Language, Gender, and Slang

If the feminist critique of linguistic communication is correct, and much of spoken communication glistens and embodies masculine and mannish experience (Cameron 1998, 9), then it should go as no surprise that arse around, which is one(a) particular mode of language, should reflect the same masculine and male experience. However, it seems that little quantitative research had been make on bait directly until relatively recently. The offset printing guide was Kutner and brogans research (1974), just over 30 years ago. The goal of this study is to test my peers knowledge of bait, and how aw be they are of its usage. One of the common ideas about slang is that slang words budge fast, from generation to a nonher the other is that slang is non mainstream. But where it exercises to sexual practice and slang, slang words have proven rather stable and common, take down the vulgar slang being a virgin or a whore has had meaning since time immemorial.But first, I will d efine slang and give a little bit of background about its study since the 1970s. What is slang? Slang refers to worlds and dialects that are not personad in mainstream culture. As such, it can be the marker of a subculture, or of areas of discourse or ideas that are taboo in mainstream thinking. A subset of slang are what we comm but take to be slang, namely vulgar, sexualized, or derogatory language. For the purposes of this paper, we will concentre on slang that has a particularly gendered aspect that is, words that are intentiond to narrow male and female genders in slang language. These slang words include, but are not limited to Chick, bitch, babe, and guy, dude, and stud. The fact that these slang words are common where it comes to talking about the relationships between the sexes, on topics such as sexual attraction and gender relations (activities and relationships).According to Flexher (1975), who produced the first dictionary of slang, the use of slang and the creati on of new slang is near exclusively the purview of males (xii). Wo custody tend to use the language that is invented for them by males. This whitethorn account for the disbalance of terms in a gendered distribution there are more slang terms to designate female or feminine behaviors, and more of these terms are banish, and much more negative than its male/masculine counterpart for example, compare bitch and asshole. First off, you would almost neer call a man a bitch unless you were trying to change him, but you can call women assholes without masculinizing them. Second, bitch has a more negative charge than asshole, which might even carry a positive charge. These are just rough informal observations that may or may not holdup under the scrutiny of a quantitative study.Males may use slang more because they are more at home in all of language, and so this violation of language norms becomes possible. There is a champion in which the use of slang is a daring thing to do, and do ing venturesome things is consistent with masculine patterns of behavior and development. Young women tend to want to contain by the rule, be these rules linguistic or otherwise. That they are already not wholly at home in language means that they already risk not communicating, which does not afford them the room to play with language in the daring way that slang demands. In this same vein, the use of profane language is more expected and praised of boys and men than it is of girls and women.These ideas, which could be summarized as the general thesis that gender slang is the domain of males is one that has come to be evidenced and accepted by many scholars, women, men, feminist and not, since the 1970s. For example, one study quoted in the text (Stanley, 1977) found that whereas there were 220 ways to designate woman in English slang, there were only 22 equal ways to designate men. More interesting is that both men and women component part the use of these same terms there ar e not devil set of slang terms, each appropriate for each gender, but only one that is determined and reflect mens experience. This has lead some feminists to argue that women need to develop and independent lexicon (see Irigaray in the Cameron, 1998). And while this diversity is completely obvious once you start to think about it and enquire language and slang use, it seems to be rather transparent to the everyday language user or at least, this is what this project has set out to test.BibliographyCameron, Deborah. (1998) The feminist Critique of lyric. New York, Routledge.de Klerk, V. (1992). How taboo are taboo words for girls? Language in Society, 21, 277-289.Eckert and McConnell-Ginet. (2003) Language and Gender. New York Cambridge University Press.Flexner, S. B. (1975). Preface to the dictionary of American slang. In H. Wentworth & S. B. Flexner (Eds.), Dictionary of American slang. New York Thomas Y. Crowell.Kutner, N. G., & Brogan, D. (1974). An investigation of sex-re lated slang mental lexicon and sex-role orientation among male and female university students. J of Marr and the Family, 36, 474-484.Risch, B. (1987). Womens derogatory terms for men Thats right, dirty words. Language in Society, 16, 353-358.