Hello Ahmed,

At first glance, this might seem to be a dry subject. After all, males and females in any given language community have good command of language. However, in sociolinguistics, one may distinguish between different levels of language, e.g. colloquial, standard, elaborate, poetic, etc. These different levels are used by people, male or female, in different social strata. If individuals in a given social class are predominantly male, e.g. legal practitioners, this fact would highlight males in the use of legal jargon, or vice versa. Whether gender is of importance is open to question. I would think that the distribution of individuals, males or females, in different social stratifications might be of significance.

You can examine various intersections of language and gender, such as the differences between males and females regarding:

• conscious and unconscious choices of linguistic behavior or aspects,
• popular stereotypes and deviations,
• being portrayed as communicators, or
• linguistic signaling and sexual orientations.

Interesting topics linking language and gender could be found through reviewing related literature. Therefore, you might check out the following relevant journals.

Cambridge University Press. (2021, May 31). Language in society. Cambridge Core. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/language-in-society

Gender and Language Association. (2021, March 25). Gender and language. Equinox Publishing. https://journal.equinoxpub.com/GL

Wiley-Blackwell Publishing Ltd. (2021, July 02). Journal of sociolinguistics. Wiley Online Library. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14679841

Good luck,

Hello. you may talk about how male and female express their feelings when they listen to the same kind of music when they are going through the same emotional or mental status. Then you examine their answers from the sociolinguistics point of view. Best of Luck.

In fact, there is ample previous research on differences in language use between male/female speakers in Sociolinguistics. You might want to invest another month to read through major earlier studies and look for research questions that the authors themselves have left unanswered? Scientifically, it would make a lot of sense to continue where earlier research has left off. My intuition is that most previous research has been done on phonology and lexicon/word choice, since these areas can be investigated more easily than, e.g., morphology or syntax.

One of the aspects can be naming a child.

Good morning,

From a lexical point of view, one can study euphemism, insults and their relation to gender. In addition, you could study all the social and ideological load that is involved in the use of a certain lexicon to name, describe or disqualify according to the gender of people. You could consult a bibliography on these issues. Good luck with your work.

Hello Ahmed and everyone.

My idea is also to start my doctorate in sociolinguistics this year. I would like to focus on the use of the non-sexist language.

I did an essay based on a survey during the master whose conclusions were so relevant to me that I cannot stop now:

NON-SEXIST LANGUAGE

IN CURRENT SPANISH SOCIETY

"A snapshot of the present moment"

Juan Antonio Martinez - April 10, 2021

MA Linguistics - Sociolinguistics

UCD - University College Dublin

Good luck!!

Juan

HI Ahmed,

just would like to make a remarks that when you are talking about gender, this refers to LGBTQE and others while sex refers to male and female only. As to where to include language like English in your study,,, read, read, read more articles or study to find the gaps in your locale related to what you wish to study. Thanks.

To approach this from the aspect of power relations being reinforced by the use of gender-specific language (e.g. man instead of person) is always interesting and I am sure there has been a wealth of research to draw on in producing your own take on the subject.

Greetings, Mr. Assaleh. Remember that, in sociolinguistic studies, gender is a constant variable because it helps to distinguish behaviors that are usually stratified. In this sense, it could be that you find research on the language in use interesting, given in the forms of treatment, conversations, etc. , or study, for example, situations of verbal violence towards the female gender. This is a social manifestation that has great force in family and community behaviors. I hope my suggestions serve you. Thank you for counting on me. Happy day.

When I was a graduate student in applied linguistics in the late 1970s, one of the emerging topics in sociolinguistics was language and gender.  I still remember the excitement I felt from reading Robin Lakoff’s "Language and Woman's Place."  It inspired us to focus on male-female language (lexicon, discourse, etc), sexism in language, power in language, etc.  The notion of political correctness was also emerging at that time — triggered by the feminist movement. “Mankind" became “humanity," “chairman” became” chairperson" or “chair," etc.  The use of “he" as the generic pronoun became “he or she.”  Speaking of the pronoun use, today, we may be using “they” instead of “he or she,” etc. Things are a lot more complicated, which makes it exciting for linguists to investigate language and gender.  Good luck!

Hi there. Gender is a very interesting topic to study. You might want to look at gendered discourse, with issues revolving power distance and politeness in workplace or institutional contexts. If you are interested in these areas, interactional sociolinguistics is a possibility for you to explore in terms of your approach among others. Try reading anything you can get your hands on by Janet Holmes, Louise Mullany, Stephanie Schnurr, Judith Baxter and Deborah Tannen. Hope you'll find your topic soon! All the best!

Deborah Tannen is another researcher (in addition to Robin Lakoff) who got me excited about language and gender when I was in grad school. Conversational styles of men and women could be an interesting topic.

Perhaps a study on the challenges for sexual-neutrality posed by languages that have gendered inflections that, unlike English, seemingly have nothing to do with sex? Or perhaps a comparative study of English and such languages?

Gender differences may crop up in the choice of a topic for discussion,the use of lexicon and structures like passives,indirect and direct narration,certain collocational and colligational aspects.Strategies like introduction,repetition, use of cohesive markers also need to be looked at.

Hi Mr. Mahdjoub

I suggest to read about this issue in the field of interactional sociolinguistics where there's an extensive research on gender and language preferences. Gender is a social variable and it is through social interactions gender-based variations can be observed. Also, you need to decide where to put your focus i.e. is it on monolingual or bilingual discourse. If it is the second choice, I suggest to study Code switching among gender groups or the use of borrowings. Actually, there's a wide range of patterns in the Algerian context: Arabic-French, Arabic-English, Arabic-Tamazight, Tamazight-French and even Tamazight-English.

Good luck