Gendered Representations in Language: A Corpus-Based Comparative Study of Adjective-Noun Collocations for Marital Relationships
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1305.12Keywords:
gendered language, gendered representation, marital relationships, sexism, power distributionAbstract
In language teaching, a study of the corpora gives teachers access to authentic texts and the language of these texts is the language used in real-life communication. Social structures and culture-defined representations of gender influence sexist language or choice of words based on gender bias. Based on the premise that adjectives as ‘describing words’ help define and express human behaviour, attitude and psyche, this research paper tries to explore and compare collocational behaviour of adjectives using four pairs of female and male nouns for marital relationships (bachelor and spinster, bridegroom and bride, husband and wife, and widower and widow) in the British and the Indian contexts. Considering that these four noun pairs sequentially represent the four stages in a marital relationship, this comparative analysis tries to demonstrate with collocational evidence the categorization of social identity and power distribution, the presence of sexism in language usage, and analyzes and interprets the cultural meanings they embody. By examining the gendered adjective-noun collocational frequencies and dispersions in the British National Corpus (BNC) and the Kolhapur Corpus of Indian English (KC), this paper seeks to present certain key perspectives in gender representations in two diverse socio-cultural and historical backgrounds and analyze how gendered language is used by native and non-native speakers.
References
Alghamidi, Naimah Ahmad. (2020). Gender Representation in MBC Advertisements: A Linguistic Associative Account. The Asian EFL Journal, 27(2.2), 31–52.
Baker, P. (2010a). Sociolinguistics and Corpus Linguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.
Baker, P. (2010b). Will Ms ever be as frequent as Mr? A corpus-based comparison of gendered terms across four diachronic corpora of British English. Gender and Language, 4(1), 125–149. Retrieved June 25, 2022 from https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v4i1.125
Biber, D., Conrad, S. and Reppen, R. (1998). Corpus Linguistics Investigating Language Structure and Use. Cambridge University Press.
Bradley, H. (2007). Gender. Polity Press.
Diekman, A. and A.H. Eagly. (2000). Stereotypes as dynamic constructs: women and men of the past, present, and future. Personality and Social Psychology (26), 1171–88.
Golombok, S. (1994). Gender Development. Cambridge University Press.
Gye, Hugo. (2013). The heartbreaking plight of India’s widows: How women are kicked out of their homes and shunned by society after their husbands die. Retrieved June 19, 2022 from http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2316493/The-heartbreaking-plight-Indias widows-How-women-kicked-homes-shunned-society-husbands-die.html
Hamdan, Sameer Mahamed Thaher. (2008). Analyzing Aspects of Gender in English Language Jordanian Basic Stage Curriculum from A Socio-Cultural Perspective. [Doctoral Dissertation, Amman Arab University for Graduate Studies]. The Asian EFL Journal. Retrieved July 3, 2022 from https://www.asian-efl-journal.com/thesis/analyzing-aspects-of-gender-in-english-language-jordanian-basic-stage-curriculum-from-a-socio-cultural-perspective/
Johansson, S. (2009). Some thoughts on corpora and second language acquisition. In K. Aijmer (Ed.), Corpora and Language Teaching (pp. 33-44). John Benjamins. Retrieved July 3, 2022 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/scl.33.05joh
Jutting, J.P., Morrison, J. Dayton-Johnson and D. Dreschsler. (2006). Measuring gender (in)equality: introducing the gender, institutions and development data base (GID). OECD Development Centre Working Paper No. 247. Retrieved July 3, 2022 from www.iza.org/conference_files/worldb2006/2786.pdf
Kjellmer, Goeran. (1986). The Lesser Man: Observations on the role of women in modern English writings. In Jan Arts and Willem Meijs (eds.) Corpus Linguistics II, 163–176. Rodopi.
Kolhapur Corpus. (1978). Powered by CQPweb, Shivaji University, India. Retrieved 18-21 February, 2022 from https://cqpweb.lancs.ac.uk/kolhapur/. Data cited herein have been extracted from the Kolhapur Corpus Online, powered by CQPweb on behalf of the Shivaji University, India. All rights in the texts cited are reserved.
Leńko-Szymańska, A. (2014). Is this enough? A qualitative evaluation of the effectiveness of a teacher-training course on the use of corpora in language education. ReCALL, 26 (Special Issue 02), 260–278. Retrieved 23 May, 2022 from http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/s095834401400010x
Pearce, Michael. (2008). “Investigating the collocational behaviour of MAN and WOMAN in the British National Corpus using Sketch Engine.” Corpora, 3(1), 1–29.
Rayson, Paul, Geoffrey Leech, and Mary Hodges. (1997). Social differentiation in the use of English vocabulary: Some analyses of the conversational component of the British National Corpus. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 2(1), 133–152.
Reppen, R. (2010). Using Corpora in the Language Classroom. Cambridge University Press.
Schmid, Hans-Jörg. (2003). Do men and women really live in different cultures? Evidence from the BNC. In Andrew Wilson, Paul Rayson and Tony McEnery (eds) Corpus Linguistics by the Lune. Lódź Studies in Language, 8, 185–221. Peter Lang.
Shastri, S. V., C. T. Patilkulkarni and Geeta S. Shastri. (1986). Manual of Information to Accompany the Kolhapur Corpus of Indian English for Use with Digital Computers. Department Of English, Shivaji University, Kolhapur, 1986. Retrieved 16 October, 2022 from http://korpus.uib.no/icame/manuals/KOLHAPUR/INDEX.HTM
Sigley, Robert and Janet Holmes. (2002). Looking at girls in corpora of English. Journal of English Linguistics, 30(2), 138–157.
Sunderland, Jane. (2004). Gendered Discourses. London: Palgrave.
The British National Corpus, Version 3 (BNC XML Edition). (2007). Distributed by Bodleian Libraries, University of Oxford, on behalf of the BNC Consortium. Retrieved 10-15 February, 2022 from http://www.natcorp.ox.ac.uk/ Data cited herein have been extracted from the British National Corpus Online service, managed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. All rights in the texts cited are reserved.
Trimberger, E. Kay. (2008). Single Women in India: Rarer, Riskier, and Happier Than in the U.S. The Daily Mirror. Retrieved 19 July, 2022 from http://www.unmarried.org/single-women-in-india/
