Gender Differences in the Use of Linguistic Forms in The Speech of Men and Women: A Comparative Study of Selected Tigrigna Novels By Men And Women Authors
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Date
2009-10
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Addis Ababa University
Abstract
This study was intended to determine whether men and women were represented differently with
respect to the use of minimal responses, ask ing question s, super polite forms and hedges in the
male and female author novels ofTigrigna written in the past there decades with a soc io political
theme of the then situation of the co untry Ethi op ia in general and the present National Regional
State of Tigray. In conducting the stud y, R. Lakofrs (1975) ideas co ncern ing linguistic
differences between males and females were taken into account. In order to gather the most
natural-I ike data, I male authored and 3 female authored dialogues of the nove ls with a socio
political as wel l as a fa mily and social theme were by design selected from the literature of
Tigrigna amongst all the scenarios written with in the last about thirty years. In all , 4,547
utterances were studi ed. The data were then divided into fo ur major groups: ( I) cross gender and
same author, (2) same gender and cross author; (3) cross gender and cross author; and (4) cross
author data. The results of the 24 Chi -squares computed shown not signifi cant difference
between the groups on the use of minimal responses, asking questions, super polite forms as well
as hedged in most of the scenarios. What makes the resu lt not uniform is the case of the cross
gender and same authors' scenario, for the chi-square computed in the male authors context
show that insignificant relationship for super polite form s. Again the ch i-square computed for the
femal e author scenario show that the relat ionsh ip is insignificant for the lingui st ic devices of
minimal responses, super polite forms and hedges. Except for cross gender and same author
scenariO the findin gs of the study confirm that Lakofrs opinion regarding gender-bound
language at least in the three areas and the corpus inspected in this resea rch
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Gender Differences