《傲慢与偏见》中语言使用的性别差异研究

Acknowledgments

Thanks for giving me this chance to accomplish this thesis and to make the conclusion for my four years’ education. Through writing

this paper, I have gained more knowledge than I supposed.

First, I am deeply indebted to my supervisor, Mr. Lei Hongyou, for

his invaluable supervision and suggestions, for his generosity in spending his time discussing questions concerning my thesis, and for his constant encouragement. Without his guidance and help, this paper would not have come into being.

Here, I also want to give my thanks to my classmates who have given me much help. Without their assistance and encouragement, I would not have completed my thesis in such a short time. Thanks a lot!

Abstract

Through the applications of the Lakoff’s theory on language and gender within the sociolinguistic field and Conversation Analysis in the linguistic field, the gender differences in language use in the novel Pride and Prejudice are intended to be explored by static and dynamic analysis in this thesis. In terms of static analysis, it is divided into lexical and syntactic levels; and dynamic aspect

includes amount of talk and topic management. This thesis attempts to make a contrastive study about gender differences embodied in the language used by male and female characters in the novel, and probes into how the different uses of language are employed to portray the typical characters, express emotions and reflect themes. In addition, this study will also explore the major factors leading to the gender differences in language use in the novel.

This thesis provides a new perspective for others who are interested

in Pride and Prejudice to appreciate its unexcelled charm and also proves the feasibility that sociolinguistic and linguistic theories can be applied to the interpretation of literary works to some degree. Key Words: Pride and Prejudice; gender differences; language use

摘要

本文从社会语言学的角度出发，通过运用罗宾·莱考夫关于语言与性别的理论

阐释，及会话分析的相关理论，试图从静态和动态两个方向对世界经典名著

说中两性语言特点进行对比分析，进而探究这些语言差异是如何塑造人物性格、

表达感情、照应主题的，另外本研究剖析了在作品创作中影响这种差异性的主

本文阐述了《傲慢与偏见》中男女两性的语言差异及产生原因，提供读者以全新角度欣赏这部作品的同时在一定程度上证明了社会语言学和语言学的相关理

关键词:《傲慢与偏见》；性别差异；语言使用

Contents TOC \o "1-3" \h \z \u

HYPERLINK \l _Toc12622 1. Introduction 1

HYPERLINK \l _Toc17008 2. Sex and Gender 2

HYPERLINK \l _Toc4045 3. Analysis of Gender Differences in Language Use in Pride and Prejudice 3

HYPERLINK \l _Toc8986 3.1 Formal Language Structure 4

HYPERLINK \l _Toc15860 3.1.1 Lexical Level 4

HYPERLINK \l _Toc23125 3.1.2 Syntactic Level 8

HYPERLINK \l _Toc15579 3.2 Speech Style 10

HYPERLINK \l _Toc13052 3.2.1 Amount of Talk 11

HYPERLINK \l _Toc26988 3.2.2 Topic Management 12

HYPERLINK \l _Toc26063 4. Causes of Gender Differences in Language Use in Pride and Prejudice 14

HYPERLINK \l _Toc4866 4.1 Internal Individual Factors 14

HYPERLINK \l _Toc24583 4.2 External Social Factors 15

HYPERLINK \l _Toc2061 4.2.1 Social Status and Roles 15

HYPERLINK \l _Toc31725 4.2.2 Sexism 17

HYPERLINK \l _Toc20711 4.2.3 Sub-Cultures 18

HYPERLINK \l _Toc8926 5. Conclusion 19

HYPERLINK \l _Toc21049 Bibliography 21

A Study of Gender Difference in Language Use in Pride and Prejudice

1. Introduction

Language can be traced back to the beginning of human society. We can say that people are born to speak, though they are not born speaking. Language, as a communicative medium of crucial importance, plays a peculiar role in human relationships. Every day we use language here and there automatically, often without conscious effort. We take this phenomenon for granted that language is a natural instinct of human beings.

With the development of society, more and more researchers put their focus on the influential functions of language. If a society is defined as any group of people who are drawn together for a certain

purpose; accordingly, a language is what the members of a particular society speak. No matter how language is defined, there is no doubt that language and society are interdependent. Sociolinguistics, a science of studying language in relation to society, appeared in the late 1960s. As a field of study involving the interaction of language and society, it has naturally been a form of linguistics which has been applied more than any other forms. With the rise of the feminist movement in the western countries, the studies concentrated on language and gender has become one of the major issues in sociolinguistics since late 1960s and early 1970s. At that time, Language and Woman’s Place, written by Robin Lakoff, has become milestone in this field. It made people begin to realize the striking characteristics of female language and the close relationship between language and gender.

