Feminist stylistics

MODELS OF LANGUAGE AND TEXT: IMPLICIT AND EXPLICIT In stylistic analysis in general, the model of text and language which is used is rarely made explicit. It contains meanings which the critic and reader discover or uncover.

Traditional stylisticians rarely discuss the model of language that they are drawing upon in order to come to their analysis of the text.

Feminist stylistics can be defined as the sub-branch of stylistics which aims to account for the way in which gender concerns are linguistically encoded in texts.

stylisticians have not only been bent on providing interpretations of textual meaning based on possibly replicable analyses. Feminist stylistics also exhibits the same urge to come up with easily observable, potentially replicable analyses for the explanation of how gender issues materialize linguistically.

The label ‘feminist stylistics’ should be properly credited to Mills (1995). she was nonetheless the one who coined the term and described more fully the practices of this sub-Branch.

Mills goes on to underscore that paying attention to aspects of text production will not suffice to evaluate fully the way gender meanings are created, so the way readers process those meanings needs to be borne in mind too.

language and gender usually highlight differences of language use as employed by men and women. Despite the fact that those linguistic variations are not always necessarily proven to be based exclusively on the gender variable).

The aim of feminist stylistics analysts is to investigate the way text producers employ linguistic features which specifically project male or female values.

Feminist linguistics identifies a political and ideological component which might not be the main focus for the former. Analyses of women’s language in literary texts.

In the latter half of the twentieth century onwards), each one representing a particular standpoint concerning the discrepancies between men and women’s linguistic practices.

The Deficit theory: The deficit theory illustrates the earliest stance regarding women’s linguistic characteristics; it is mainly associated with the work of Robin Lakoff (1973) and her description of prototypical women’s language as being ineffective and ‘lacking’ when compared to that of men.

Lakoff’s work also highlights a specific correspondence between women’s linguistic features and their situation of powerlessness in society, especially when seen in relation to males. Lakoff (1973) identifies linguistic traits such as the use of lexical hedges or fillers (e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see), ‘empty’ adjectives (e.g. divine, charming, cute), or precise colour terms (e.g. magenta, aquamarine) as prototypically female and, thus, potentially discerning.

One of the most often quoted feminist stylistic studies highlighting a political perspective is that of Burton (1982). who argues that ‘stylistic analysis is not just a question of discussing “effects” in language and text, but a powerful method for understanding the ways in which all sorts of “realities” are constructed through language.