ISSN: 2265-6294

Gender differences in language use: A linguistic analysis of two Saudi newspaper articles

Main Article Content

Badar Almuhailib

Abstract

Language use defines a society in more than one ways. This study aims to compare the use of a foreign language (English) by Arab journalists writing for the two Saudi dailies in English (Arab News, Saudi Gazette) to find clues of gendered language use. Twenty-four neutral writing samples with twelve each by male and female journalists form the dataset. Using a freely available parsing tool, grammatical dependencies are established for sixteen parameters. All parsed data are then summed up for each gender under each grammatical dependency and statistical analysis undertaken to verify if there are variations in the use of language by male and female participants. Results showed that male journalists used nine of the parameters higher than females including compound sentence, direct object, adverb clause, determiner, the, this, auxiliary verb, case marker and negative marker whereas the ruminant markers were used more by female journalists including noun in subject position, that, adverb modifier, adjective clause, average sentences length, compound marker, and auxiliary passive marker. Results show that contrary to most other such studies, there are no statistically significant differences in the use of English by Saudi journalists. This may be taken as an evidence of language use parity induced by gender neutral language training. However, the study recommends reinforcement of these results with replicated studies in other environments.

Article Details