As we all know, Pride and Prejudice, written by English female novelist Jane Austen who is famous for realistic style and biting irony, is one of her masterpieces and the most favored novels in English literature. The stories take place in Austen’s works always from her familiar experience and observation. Many scholars have analyzed Pride and Prejudice in multiple perspectives from its themes and skills to linguistic phenomenon by concerning pragmatic theories. Some study its irony and humor art; some discuss about marriage and feminism; others focus on conversation styles on a basis of cooperative principle…since this novel has a great number of excellent speech and classic conversations, this thesis attempts to take it as object to make a contrastive research about gender differences embodied in the languages used by its male and female characters, and then discusses how the language differences of both genders are employed to portray the typical roles, express their emotions and reflect the work’s theme. Meanwhile, the study will explore the major causes contribute to the gender differences in language use in the novel. The study standing from the perspective of sociolinguistics, and combining the applications of Lakoff’s theory on language and gender and Conversation Analysis in the linguistic field, analyzes the gender differences in language from quantitative and qualitative directions: one is formal language structure, and the other is speech style. In terms of formal language structure which is divided into lexical level and syntactic level, 108 utterances as

date are collected from the novel text Pride and Prejudice. More specifically, the lexical level will be discussed from the aspects of intensifiers, interjections and extravagant adjectives. The syntactic level is mainly concentrated on tag questions and hedges used by

males and females in this novel. In terms of the aspect of speech style, the study includes amount of talk and topic management. The study of formal language structure is a static analysis in horizontal direction while the speech style is a dynamic one in vertical direction. The results of the research indicate that the gender differences in language use in Pride and Prejudice are the

combination of “similarity” and “particularity”. This thesis provides a new perspective for us to have a better comprehension

about how Jane Austen presents her charming language skills use by male and female characters in Pride and Prejudice, and also proves

the feasibility that sociolinguistic and linguistic theories can be applied to the interpretation of literary works to some degree.

2. Sex and Gender

To some extent, “gender” and “sex” are two similar concepts for us. However, they actually focus on different perspectives. In order

to better understand the theme of the thesis “gender difference”,

it is necessary to make a clear distinction between gender and sex. Gender is a relatively new term emerging since the 1960s with the development of sociolinguistics and feminist movement, and widely adopted into American literature and daily life since the 1980s. Here are several well-accepted definitions of gender. For Ronald Wardhaugh, sex is biologically determined whereas gender is a social

construction (but one heavily grounded in sex) involving the whole gamut of psychological, social, and cultural differences between

males and females (53). According to Anthony Giddens, sex shows biological or anatomical differences between men and women, whereas gender concerns the psychological, social and cultural differences between males and females (47). In the view of Jennifer Coates, sex refers to biological distinction, but gender is a term used to describe socially constructed categories based on sex (39). Similar definition is given by Eckert and MeConell-Ginet, denoting that

gender is the social elaboration of biological sex in other

irrelevant fields and domains (51). Another definition comes from Chinese scholar Bai Jiehong: sex is a female and male signal based on

biology determined by genes, while gender is a feminine and masculine signal based on social roles and statues and gained from the

influence of social, cultural and psychological factors (40).

From the discussion above, we can make a conclusion that sex is a biological and birth-given term, either man or woman, which is static and unchangeable except individual preference and choice with the

help of denaturation operation. On the contrary, gender is a social-and-cultural constructed term, which is dynamic and can be learned

and acquired by human beings in the lifetime under the influence of cultural background and environment. In another word, one may have both feminine and masculine characteristics but present them respectively and appropriately according to different contexts.

3. Analysis of Gender Differences in Language Use in Pride and Prejudice

Pride and Prejudice mainly tells the love story between a rich, proud young man Darcy and the beautiful and intelligent Elizabeth Bennet. Here we won’t talk much about the details of the novel but concentrate on their languages. Every individual’s language seems to have linguistic items that reflect social characteristics of the speaker, of the addressee or the relations between them. One of the typical features of this novel is its excellent and flexible use of language. In this section, we will put our focus about the language used by different genders in novel on two fields: the language structure employing the Lakoff’s theories of features in female speech; the speech style on a basis of Conversation Analysis. The research will be conducted by studying the data collected from

literary text through quantitative and qualitative methods.

