Language and Gender

One of the facts that influences our way of using language is our Gender. Obviously, every person is different, but we can still find some patrons in the way women and men speak. Men, for example, tend to say things more directly, without going "around the bush" too much. In the other hand, women commonly avoid going directly to the point, and prefer to paraphrase more what they want to communicate. Also, I think females will tend to describe things in a better perspective than men, using softer adjectives.


Also, we can identify some modifications in language because of gender. In English, people usually said "Man and wife", instead of just saying "Husband and wife", and of course would never say "Woman and husband". Also, in Spanish, when you talk of a group of people that includes both sex, people will always refer to that community with masculine articles. In fact, there is no neutral article in Spanish. Probably, we can explain this patterns in language by researching a bit of the past of the countries. History confirms that old societies were male-oriented and gave less importance to women than to men.