49th International Philological Conference (IPC 2020) in Homage to Professor Ludmila Verbitskaya (1936-2019)

Men and Women: Communication Gap (the Case of Gender-Oriented Utterances in English language fiction)

Анна Сергеевна Вахрамеева
Докладчик
доцент
Санкт-Петербургский государственный университет

Ключевые слова, аннотация

Gender, stereotype, utterance, conflict, misunderstanding.

Тезисы

At the start of feminist linguistics male dominance was portrayed somewhat simplistically. It was assumed that men intentionally communicate dominance, power and greater esteem for masculine behavior. Later on there was another approach in communication research — the two-cultures approach. This paper focuses on gender-biased utterances in English Language Fiction which may cause conflicts and misunderstandings between men and women. The most frequent areas of conflict include 1) Independence vs Intimacy. 2) Advice vs Understanding. 3) Information vs Feelings. 4) Orders vs Proposals. Under gender-oriented utterances I will understand utterances of men about men and women and utterances of women about men and women. The analysis in this paper indicates that female characters tend to use utterances of a simple structure with explicit ideas when describing both male and female, while male characters use utterances of simple structure only when describing men. When male characters characterize women, they tend to use a complex structure with a complicated implication, which indicates his desire to hide his implicit idea, make it more distant from the hearer. Another conclusion concerns gender stereotypes (the set of perceived behavioral norms associated particularly with men and women) which exist in English language culture.