3.1 Formal Language Structure

Language is such an integral part of humanity that too much about it has been taken for granted. It is used as a medium for access to

other fields of knowledge rather than just as a subject in and by itself. However, if we pause to think of the rhyme about language, it’s indeed necessary to reconsider the real essence of language. In linguistic system, formal structure consists of phonemes, syllables, intonation, pronunciation, then of words, phrases, sentences, and lastly, of speech and writing, etc. In this field, the representative scholar Robin Lakoff has made great contributions to the research on language and gender systematically. Here we discuss the words in form

of written instead of spoken, so the analysis will be carried through lexical and syntactic level.

3.1.1 Lexical Level

As we mentioned before, there are three aspects we can discuss at lexical level in Pride and Prejudice. According to Lakoff’s theory, they are intensifiers, interjections and extravagant adjectives. Generally speaking, intensifier is one kind of adverb of degree usually functioned as the modifier to emotional adjectives. For example, the adverbs “so”, “really”, “very”…can be regarded as intensifiers to emphasize the emotional degree of the modified words. Accordingly, Lakoff refers to it in her Language and Woman’s Place that “the intensive so, used where purists would insist upon an absolute superlative, heavily stressed, seems more characteristic of women’s language than of men’s” (54). She supposes that females are more likely to use intensifiers to strengthen their moods and opinions. Under most circumstances, the intensifiers chosen by females are somewhat different from males’. With the guidance of

this theory, a data about the using of intensifiers by each gender in Pride and Prejudice is listed in the following table:

Table 3.1: The Frequency of Intensifiers Used by Male and Female Characters

IntensifierGender so really very quite total

Male 26 32 4 3 65

Female 41 35 8 14 97

From the table above, we can clearly conclude that female characters are more tend to use intensifiers than males do in speech. For example, in Chapter 25, Elizabeth and her aunt Mrs. Gardiner totally use “really” 6 times during their conversation about Lydia and Wickham. And only in this section Mrs. Gardiner uses intensifiers 11 times in all. Here we will take the female character Mrs. Bennet as a typical object to analyze her expressions in the novel, to prove these features more specifically.

“Jane was so admired, nothing could be like it…and Mr. Bingley thought her quite beautiful…I was so vexed to see…and he seemed quite struck with Jane…” (Austen 13-14).

“I am quite delighted with him. He is so excessively handsome!”(Austen 14).

“…for he is a most disagreeable, horrid man…So high and so conceited ... fancying himself so very great! ... I quite detest the man.” (Austen 14).

These expressions are selected from Chapter 3, happening after Mrs. Bennet comes back from the ball. The intensifiers help express Mrs. Bennet’s emotions more vividly. The three utterances respectively stand for her proud of Jane’s beauty, praise of Mr. Bingley’s elegance and disgust for Mr. Darcy’s prejudice.

Another example is taken from Chapter 25 when Mrs. Bennet complains about Elizabeth refusing Mr. Collins’s proposal with Mrs. Gardiner:“It is very hard to think … He made her an offer in this very room. …The Lucases are very artful people … It makes me very nervous and poorly … and I am very glad to hear…” (Austen 174) There are five “very” in these utterances to emphasize the degree of Mrs. Bennet’s anger, and readers can feel her regret and disappointment for Elizabeth’s decision.

We can certainly imply that Mrs. Bennet is a person who always speaks out what she thinks in mind directly from these samples. It is in accord with her personality described in novel that she always puts her daughters’ marriage in the first place and spares no effort to find a satisfactory husband for each of them. In addition, the other female characters such as Jane, Caroline also use intensifiers in their utterances. However, these words can hardly be uttered by male characters. Thus, we have no difficulty to draw a conclusion that female characters prefer to use intensifiers in their daily communication to express more strong feelings in the novel, in comparison to males. That is to say, the author Jane has a tendency to mould the sentimental feature of female when creating this works. And this linguistic phenomenon conforms to the result of Lakoff’s theory and actual language usage.

Besides the difference on intensifiers, another typical aspect of vocabulary is the using of interjections between males and females. Under most circumstances, an interjection has no practical significance but just reflects the speaker’s emotion or implied attitude. Usually we define the interjection that it appears at the beginning of a sentence and is followed by a punctuation mark. For instance, “Oh!”, “Goodness!” are the common interjections.

Lakoff states that interjections can be divided into strong and weak ones according to their degrees of mood (176). Previous studies has shown that female speakers are not expected to use strong interjections, such as “damn” or “shit”, but are encouraged to

use weaker ones like “oh dear”, “goodness”, “fudge”, etc. However, with the rise of females’ status, we can hear the strong interjections are spoken by both genders in modern society, but weak ones like “Dear me” are still not being adopted by males in majority.

