Language, Gender, and Slang

If the feminist critique of quarrel is correct, and much of language reflects and embodies masculine and male hear (Cameron 1998, 9), then it should come as no surprise that camber, which is one particular mode of language, should reflect the said(prenominal) masculine and male experience. However, it seems that little quantitative research had been done on view directly until relatively recently. The first study was Kutner and Brogans research (1974), just over 30 years ago. The purpose of this study is to test my peers knowledge of fool, and how aw be they atomic number 18 of its usage. One of the common ideas rough consume is that slang words change fast, from generation to another the other is that slang is not mainstream. only if where it comes to sex activity and slang, slang words have proven rather stable and common, even the vulgar slang being a virgin or a whore has had meaning since time immemorial.But first, I ordain define slang and give a little bit of ba ckground about its study since the 1970s. What is slang? Slang refers to worlds and dialects that are not used 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 depending. A subset of slang are what we ordinarily take to be slang, namely vulgar, sexualized, or derogatory language. For the purposes of this paper, we will focus on slang that has a particularly gendered aspect that is, words that are used to designate male and feminine genders in slang language. These slang words include, barely 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 creation of new slang is almost simply the purvi ew of males (xii). Wowork force tend to use the language that is invented for them by males. This may account for the disbalance of foothold in a gendered distribution there are more slang terms to designate female or feminine behaviors, and more of these terms are negative, and much more negative than its male/masculine counterpart for example, canvass bitch and asshole. First off, you would almost never call a man a bitch unless you were arduous to feminize him, but you can call women assholes without masculinizing them. Second, bitch has a more negative charge than asshole, which big businessman even carry a positive charge. These are just some 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 sense in which the use of slang is a nerve thing to do, and doing endure things is consistent with masculine patterns of behavior and development. Young women tend to want to abide 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) show that whereas there were 220 ways to designate woman in English slang, there were only 22 alike(p) ways to designate men. More interesting is that both men and women share the use of these same terms there are not two 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 motivating to develop and independent lexicon (see Irigaray in the Cameron, 1998). And while this disparity is completely obvious once you start to think about it and investigate language and slang use, it seems to be rather transparent to the everyday language exploiter or at least, this is what this project has set out to test.BibliographyCameron, Deborah. (1998) The Feminist Critique of Language. 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-related slang vocabulary and sex-role or ientation 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.