A Literature Study Investigating the Relationship between Language and Gender

Present the literature review focused on the true pictures of language and gender research conducted by scholars abroad and home. The current thesis aims at the differences and similarities in presenting female and male from lexical perspective and through lexicon related discourse analysis explores the connection between the vocabulary and the dominant gender ideologies of the magazine. There are differences and similarities in lexical choice. Reports on men and women both tend to use words, such as children, spouse, and business. Female images constructed by target lexicon differ from men’ and female were regarded as the second gender which is sealed in discourse.


1) What is the concrete manifestation of difference in male and female language?
2) What is the concrete manifestation of similarity in male and female language?
3) What is the relationship between the most frequent vocabulary in the magazine and their preferred gender ideologies?
The first two research question will be answered based upon the outcomes of the empirical study and also analyzed on the basis of theories of markedness; the last question will be explored in considerable detail with theories about social-linguistic.

Studies in China
There are considerable academic works both abroad and home investigating the relationship language and gender. These articles are divided 3 categories on the basis of research topic, respectively: GL in English, the comparison of GL between Chinese and English, and GL in Chinese. Those studies conducted from 12 aspects: GL in transmission; GL in advertisements; GL in oral discourse; GL in verbal communication; GL in cyber language; GL and language teaching; GL and culture; GL in the whole register of English ;Among these is Review on Language and Gender Study written by Zhao Ronghui. This article makes a specific introduction about the origin of the formation of language and gender, respectively from fragmentary study period and systematic study period; the results in each period and propose her idea on the theory status and prospect. Unfortunately, these study of this topic in China mainland hasn't made much progress despite the above mentioned, especially that of gender differences in conversation among Chinese people. It seems that not much quantitative research method or interdisciplinary approaches are employed in gender language studies in China. As to the field of education, some attention has been given to gender differences in various curriculums, but little consideration has been given to gender similarity and the study of gender differences in context.
Along with the progress of feminist movement in China, the concentration on topic is booming rapidly.
Many researches have been witnessed and a great many of outcomes relevant to it has come into being The present study is empirical one with innovations as follows: firstly, the present study employs the combination of difference and similarity. Looking over the previous studies, there is hardly any research study on similarity between male and female language. Secondly, this is a research based on a large data. The researcher collects the data from Reader's Digest where language is best modern English. They serve as the data in this research which is just not found so far in the previous studies on gender language. So to speak, this study will be more comprehensive and objective, seeking to fully understand language and gender.

Studies Abroad
According to Zhao Ronghui in 1999, studies on language and gender can be divided into two period times. One is called fragmentary period which is before 1960s. People in ancient Greece realize the important relationship between language and gender in order to make an explanation of genus in grammar. They believed that genus in grammar is the symbol of sexus. Since 1960s, researchers made use of statistical investigation method which used to mainly in sociology to measure the concrete number in linguistic gender difference with the prevalence of social-linguistics.
Those quantitative researches showed that gender affect speech behavior and ideologies in a certain way.
Many excellent linguists drove studies on female language forward. They are Lakoff, Trudgill, Zimmerman, West, Thorne, Henley and Bolinger. Meanwhile, feminist movement launched out in which women request having equal right with men in every field. Feminist movement drove linguists into further studies on language and gender. Then the study was raised in many other countries and did not only refined in English, but also refers to Chinese, Japanese, Germany, Russian, etc.
Much research has been done on language and gender in English. Most of them are based on data from whole register of English, while few of them focus on the concrete text such as magazines, newspapers and adv, etc. Edward Sapir said "language is a guide to social life". Media language not only guide social life but also contributes to the formation of public opinion and play an essential role in the upholding of the capitalist system (Talbot, 1995). It is dedicated to all ages and features as easy showed that both girls and boys experience a declining academic self-concept during the period of secondary education and that girls declined at a faster rate. Mary Lynne Gasaway Hill discuss in the paper Staying on topic, changing the topic: language and gender in the 1995 Louisiana governor's race (2008) that the gendered use of topic shifting within an electoral community of practice of ten candidates for the governor of Louisiana (three female, seven male) during two political debates. The study found that his findings on men's speech and topic shifting did not support previous research; however, the findings on women's speech and meta-topic shifting did support previous research.
Stefan Heim wrote an article Syntactic gender processing in the human brain: A review and a model in 2008. This article provides a systematic review of the neural correlates of syntactic gender processing, based on anatomical information from cytoarchitectonic probability maps. (2008). The researcher emphasis that the field of language and gender is multidisciplinary in scope and the field need more theoretical grounding.

M. Talbot made a review in the article Gender and Language
Since the 1980s feminism has stimulated further research on women's ways of using language and the extent of differences between the sexes in their use(s) of language. A feminist orientation in linguists and language researchers has also been responsible for the critical re-examining of previous findings and explanations of gender differences in language use. The following influential works are some of the man impacts feminism is having on society.
Language and Women's Place (Lakoff, Robin, 1976): This book, although published nearly 20 years ago, is still referred to in more current works. This work discusses language used to describe and define the sexes, and identifies features of "women's language" in the context of women's devalued status.
This is an important source to look at, not only because Lakoff is an authority in the field, but because of its excellent overview of the issue of sexism in language and the angle by which it is approached.
Man Made Language (Dale Spender, 1980): This book presents an exciting, wide-ranging feminist study of language, its rules and uses. The author argues that for women, language is man-made, for it encompasses the meaning of men who have arrived at their definitions of the world from a position of dominance, a position which women as a group do not occupy. The author demonstrates that once women expose the falseness of existing male meanings and encode their own, language and society can assume new forms, and women can move towards autonomy and self-determination and can assume a position of strength.
Language and the Sexes (Frank, Francine and Frank Anshen, 1983): This book provides an overview of the topic that is well researched and while scholarly in nature, is quite readable. The work analyzes language to reveal society's disparate views and treatment of the sexes, and explores some of the ways in which our language mirrors the sexism in our society. Both authors have published widely on the subject of sexism and language; their work was cited often in other sources the author reviewed. English and summaries of the findings of linguists who have studied women's language. This is an especially appropriate source for those who are less familiar with the subject of sexist writing.
Women Changing Language (Anne Pauwels, 1998): It is the first book to examine feminist views and actions on language planning in different languages and different societies (mainly in Europe). The book has the merit of examining the workings of sexism in several languages, including lesser-known ones; clearly enough so that a command of the language does not prove necessary. This highlights the fact that sexist practices reflect a common reality of gender inequality: men as the norm (generic use of male terms to designate all human beings), women as a deviation from this male norm.
Many articles continue to expose the sexist nature of English: Silveira (1980) 'Generic masculine words and thinking' attempts to investigate the way in which the male is treated as the norm, or as unmarked term in English classification systems. Beardsley's article 'Degenderisation' (Beardsley, 1981) calls again for sex-neutral vocabulary to be introduced into speech, as does Duran (1981) 'Gender-neutral terms'. A whole series of articles investigate the use of 'Ms. ': Levin (1981), Purdey (1981) and Soble (1981), as does Baron (1984). Korsmeyer (1981)