1-Introduction:Language is the method of human’s communication, either spoken or written, consisting of the use of words in a structured and conventional way. (OXFORD, 2018). It has always been affected by many factors like culture, age, religions, gender and others. Sociolinguists claimed that the usage of language might be differ according to the speaker’s gander thus they observe the grammatical features and the usage of code by men and women to stand on the truth of the effects of gender on language and in which field it might be differ.
The first linguist who has done the first studies about the relationship between language and gender was Robin Lakoff since the 1970s. She suggests in her book the places of women that women’s language is deficient and might be less direct than men. Lakoff claims that women have a caution language, they mostly use super polite forms, softened responses and hidden directives and they overuse empty adjectives and qualifiers.
From a traditional and a historical view, being a female may restrict the usage of language as they are always expected to talk in a proper and prestigious way, thus there is a long list of taboos that women are not likely to use while talking. In addition, the social expectations of women to be modesty may prevent women of expressing themselves and their thoughts directly. Those society rules influence the way parents raise their children according to their sexual category, consequently, they grow up developing different language style as gender differences strongly affect language. 2-Methodology:This investigation aim to highlight the differences between men and women language in Bahrain.In order to achieve the purpose of the research a survey contained of nine main questions was done among 37 English speakers in Bahrain, 27 women and 10 men. Most of the questions were short answer questions since the aim of the survey was to observe the usage of code. The first section was the Demographic information which contained only two questions as the investigate focus mainly on gender. First question in this section was about gender and the second one was about the area of living to understand the respondent cultural background. The second question was yes or no question. There were two questions about the usage of body language. The third section had two short answer questions about the reaction of the respondent in certain situations. Then it was followed by a question contains 9 minor questions. Last two questions were short answers again one was an imaginary situation and the other one was describing a picture of deep art. 3-Findings:This chapter will hold a discussion and the analysis of the most significant collected data which was given by the participant. 3-1 Yes or no questions resultThe first question result showed that the majority ( both gender ) do use the body language like moving hand while talking and shaking shoulders , two female said they don’t while all the male respondent do use the body language.In the second question the differences started to be more obvious. 10 out of 10 men use the eye contact when they talk while 12 women out of 27 ‘almost the half’ admit that the avoid eye contact during conversations which support the claims of Lakoff which said that men are more likely to be direct in speaking than women. ‘The eyes of men converse as much their tongues’ (Emerson). This quote support the idea that says men are more direct and they express all their thoughts clearly while women are less likely to do eye contacts because for some reasons such as the nature of women as they were raised up to be conservative, they do not express all their thoughts or they do not express them directly. 3-2 Short answer questions analysis:Fifth question was a short answer question, it was an imaginary question (you need to borrow 10 BD from a friend, how would you ask for it? women were more likely to use polite and super polite forms (please-modal verbs) also they promise more to return it back as a way to alleviate the embarrassment.1-would you please give me 10BD and I promise I’ll pay you back2-can you please lend me the sum. I’ll pay back as soon as I can. Thank you.3-Hi, can you please lend me 10 dinars? I’ll give them back to you once I get my allowance Others prefer to give introduction before asking which is like going around the main point1-I need your help! I know it’s too much but if you can lend me 10BD if it’s too much and you can’t its okay I under stand2-I have some financial problems and I want to borrow 10 BD if you allow and you have? And I will return them as soon as possible3- I need your help and if you don’t mind and if you have enough money and are able to help can I borrow 10BD please and thanks4-Hey this is very awkward and it’s just so not me but can I borrow 10BD please?Less number of words used was 12 words and the highest words number was 28, it is clear that women use more words than men, they use lots of adverb and empty adjectives like ‘too,so,really’Four women went very indirect as they stated the following:1-‘..I just tell them my situation and if they offer their help I will accept it’2-‘ I’ll tell her the situation and wait for her to offer help.. Or I’ll say after that, if someone just can lend me… Can you?3-via whatsapp4- I would prefer to ask him by a text message to avoid embarrassmentUsing indirect way of asking is used to save face or avoid the embarrassing situation as they may experience uncomfortable tension, moreover, women tend to be more sensitive to the rejection than men that is why they ask indirectly to avoid the embarrassment of rejection. They also do it in order to soften the blow.Heiltler suggest that this kind of communication can get the listener lost as they are getting insufficient data. As end result, half of the women used indirect communication to ask, however, a number of women did ask directly and that may return to the change of women’s position in society nowadays as they refuse the social expectation which put them in weak situation and they start to be more defensive and they became more equal to men thus they start to develop more strong language as they grew up as strong individuals.On the other hand, half of men at least asked straight forward without softening the speech or using polite forms, the least number of words used was 4 words which is the less than the half of the least number of words used by women. Here are