Document Type : Research Paper

Authors

• Razieh Esmaeeli ¹
• Jalilollah Faroughi Hendevalan ²
• Hossein Navidinia ³

¹ English Language and Linguistics Department, University of Birjand

² English language and linguistics department , university of Birjand

³ English language and linguistics department, university of Birjand

Abstract

The present study investigates the discourse characteristics of male and female junior high school students in Birjand based on Lakoff’s (1975) Dominance Approach.This approach maintains that women are inferior to men for cultural, social, etc. reasons, and this is reflected in their discourse. The participants of the study include 278 female students and 278 male students, whose class discourse was recorded for one academic year, and then the corpus was transcribed and analyzed using Glaser and Strauss coding method and chi-square test. The findings indicated that although it was expected that the promotion of public awareness through education, social media, and social developments could have a positive impact on the discourse of target population resulting in some changes in the superiority and inferiority qualities of adolescent boy and girl’s discourse, Lakoff's linguistic distinctions between genders are still true, Adolescent girls have a higher frequency with a significant difference in all criteria which entails a lack of self-confidence, authority and powerless language.

Keywords

• Robin Lakoff
• dominance approach
• classroom discourse
• gender
• male and female students in Birjand
• sociolinguistics

Main Subjects

• Discourse Analysis