Before collecting the data in the text, there is one thing we must take into consideration--social background. We all know that the

story took place at the turn of 19th century. It was a relatively conservative society and nearly all the characters in the story were upper-class roles, therefore, there is no swear words such as “damn”or “shit” uttered by male characters let alone females. So the

thesis pays more attention to the frequency of weak interjections

used by males and females instead of the difference of strong and weak ones.

Table 3.2The Frequency of Interjections Used by Male and Female Characters

InterjectionGender Oh Dear me Good Lord For God’s Sake total

Male 3 0 1 1 5

Female 7 1 8 2 18

The data collected in the table 3.2 indicates that the number of interjections used by females characters accounts for more than three fourths. “Oh” and “Good God” are the most frequently used among females. Here some samples are selected spoken by Elizabeth in

Chapter 47 to explore her different psychological activities with the same expression “Oh”.

“Oh, no, no--this is not likely.”

“Oh, yes!--that, that is the worst of all.”

“Oh, …this could not have happened!”

“Oh! Thoughtless, thoughtless Lydia!” (Austen 341, 343, 351, 352). Although four sentences have the same simple interjection “Oh”, it really represents different emotions of Elizabeth. It contains not only her sorrow and anger for Lydia’s behavior but anxiety and worry about for sister’s safety. Thus, it helps readers to have a better comprehension for Elizabeth’s personality.

On the other hand, we can get the information from the data that male characters hardly adopt interjections. In the story, nearly every male character is cultured and behaves elegantly. What they pay more attention to is the matter of conversation itself but avoid involving individual emotion. Another point is that the novel is different from traditional English literary works that we can find no interjections like “shit” between the lines. That may not be consistent with the previous relative research in some degree. It is not difficult to

find that the reasons for this language feature lie in the social environment. This novel describes a group of people who belong to upper-class or the bourgeois, whose social status and conservative culture mostly determine the Britons, especially the upper-class British men like Mr. Darcy and Mr. Bingley, to be gentlemen without saying any disgraceful words such as “shit” or “damn”, which would be detrimental to image and fame. Consequently, as Lakoff says, males from the upper-class in Britain may use the words listed in the females’ column categorized as specifically feminine, without

raising doubts as to their masculinity among other speakers of the same dialect (53).

The third aspect of lexical level is called extravagant adjectives, which usually show the users’ feelings like appreciation or admiration. Lakoff explains the concept more specifically in her Language and Woman’s Place that females like to use “women’s adjectives”, such as “adorable” or “driving”, while males prefer to use “neutral adjectives” such as “great” or “terrific”. She states that females are inclined to use extravagant adjectives to highlight their attitudes or emotions, but males have less such preference (84-85).

Extravagant adjectives may not be an intuitionistic character as intensifiers and interjections in the whole novel. What attracts us most is the using of “charming”, which is the most frequent extravagant adjective used by both genders, totally 10 times. In the story, female characters use “charming” to praise others in most cases. This feature will be discussed in the following examples.

Mrs. Bennet: “…a charming prospect over the gravel walk.” (Austen 50).

Elizabeth: “He is a sweet-tempered, amiable, charming man.”(Austen 103).

Both these two utterances are positive evaluations of Mr. Bingley from different people. The first one conveys Mrs. Bennet is so satisfied with Mr. Bingley that she really wants her daughter Jane would marry him. The second is uttered by Elizabeth who thinks highly of him, which implies that she has no good impression upon Mr. Darcy compared with Mr. Bingley. We can infer character’s psychological world from such extravagant adjectives.

3.1.2 Syntactic Level

Syntax, as a major branch of general linguistics, identifies the permissible sequences in a language and the interrelationships between elements in sentence structure. Different genders differ in the selection of sentence patterns in communication. Lakoff gives her views that “there is no syntactic rule in English that only women may use. But there is at least one rule that a woman will use in more conversational situations than a man” (53). This section will explore some syntactic features of different genders in language use in the novel, including tag questions and hedges.

According to Rabin Lakoff’s research, tag questions are added-on questions at the end of some statements, such as “It is the book for your class, isn’t it?” In her article You Are What You Say, she writes that,

A tag is midway between an outright statement and a yes-no question; it is less assertive than the former, but more confident than the latter[…], it is polite to leave a decision open, not impose your mind, or views, or claims, on anyone else. (Lakoff 2)

Putting our attention to the novel, we can conclude that both males and females use tag questions in their dialogue but apparently the latter account much more. In Pride and Prejudice, there are 7 tag questions in total: five belong to females’ speaking and the rest two are uttered by male characters, one is from Mr. Bingley and the other is from Mr. Bennet. The application of tag question in the story is correspondent with the previous studies. Although the tag question is not used in high frequency, these utterances still can express the personalities of different genders. Among the female characters, Mrs. Bennet is the one who uses tag questions most frequently. Here we take two of her expressions from Chapter 9 to analyze.

