Language, Relativity & Culture

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Language and Gender

Studying culture-specific and ethnicity specific language practices reveals, embodies and sustains attitudes to gender. For example, in Spanish, Italian and Portuguese languages, all of Latin-Roman origins follow very specific feminine and masculine versions of terms, patterns and sentence structures. There is a male-female equivalent to verbs, adjectives, nouns and pronouns which indicates that gender lines are very pronounced in said cultures. Speakers of said language use particular gender linguistics when speaking or writing, reflecting their gender and sexual affiliations. This also comes in handy for historical research especially in genealogy and family histories as documents, diaries and journals, particular texts that have no indication of author or writer are betrayed or rather revealed in the gender-linguistics displayed. In terms of languages who are not as gender-specific as the other 3, say English for example, the manner of writing - choice of words, choice of situations, manner of explanation and presentation of the narrative, overall story - they indicate as well the gender and perspective of the writer. Such was the case with George Eliot, author of 'The Mill on the Floss' & 'Silas Marner'. Her real name was Mary Ann Evans and was one of the most celebrated author of the Victorian Era. Many critiques and readers found her novels to have a depth of understanding that revealed a feminine view and when it was found out that George Eliot was only a pen name, Mary Ann Evans defended her choice in that male authors tend to be taken more seriously. An understanding of the social structure of society - whether it is patriarchal or matriarchal or whether the society leans towards gender equality can be revealed by an understanding of gender linguistics.

Linguistic relativity

The linguistic relativity is a theory or principle proposed by German scholars Franz Boas, Edward Sapir and Benjamin Whorf although later on it came to be known as the Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis. It proposes that the manifold cultural concepts and ...