Sexism in Language: Do Fiction Writers Assign Agentive and Patient Roles Equally to Male and Female Characters?

dc.creator	Dunlop Ochieng
dc.date	2012-10-01T00:00:00Z
dc.date.accessioned	2015-07-20T22:10:11Z
dc.date.available	2015-07-20T22:10:11Z
dc.identifier	1305-578X
dc.identifier	https://doaj.org/article/e649c3c36340403e8c134d078b0db191
dc.identifier.uri	http://evidence.thinkportal.org/handle/123456789/13445
dc.description	Problem Statement: Studies have shown that language is used discriminatorily to women and men. Hence, there have been movements against gender biased language−the movements which are reported so successful especially in the West.Purpose of Study: This paper however argues that discrimination stems from speakers’ minds; and hence performing gender neutral language alone does not confirm gender neutrality of the performer. The reliable way of judging gender neutrality would then be studying the speakers’ minds.Method: The study applied psychoanalytic literary criticism as a gateway to the unconscious minds of American authors–to find out how gender neutral they were at cognitive level. Through psychoanalytic literary criticism, authors’ suppressed desires would find their way out onto their works in a distorted form. Along these lines, the study assessed the equality in assigning agentive and patient semantic roles between males and females in American fictions–to find out who between males and females were frequently assigned agentive and patient roles of the reciprocal verbs: kiss, hug, marry, and divorce.Findings: The study found out that males were assigned more agentive roles in kiss and hug, and females in divorce. Moreover, both were assigned almost equal roles in marry.Conclusion: The implication of the findings is that speakers’ unconscious mind is basically gender biased along gender stereotypes.
dc.language	English
dc.language	Turkish
dc.publisher	Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies
dc.relation	http://www.jlls.org/vol8no2/20-47.pdf
dc.relation	https://doaj.org/toc/1305-578X
dc.source	Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, Vol 8, Iss 2, Pp 20-47 (2012)
dc.subject	language and gender
dc.subject	language thought and society
dc.subject	linguistic relativity
dc.subject	psychoanalytic literary criticism
dc.subject	literary realism
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	DOAJ:Education
dc.subject	DOAJ:Social Sciences
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.subject	Education (General)
dc.subject	L7-991
dc.subject	Education
dc.subject	L
dc.title	Sexism in Language: Do Fiction Writers Assign Agentive and Patient Roles Equally to Male and Female Characters?
dc.type	article