“The country is a vast deal pleasanter, is not it, Mr. Bingley?”

“What an agreeable man Sir William is, Mr. Bingley, is not he?”(Austen 52, 53).

These conversations take place when Mrs. Bennet comes to Netherfield

to see her daughter Jane who is ill then. We can find that they are both related to Mr. Bingley who is the ideal husband for Mrs. Bennet’s daughter. So when Mr. Darcy thinks lowly of the country, Mrs.

Bennet feels angry and wants to get support from Mr. Bingley to maintain her views. On the other hand, she uses tag questions to express her friendly attitude towards Mr. Bingley.

From the aforesaid examples, it is clear that females are more likely to use tag-questions than males. Usually, female speakers associate themselves with tag-questions to exhibit a desire for agreement. They are not sure whether hearers will agree with them or not. It is a typical feature for female speakers to use tag-questions, presenting themselves as unsure of their opinions and thereby as not really having opinions that count very much.

The second feature of syntactic level is hedges. Hedges are words

used to avoid giving a direct answer to a question or a promise to support some particular ideas, adding expressions like “I believe”, “I think”, “well”, “I guess”, “perhaps” or “you know”, and so on uncertain ones. The table 3.3 lists the usage of different hedges collected from the utterances.

Table 3.3 The Frequency of Hedges Used by Male and Female Characters HedgeGender Well perhaps I think/suppose You know total

Male 4 7 2 1 14

Female 12 12 7 6 37

From the table we can clearly get that the female characters in this novel use hedges much more frequently than males, more than two times. The reasons for this phenomenon can be explained as follows. First, most females are not certain about what they say and they lack confidence in some degree. Second, using hedges seems more polite in communication. Meanwhile females try to maintain a close relationship with listeners and avoid conflicts. Thus they tend to employ more hedges in speech.

We can easily get some examples from the text:

“We were married, you know…I was so afraid, you know…And then, you know…”

“Oh, yes!--he was to come there with Wickham, you know.” (Austen 386, 387).

These are Lydia’s words when she comes back home to share her wedding with her sisters in Chapter 51. Here “you know” occurs 4 times and we can infer that Lydia speaks so fast that she couldn’t cover up her excitement for this marriage. What’s more, she can’t wait to show off her wedding and handsome husband to her sisters. And in linguistic field, “you know” takes the function of interpersonal and helps the conversation continue smoothly.

All in all, females who are short of confidence or uncertain about what they refer to are more likely to employ hedges while this phenomenon less occurs on males’ speech.

3.2 Speech Style

If the study of language structure is considered as a static process, then how we research speakers’ speech style is considered as a dynamic analysis. Different people have different kinds of behavior

in their communication. Equally, different genders have distinctive behavior patterns in language use. Numerous observers have described women’s speech as being different from that of men. Fischer’s work showed how very young boys and girls differ in certain choices they make, as did Cheshire’s work in Reading in an older group. Labov’s studies in New York also revealed noticeable gender differences in adult speech. All in all, these gender differences in communication can be concluded mainly in the aspects of topic and amount of talk. Thus, this part will concentrate on these two issues of talk, applying Conversation Analysis to explore gender differences in language use.

3.2.1 Amount of Talk

Usually it’s a little difficult for us to make sure the actual amount of characters’ talk and then make a comparison. Here the problem can be handled that several special contexts are selected from the novel to be analyzed. It seems a common sense for us that, when it comes to the amount of talk, females are considered to be more active than males to provide topics. It has been taken for granted for a long time that females like gossiping; accordingly, they talk more than males. This stereotype is firmly branded in human mind so that females are even called chatter-boxes. However, it is an unfair judgment. This section focuses on two stages in the novel to

refute such view, by analyzing the conversations between Mr. Collins and Mrs. Bennet. The first example is in Chapter 14, when Mr. Collins comes to visit the family of Bennet. Four utterances of each character are chosen. And the second stage is about Mr. Collins who wants to make a proposal to Elizabeth in Chapter 19. Five utterances are chosen. The next table lists the figures of both genders’ amount of talk in detail.

