Language, Gender, and Power

The book focuses on the role of language as a powerful tool in representing and structuring the world. It explores how language can help construct stereotypes, identities, and human relationships. By constructing stereotypes language also manifests and perpetuates gender differences. The author examines how gender is in fact made up on a continuous basis in different linguistic and artistic expressions, e.g., sayings and proverbs, jokes, songs, films, TV plays, newspapers, theatre, and slogans behind vehicles, and reveals how these apparently playful activities strengthen gender stereotypes unnoticed. The book highlights the politics of representation and hegemony with regard to women with special reference to language. The readers are encouraged to realize that on the one hand language is a tool of control and hegemony while on the other hand it can be used to mount resistance against hegemony by reversing the discourse.CONTENTS: ; PART 1: LANGUAGE, REPRESENTATION, AND HEGEMONY ; 1. Language: A socio-political phenomenon ; 2. Power and politics of discourse ; 3. Language, representation, and control ; PART 2: LANGUAGE AND GENDER CONSTRUCTION ; 4. Manufacturing gender and role of language ; 5. Growing up with gender ; 6. Language and gender: Revisiting research ; PART 3: LANGUAGE, GENDER, AND PERFORMANCE ; 7. Literature and politics of exclusion ; 8. Sayings, proverbs, and women ; 9. Gender and jokes ; 10. Matrimonial ads: societal expectations ; PART 4: LANGUAGE, GENDER, AND EDUCATION ; 11. Gender and education ; 12. Nursery rhymes and gender representation ; 13. Representation of women in fairy tales ; PART 5: LANGUAGE, GENDER, AND MEDIA ; 14. Gender and media ; 15. Women in advertisements ; 16. TV plays and gender stereotypes ; 17. Construction of gender in films ; 18. Representation of women in songs ; PART 6: GENDERED DISCOURSE: REFORM AND RESISTANCE ; 19. Need for language reform ; 20. Resistance through language ; BIBLIOGRAPHY