COMMENTS:Omnia Ahmed Ali

In unit two the author tries to “look at the qualities and characteristics we associate with men and women…by looking at the language we use to describe the sexes”. The author starts doing so by using the notions of denotation and connotation through which he made it clear that denotation, “the dictionary definition of the word”, is never enough as connotation is needed because it reflects “who is using the terms and how they are deployed”. Then he provides a number of examples to simplify these abstract terms like how the words ‘bachelor’ and ‘spinster’ have different connotative meanings though they have the same denotative one. In the denotative meaning they both mean an unmarried male or female; however the word ‘bachelor’ has a rather positive connotation, meaning that the man is single by choice or “playing in the field”. The word ‘spinster’ on the other hand has a negative connotation, meaning that a woman has been “left on the shelf”. This could be related to how and why people use the same terms but in a completely different way about males and females. At the same time it could reflect the power of implicit meanings which reflects the speaker’s cultural values. Through implicitness the speaker can deliver a certain hidden message through the connotative meaning of the word. Having presented the idea of explicitness; the author very tactfully shifts to the notion of collocation. Through which he explains how certain words tend to occur more or even only with males and others with females. An activity elaborates the idea as it explains why speakers use different terms to describe males and females; for example why words like ‘hunk’, ‘physique’, and ‘handsome’ collocate only with males, whereas ‘buxom’, ‘figure’, ‘pretty’ and ‘long-legged’ collocate with females. At the same time it elaborates how even the words that could collocate with both males and females tend to have different connotations, for example ‘strong’ while it suggest physical ability when used with men; it implies a psychological strength when used with women. The author then makes use of a recent study to clarify the notion even further “based on the Cobuild corpus…words for physical attractiveness (pretty, sexy, glamorous) collocate most frequently with ‘women’, while terms to describe height, abilities and personality most frequently collocate with ‘man’”. This in fact sheds a light on the speaker’s cultural background; it reflects how male are perceived as being “logical, rational, aggressive…etc”, whereas women are thought to be “emotional, submissive, and empathic”. This can prove that language is gendered; that is when using a certain word to refer to a male or a female it reflects the speaker’s “social knowledge” about both genders. In fact this idea of socialization, which is the process of acquiring our social knowledge, explains a lot about the speaker’s linguistic behaviour which is the result of that long process that starts with the beginning of the person’s life.

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