some examples:1-®€ №· 5 §± §ґ€±§і2- Hey dude you got money I need 10However, a good number of male participant did ask in a polite way by using please and some modal verbs which show that politeness is not for a gender over another.The next question investigate the way of apologizing, it says: ‘you borrowed an expensive thing from a colleague and you lost it, write how you would apologize? The majority of women strength their apologize by using adverb ‘so so sorry , very sorry, deeply sorry) and they repeat and keep apologizing more than once, explaining the situation and Demonstrate full willingness to compensate while the majority of men just apologized and ask if the person want compensation, while some didn’t say sorry even which take us back again to the raise of children according to gender, men are less likely to apologize as they were raised by thoughts says that apologizing may represent weakness and men should never show their weakness thus it’s hard for them to express their regret as clear as women since the society raise their threshold of what requires an apology and lower it for women. This might show that women are more responsible than men and they take the responsibility of their act and they think deeply beyond the situation, for example a women would think: ‘ it might be really precious for her, it might be a gift from a dear person’ thus she see that sorry alone is not enough while men don’t really give values to subject and they don’t look beyond the situation. The next question to analyze is another fictional situation requires the respondent to express their feelings to someone they like. The analyze shows that women can be really expressive when it comes to express their feelings. They expressed their feelings accurately although they used lots of metaphor and it might be because of women usually feel uncomfortable to express their feelings clearly as it might be looked at as inappropriate action while men where direct but so inexpressive they just would say (I love you, I like you) as the social rules may underestimate the emotional guy and look at him as weak guy since emotions and weakness were always associate with women. On the other hand, women wrote something like (your presence in my life brings me cheer and joy, I’m so pleased to have you in my life, you mean a lot to me your smile is my favorite) as they can easily demonstrate how they feel by words. 3-3 ranking questions analysis:Participant were request to choose how often they do a stereotype stated by the researcher, there were nine different generic stereotype statement which were analyzed according to gender as the following.1- How often do you say PLEASE when you ask for something?The stereotype says that women are more polite in men and they use polite forms always. The result showed that the majority of women do always use please when asking for something but it showed also that more than 50% of the participant of men do use please also so it seems that there is no huge difference between gender in using polite form.2-How often do you say sorry? The second stereotype says that women always apologize even in situations which do not really need apologize. The result showed that 12 women apologize always while less than the half of the women participant apologize always which says that this stereotype might be true.3-How often do you swear?This question based on the statement which says that women swear all the time. Surprisingly the numbers showed that 3 men always swear while two women only chose always. The majority of women said that they rarely or never swear while a number of 9 women said that they swear sometimes. The result says totally the opposite of what the stereotype says. Research suggest that Swear words are used by men to add emphasis to masculinity, they also think that swear may express aggression, which is more a Masculine characteristic.4-How often you say NO while you mean YESThis statement is basically based on the thoughts which says that women are in direct and they always say the opposite of what they mean, but the result showed that 6 female never do this and 5 female rarely say no instead of yes while only 3 women always do that, nine women admitted that they also do it sometimes versus 6 men rarely do it and 2 never have done such thing. it’s clearly that this statement is not really associated with gender but it’s about the one’s personality as according to the results women are not as complicated as the stereotypes shows and they do not use this strategy, at least not always.5-How often do you use Maybe/I don’t know before stating somethingThis stereotype says that women are always hesitated about what they are going to say and they always say I don’t know even if they do know and they are about to say what they know, they always show some hesitation. More than half of women do that always or sometimes which kind of assure this stereotype while 5 men out of 10 do it sometimes and it’s not a small number also.6-How often do you say I GUESS / I THINK before stating somethingPeople usually use those words to show that they’re not fanatics to what they are going to say. Society think that women use it more since they are more likely to change their minds and they view women as weak creatures thus they are easily affected. Not surprisingly, 11 women says that they always do that while 9 women says that they do it sometimes, only 3 women said that they never do it. Moving to the men, two of them do it always and four of them do it sometimes which mean that both gender do this and it is not only women and that may back to the openness on other culture and the acceptance of others thus people understand that their thoughts represent them only. people in general also use those words to soften the speech thus what they are stating later would be more acceptable as the receiver doesn’t feel that he is forced to accept.Conclusion: The analysis shows that there might be some differences of how women and men express their thoughts and their usage of language, thus it does not seem to be a huge difference as some research claims. 4-Conclusion:To end with, language and gender is a rich field to study nevertheless the limitation of time has caused the limitation of information as there was no time to use other methods to support the survey findings. A clearer data could be found by doing observation group among the same number of male and female.