The individual experience of culture is so much a part of basic consciousness that it may seem beyond analysis in general, let alone linguistic analysis in particular. Yet there is compelling evidence that language usage is a product of cultural assumptions and norms and that linguistic practice reinforces traditionally engendered social roles, as well as relative power relationships, that constitute the content of culture. By reference to linguistic and social theory and analysis, including the discourse of the modern feminist social critique, this research examines ways in which unequal social roles and relationships of males and females receive their sanction in the language and are continually reinforced by linguistic custom and practice, with a view toward identifying possibilities for change.
The purpose of this research is to examine the interplay of language, gender, and culture as core determinants of social roles. The plan of the research will be to set forth the context in which these elements of human experience have entered modern social and cultural discourse and then to discuss evidence of cultural foundations for linguistic formation, prevailing modes of usage, and change, with a view toward forecasting possible lines of development.
It is both a fundamental principle of psychosocial development and a commonplace of ordinary human experience that language plays a decisive role in the shape that such experience takes. Language is a commonplace of experience in the sense that it intertwined with self and mind for even its most minimally competent users; one readily sees that even the most thoughtless language user nonetheless exploits linguistic capacity to cope with life. The fact that language can be considered in a more complex sense is readily apparent inasmuch as competitive linguistic theories have emerged about the language-acquisition processes of children and the uses to which language may be put over the c...