Gender Exclusive Differences in Language Use

<P align=left><I><FONT size=1 face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=1 face="Times New Roman"><FONT size=3>We are surrounded in our everyday lives by powerful commonsense ideas about speech </FONT><FONT size=3>which tell us that men and women communicate and use language in different ways. Nowadays, a </FONT><FONT size=3>major topic in sociolinguistics is the connection between language and gender. Gender differences in </FONT><FONT size=3>language use are of two types: gender-exclusive and gender-preferential, although some </FONT><FONT size=3>sociolinguists claim that the former is a myth and there are no gender-exclusive differences between </FONT><FONT size=3>the speech of men and women. The aim of this paper is to prove that these differences exist and that </FONT><FONT size=3>they are specific to traditional societies. Phonological, morphological, syntactic and lexical </FONT><FONT size=3>differences will be discussed, it will be demonstrated that these gender differences really exist and </FONT><FONT size=3>that they are influenced by social factors. </FONT></FONT></FONT></I></P>

04_N.S.Gundur.pdf

<font size="3"><span style="font-weight: bold;">Abstract</span>: The official language of the Indian Armed Forces is English. Otherwise Hindi connects<br>the officers and personnel from the different parts of India. As the cultural ethos of (wo) men-inuniform<br>is quite different from that of the civilian community, the dialect of their language repertoire<br>also varies. The language of the Armed Forces, which is an abounding site for a sociolinguistic<br>investigation, has received little attention from linguistic studies. In the present paper, I have tried to<br>analyze the ‘utterances’ of the cadets of National Defence Academy [NDA], Khadakwasla, Pune<br>(India). Based on the data collected during April 2004 to Oct 2007, the study explores the nature of<br>cadets’ use of language on the campus. The cadets’ language, popularly known as the 'NDA lingo' at<br>the Academy, exhibits a typical linguistic behavior of the Armed Forces. The register of the NDA<br>lingo– marked by the economy of language, deviation from the general conversational practices,<br>code-mixing, word blending and clipping, etc.,– reflects the cadets’ way of life: their regimental lives,<br>the relationship between senior and junior cadets, their socio-psychological make-up, play with<br>language, management of time, etc. Largely derived from English and partly from Hindi, the NDA<br>lingo is slightly unintelligible to outsiders. The First Term cadets take almost four to five months to<br>acquire a pragmatic competence of the lingo.<br><br><span style="font-weight: bold;">Key words</span>: cadets, NDA lingo, Armed Forces register, semantics, code-mixing.</font>