Mr. Mohammed Abuzaifah, a Ph.D. candidate, delivered a presentation based on research titled, "Language and Gender: A Bilingual Perspective". It was presented at a webinar organized by the Language Research Center on November 24, 2021. His main interest was how the English language is used by two different genders. He also tried to highlight the difference in terms of the Arabic language.
Abuzaifah, first explained the study of discourse and gender, which is an interdisciplinary endeavor shared by scholars of linguistics, anthropology, speech communication, and social psychology. He also mentioned how language was defined differently by scholars like Aristotle, Saussure, Bloomfield and Chomsky.
The researcher emphasized the fact that gender plays a significant role in the use of language. He explained the distinction between sex-related variability and gender-related variability. The former is related to psychological, neurological and biological factors while the latter to society-constructed gender roles.
Abuzaifah highlighted the history of gender and language studies mentioning a book titled, "Language and Woman's Place" written by Robin Lakoff (1972), which was primarily based on feminist theory and the women's liberation movement. This book showed the difference between men and women in terms of language usage. The researcher also highlighted the difference in terms of the spoken language features such as turn-taking and backchanneling etc. He also exemplified the difference in respect of word choice and intonation.
The researcher concluded that women talk more than men in general, and they are more polite but interrupt more often. Men, on the other hand, swear more and express their dominating behavior while talking but interrupt less.
The webinar was very interactive and a great success.
Date: 11/24/2021
Source: Mohammad Adil Siddique