from the discourse

perspective. She believes that communication is not just about
conveying intention and meaning, but the quality of conveying the
intention (regardless of its meaning) that is usually affected by the
cultural fabric of society, and plays a very important role in shaping the
communication. In her opinion, the tendency to communicate more
with the same gender is one of the reasons for the durability of special
speech styles of both sexes.

Other linguists differentiate between sociocultural gender and

biological sex, and considers gender in language as mostly a cultural
context-driven phenomenon. However, they believe in two gender-
natural and grammatical systems. In addition, there are lexical,
grammatical, semantic and discourse or communication differences.
Overall, three distinct approaches to language differences between men
and women have been pointed out: biological differences between men
and women, male domination over women and social differences
between men and women.

Sociolinguistic research on gender differences has indicated that

women’s speech styles are often characterized by feature like less