Table 3.4 The Amount of Male and Female Characters’ Talk

StageDate Chapter 14 Chapter 19

Number of words Mr. Collins 264 722

Mrs. Bennet 88 389

Through the data above we can clearly get that male character is much more talkative than female in Pride and Prejudice. The result breaks the traditional view about this issue. In Chapter 14, Mr. Collins’s words are nearly three times of Mrs. Bennet’s. Back to the context, it is Collins’s first visit to the Bennets, during the whole dinner, he spares no effort to flatter Lady Catherine with a large amount of elegant compliments in order to show his respect and admiration. In Chapter 19, he makes a proposal to Elizabeth with several selfish reasons instead of love. From these two contexts, it is obvious to see that Mr. Collins is a talkative character with the flattering, selfish and foolish personality.

Up to now, almost all the surveys come to the opposite conclusion

that males talk more than females. In an investigation into the amount of talk in jury, Eakins found that males occupy the amount of talk four-fifths, while females only one-fifth; at the same time, men pose problems more frequently than women. Another research also found that when in public and formal settings, males contribute a large amount of talk than females, in which they think they could attract positive attention to value their statement highly. For example, in the workplace, males talk progressively and interrupt others so much to prove their dominant positions. But when they are in private places, like homes, males obviously leave the place to females. On the contrary, females have to work hard to keep conversation going and avoid interrupting others’ speech in public settings; while in private places, they enjoy themselves in every affectively oriented talk.

3.2.2 Topic Management

Generally speaking, topic refers to the specific matter that people are talking about in certain context. So we can understand topic management as the communication skills or strategies in order to accomplish the purposes such as attract listeners’ attention or acquire information. As Anne Burns has mentioned in Focus on Speaking, topic management contains two important points: one is how to choose an appropriate topic to begin the conversation and the other is how

to carry the topic smoothly through the communication and handle unexpected issues flexibly (89). The ability of topic management is regarded as an essential skill for a good speaker to unfold

information exchange successfully. Previous studies find that males are different from females in term of topic management including

topic choice and topic control. However, in this novel, topic management tends to explore the deeper meanings entailed in conversations so as to interpret the linguistic differences of both genders comprehensively.

In Pride and Prejudice, the application of topic choices always has the functions of reflecting characters’ personalities or revealing novel’s themes from different perspectives. The excerpted dialogues between Mr. Darcy and Elizabeth are selected from Chapter 18. In this scene, Elizabeth has strong prejudice towards Mr. Darcy for his previous rudeness and no sympathy to Wickham, so she speaks no word with Mr. Darcy when dancing. But her thought changes later and begins to initiate conversation. In the whole dialogues, we can find Elizabeth always guides topic control as follows:

“When you met us there the other day, we had just been forming a new acquaintance.”

“…We have tried two or three subjects already without success, and what we are to talk of next I cannot imagine.”

“No--I cannot talk of books in a ball-room…”

“I remember hearing you once say, Darcy, that you hardly ever

forgave …” (Austen 117).

However, Mr. Darcy only initiates one topic about book but can’t move on the conversation. Besides, what he answers is very simple or just silence passively. At first Mr. Darcy invites Elizabeth to dance but becomes a passive receiver later. This conversation shows Elizabeth dominates the active role to control the topic and her communicative strategies. Facing with Elizabeth’s unfriendliness and

hostility, Mr. Darcy still keeps silent because of his politeness. In the whole conversation, Elizabeth begins and manages topic for her prejudice to Mr. Darcy, while the latter behaves negatively deepens her misunderstanding. This is the typical scene involving topic management.

With the development of story, the two leading roles’ relationship changes gradually. For instance, Mr. Darcy has ability to control the topics three times when he visits Elizabeth at Hunsford in Chapter 32. It indicates that he wants to find some common topics and keep a

closer relationship with Elizabeth. In Chapter 54, Elizabeth successfully seizes the chance to talk with Mr. Darcy with her sister. Here we can infer from Elizabeth’s words that her attitude towards Mr. Darcy has changed from prejudice to appreciation.

4. Causes of Gender Differences in Language Use in Pride and

Prejudice

Ronald Wardhaugh once said: “When we do observe gender differences

in language behavior we are confronted with the task of trying to explain them” (35). When it turns to matters having to do with why men and women use different utterances, there are some possible explanations for the differences in current researches. From the discussion above, it shows that the characters in this story possess the typical features of males and females in relation to

sociolinguistic factors such as society, culture and so on. This section will explore the factors leading to the language differences

of both genders from the subjective and objective aspects. The former one is concentrated on individual issues such as psychological

analysis while the latter is concerned with social environment.

