Title: A Sociolinguistic Study of Gender Differences in Persian Written Performance
Abstract: ABSTRACTThis study examined the gender-linked differences in Iranian university students' Persian writing in terms of 13 linguistic features mentioned in Mulac et al. (2001). To carry out the research, 80 participants (40 boys and 40 girls) were asked to write a descriptive paragraph regarding their family and university. These participants were all students at University of Sistan and Baluchestan, and were all native speakers of Persian. To avoid generation-related differences, they were all between 18 to 22 years of age. The results of this study revealed that males tended to use I references, elliptical sentences, judgmental adjectives, locatives, and references to quantity more than females while females were apt to use more words, hedges, sentence initial adverbials, length of sentences, dependent clauses, references to emotions, intensive adverbs, and uncertainty verbs. T-test analysis also indicated that the differences between male and female participants were statistically significant.KEYWORDS: Gender-linked Differences, Written Performance, Linguistic Features, Persian1. IntroductionThe last several decades have seen an explosion of research on the nature and existence of differences between men and women's language use (Newman et al., 2008: 212). Halpem (2000) and Wood (2001), for instance, claim that there is a link between language and gender; therefore, men and women use language differently. In this respect, one of the most common questions is the extent to which men and women use language differently. This, in part, roots in the fact that language is an inherently social phenomenon and can provide insight into how men and women approach their social worlds. Social scientists' findings, however, suggest that men, relative to women, tend to use language more for instrumental purposes of conveying information, whereas women are more likely to use verbal interaction for social purposes with verbal communication serving as an end in itself (Brownlow et al., 2003, and Colley et al., 2004). However, such a stereotyping of 'women are good at X' or 'men are bad at Y' not only denies the huge range in abilities among women, and among men, and the extent to which women's and men's abilities overlap, but also denies the existence of gendering and gendered social practices, and the possibilities for change (Sunderland, 2000). As Waskita (2008: 449) puts it, human gender characteristics are not just given, but rather socially constructed. Institutions and practices can be described as gendering. Gendering shapes gender roles: what men and women, boys and girls do, occupationally and socially.On the other hand, a number of theorists have argued against the existence of any meaningful differences in men and women's language (Bradley, 1981, and Weatherall, 2002). According to Newman et al. (2008: 212), one contributor to this doubt may be the lack of a commonly accepted metric of analysis among empirical studies of language. All in all, as Swallow (2003) mentions, one of the most comprehensive frameworks used to study the gender-linked differences is the one proposed by Mulac et al. (2001) which considers thirteen linguistic features meticulously in one's linguistic performance; namely, number of words, hedges, I references, sentence initial adverbials, elliptical sentences, mean length of sentences, dependent clauses, judgmental adjectives, locatives, references to quantity, references to emotions, intensive adverbs, and uncertainty verbs.Considering these issues, the present study is an attempt to investigate gender differences among Iranian university students' Persian writing in terms of the abovementioned linguistic features. Specifically, this study aims to answer the following questions:1. What are the linguistic differences between Iranian male and female university students' written performance?2. What sociological considerations account for these differences? …
Publication Year: 2014
Publication Date: 2014-03-01
Language: en
Type: article
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