Male and Female Speech Patterns: A Sociolinguistic Perspective - Essay Example

It is common knowledge that Southerners speak differently from the Northerners; individuals in the UK speak dissimilarly from individuals in the United States; British people speak differently from speakers of English in Australia (Ferguson & Huebner 1996). With regard to gender differentiation in speech patterns, there is an interesting discovery located in the linguistic literature. Caribbean-Indians in the West Indies, male and female, use and speak two different languages. This phenomenon is brought about by a group of Caribs, which in invasion, murdered the native men and married the local women.

The son of the intermarried Caribs started to gain knowledge and proficiency of the language from their fathers, whereas the daughters were guided and instructed to the native language by their mothers. It is at present recognized that this in not the outcome of two dissimilar languages, in reality it is a single language, nevertheless the variations are rigorously gender based. This is just an example of a gender-based language differences. This can as well be found in several various languages (Romaine 1994).

One of the most remarkable languages in this regard is definitely English, particularly in its morphology and lexicon area. Lakoff, a sociolinguist, declared that women have their own sets of words for particular topics. They will normally be exceptionally specific while speaking and will apply adjectives such as beautiful, charming, precious, and others, whereas men will more or less never make us of such descriptions. There is as well a great understanding with regard to the characteristics in the word choice of a number of terms, and alterations have been made.

For instance, when portraying occupations or professions: law enforcer and not policeman, fire fighter instead of fireman, salesclerk and not salesman, and so on, both for male and female (Canary & Dindia 1998, 119). There are as well variations