4.1 Internal Individual Factors

The first thing we should pay attention to is the author of this

novel is a female, to some extent, the characters’ personalities and novel’s themes are the reflection of Jane Austen’s values. In this part, several themes of the novel will be analyzes respectively in order to express values and thoughts more specifically and clearly. Throughout the whole novel, there are three themes can express Austen’s values and affect the speech styles of characters. The first theme

is marriage. In the opinion of Jane Austen, a happy marriage is based on not only material wealth but also love and respect. Her opinions about marriage influence the personality of Elizabeth. Elizabeth

refuses Mr. Darcy’s proposal because of her prejudice of his seeming arrogance. But at the end of story, after knowing Mr. Darcy is

sincere to help her families and loves her deeply, Elizabeth accepts his proposal and finds it is the marriage that she longs for. However, for the other female characters, especially Mrs. Bennet and her three younger daughters, a good marriage means that marrying a handsome and wealthy upper-class male but has nothing to do with love or equal status. This value of marriage also can be reflected in their speech and behavior.

The second theme is class which is an unchangeable fact of each character at that time. In the novel, the pride of Darcy and the prejudice of Elizabeth originate from social hierarchy. At the first ball, Elizabeth has no good impression on Mr. Darcy because of his arrogance. And it explains the reason why she believes Wickham’s lie, which deepens her prejudice about Darcy. Another utter-class

character Lady Catherine is the representative to embody this theme. She makes a heavy stress on the love between Elizabeth and Darcy. And her imperious and insolent personality is exposed completely when she looks down upon others and interrupts Elizabeth’s speech rudely. In fact, she does it out of her pride of high social class.

And the last important theme is feminism. The female author Jane Austen has a tendency to module female characters in her story that they should be independent and confident but not subordinate to males. The heroine Elizabeth is a classic role whose language is different from other traditional females’. When she is interacting with males like Darcy and Collins, Elizabeth often presents the powerful ability to manage or control the topics by some speech strategies such as

tag-question. When she is insulted by Lady Catherine, Elizabeth defends her dignity without fear or shame. By employing these language features and conversation strategies, a feminism figure who

is confident and has enough courage to pursue the real happiness is presented for readers vividly.

4.2 External Social Factors

After making a conclusion about the subjective factors, it turns to the generalization on the relative “objective” ones. Since the development of sociolinguistics, there are several theories studying on the relationship between language and gender appeared for the past few decades. The roots of these studies are all related to social

factors. As Lakoff points out “language uses us as much as we use language” (45). Thus, this part mainly discusses three aspects of social level: social status and roles, sexism and sub-cultures.

4.2.1 Social Status and Roles

In Chapter 4, we can conclude that male characters prefer to speak in a more assertive and direct way, just centering on what they are interested but behaving indifferently to what they have no interest; while female characters often interact more politely and cooperatively. These differences reflect the huge distinction in

social status between males and females. We all know the society in the 19th century was dominated by males who were in the leading position with definite dominance and power in society and family. And most females were treated as the attachment to males because of their low social status. They had no choice or right to pursue their own life. The most important thing for females at this time was trying to find a promising marriage to ensure and maintain their living standard. In Chapter 13, the plot that it is Mr. Bennet’s nephew Collins who would inherit the estate instead of his five daughters after his death reflects woman has no right to get parents’ estate

at that time. More specifically, we can find this social feature especially from the words of Mrs. Bennet and Lydia whose unequal

social status can be tracked when they have something uncertain or

lack of confidence, they always turn to hedges or tag questions because they want to get support from listeners and establish cooperative and harmonious atmosphere.

To some degree, social status is greatly related to social roles, which can be understood as the individuals’ identities in the community of social relations, and different gender is endowed with given roles in terms of traditional conventions and individual values. Generally speaking, these different social roles are generated from the division of labor in different periods to a great extent. That is to say, what one does decides his role in society. The era Jane

Austen lived in laid much emphasis on social hierarchy and division

of labor. At that time, males in majority had occupations to support families even the upper-class ones. So it seems that they had less

free time to chat aimlessly like females. Whereas females’ roles

were generally limited in a smaller range made up of housework, childcare and other trivial matters. In a word, females took no

leading role in society and they were always submissive to males in the 19th century. With such social background in English society, the heroine Elizabeth is so independent and special to attract readers’attention.

4.2.2 Sexism

The matter of sexism is more or less a sensitive topic, even nowadays, it still exists around us. It has much to do with social background. During the development process of human beings, we gradually consider men as the representative of power and leading-roles. Naturally, female image is powerless and to be protected. With these different social expectancy values, males express their superiority in language field.

