Gendered Speech: A Sociolinguistic Study of Conversations between Men and Women in Biblical Narrative
Year: 2018
Type: dissertation
Abstract: Variationist sociolinguistics is a branch of sociolinguistics that uses the quantitative method known as variation analysis to determine precisely how social systems and linguistic systems interact. It is based on the observation that not only do speakers make linguistic choices, but those choices are systematic and constrained and can thus be analysed quantitatively (Tagliamonte 2006). According to the sociolinguist William Labov, “the forces operating to produce linguistic change today are the same kind and order of magnitude as those which operated in the past five or ten thousand years” (1972, 275). This suggests that the same kinds of linguistic variation observed in modern languages might also be evident in the Hebrew Bible. Several of the principles of linguistic change observed by Labov relate to the speech of women as opposed to men; in particular, according to Labov’s second principle of linguistic change, “For stable sociolinguistic variables, women show a lower rate of stigmatized variants and a higher rate of prestige variants than men” (Labov 2001, 266). This raises an intriguing question: Do the conversations in the Hebrew Bible encode gender-based linguistic variation in the speech of men and women? In this study, I conduct a quantitative sociolinguistic analysis of a range of different linguistic variables from different levels of grammar, including syntax and vocabulary, that are used by men and women in mixed-gender conversations in the Hebrew Bible. The results of this analysis demonstrate that Hebrew as a written language presents a sociolinguistic world with consistent patterns of linguistic variation, including consistent patterns of gender-based variation. Because the biblical authors use adherence to and deviation from the expected patterns of speech as a way of expressing character traits and indicating unusual situations, an understanding of how linguistic variation functions in the Hebrew Bible provides deeper insight into the text.
Source: TSpace (University of Toronto)
Author: Laura Hare
Language: English
Subfield: Linguistics and Language
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Gender equality
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2981983263