Language & Gender Essay

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Language & Gender

Lee Wilkinson uses very descriptive language to describe the male character and the setting. This is probably because the writer is describing what the woman is experiencing, therefore uses frequent adjectives, for example; precise texture descriptions ‘smooth stones’ and the man’s anaesthetically pleasing appearance ‘cool clear grey’ showing her to be almost shallow, comparing him to her dead husband and perhaps judging this man to be safer than her husband due to his attractive appearance.  This extract presents Lakoff’s theory of women being taught a female version of the language, it also matches my own findings when I created a questionnaire for both males and females to describe samples of colour, the results showed women were more precise, creative and eloquent with their choice of description.

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Another element the text features that follows Lakoff’s theory is Lee Wilkinson’s choice of the woman being super polite and using unnecessary intensifiers being overly ‘dramatic’ ‘Thank you. Believe me, I’m very grateful’ almost apologetic, showing how she feels he is of a higher position and she has troubled him in some way.

In the same way the woman’s language is shown to be weak, the text portrays her as a character as being feeble in comparison to the man’s. She ‘struggled’, had hooves ‘bearing down on her’ (which later are described as harmless), ‘she said a trifle ...

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