Every language seems to have linguistic items that reflect social characteristics of the speakers. From the inception of

sociolinguistic gender studies, it has been a contentious question whether gender-specific speech behavior ought to be understood in terms of differences or domination. We all like to think that the way we think about the world is objectively correct, even if there are large areas of ignorance. But what if our language reflects outmoded way of thinking which we now reject morally? Can the language system act as a serious brake on progress? With the development of women’s movement, there is a major shift in culture from the Bad Old Days when women were powerless and subordinate to men to a new era where people all have equal rights and status. However, there is the question that many people have been accustomed to thinking alone the old lines without realizing it. More precisely, the way in which language use allows us to refer to males and females discriminates against females. But hardly anybody tried to question the old lines. We can find the trace of sexism in the novel here and there. For example, like the English distinction between Mrs. and Miss., which

is not paralleled by a pair of male titles showing whether or not the bearer is married. Other serious examples against women we must mention are the words “man” and “he”. On the one hand, each of them could reasonably be claimed to have two distinct meanings: “man”means either ‘person’ or ‘male adult’, and “he” either “the person just mentioned’ or ‘the male just mentioned’. On the other hand, both of them are genuinely neutral for sex; however, “woman”

or “she” just refers to female. There is no doubt that the way in

which people use language shows that they take males as the prototype even for the sex-neutral concept. In a word, sexism, in the language system which is related to the culture and society stereotypes, could not be changed easily.

4.2.3 Sub-Cultures

To some extent, the differences between males and females in speech patterns result from different expectations endowed by society with the development of civilization, that is to say, they grow up in the background of different sub-cultures and inhabit two different

cultural worlds. Jennifer Coates points out that language is an important part of the socialization process; therefore, gender differences in daily English communication might come from different socialization processes. As is known to all, language is not born to learn but acquire. People of different genders have different ways

and sources to accumulate distinctive speech styles, both consciously and unconsciously, such as mass media, education, family, peers current, and so on. Most of all, family education influences children by osmosis. In ordinary families, parents may teach their daughter to be like a girl who is supposed to be obedient and domestic and their son to behave like a man, independent and courageous, and thus, girls tend to use hedges, tag questions and not direct speech acts while boys prefer to use neutral adjectives and direct speech acts.

In addition, social expectation is such a stereotype in society that defines gender differences in language use profoundly. Traditionally, males should be independent, confident, positive, active, devoted to careers, and sometimes even to be with muscle to give the female with a sense of security. On the contrary, females should be passive, fair, gentle, well-behaved, patient, and sometimes even so vulnerable that they need to be protected. Furthermore, society always expects

females much more, as is described in Pride and Prejudice:

A woman must have a thorough knowledge of music, singing, drawing, dancing, and the modern languages, to deserve the word; and besides

all this, she must possess a certain something in her air and manner

of walking, the tone of her voice, her address and expressions, or

the word will be but half-deserved. (Austen 46)

This passage proves that ladies are expected to be accomplished and elegant. In many public places, such social expectations drive

females to show politeness and cooperativeness in conversations,

while males usually tend to topic control and compete with other participants. In conclusion, males and females talk in different ways with the guidance of their own sub-cultures under certain social contexts.

5. Conclusion

The differences between gender and language are widely discussed in the last decade of the twentieth century in the West. Due to the differences between males and females, men and women do speak a particular utterance and use different ways to enrich communication. This thesis mainly analyzes some typical linguistic differences between males and females in Pride and Prejudice from static and dynamic perspectives and explores the causes result in the differences in subjective and objective aspects, employing Lakoff’s theory and Conversation Analysis theory.

Through the quantitative and qualitative methods above, we can summarize the major findings as follows: The female characters in Pride and Prejudice are inclined to use certain lexical and syntactic items more frequently than male characters. But the ability of topic management is no longer the conversational patents for males in the novel and the analysis of amount of talk indicates women are not the chatter-boxes. And the explanation of gender differences in language use may result from many factors in a comprehensive scope. The main factors should be considered from social dimension including social status and roles, sexism and sub-cultures. The important point in

this novel is the values of author Jane Austen affect the

descriptions of male and female characters.

In addition, several implications can be drawn from this finding. First, the study on the relationship between language and gender can not only be applied to analyze the social communications in real world but also be applied to appreciate literary works in aspects of linguistic features and conversation styles. Second, some relevant scientific methods and linguistic theories can be employed into the analysis of literary works, especially the novels involving plenty of dialogues.

Although the present thesis interprets the different language usage between males and females in Pride and Prejudice, it is only a tentative attempt and still has some limitations that should be pointed out. Anyhow, with the development of science and culture,