A Comparative Analysis on Women's Speech in Herland and Kadınlar Ülkesi

Authors : Senem Üstün Kaya, Ümmühan Bilgin Topçu
Pages : 1626-1645
Doi:10.29110/soylemdergi.1775596
View : 104 | Download : 168
Publication Date : 2025-12-28
Article Type : Research Paper
Abstract :“Sociolinguistics”, analysis of the relation between sociology and linguistics, scrutinizes the relationship between language with social variables such as geography, race, gender, or nationality. Initiated with the development of feminist linguistics in the 1960s and 1970s, studies on “gender and language” are categorized into two: “women’s speech” and depiction of women in “men’s speech”. The relation between gender and language has been one of the most controversial themes in women’s studies by notable sociolinguists such as Deborah Tannen, Janet Holmes, Otto Jesperson, and Robin Lakoff. Lakoff, in her article “Language and Woman’s Place” (1973), clarified “linguistic discrimination”, referring to the language distinctions between men and women. This study, therefore, aims to analyze women’s speech and how men portray women in the Crimean author İsmail Gaspıralı’s Kadınlar Ülkesi (1887) and the American author Charlotte Perkins Gilman’s utopia Herland (1979), regarding Lakoff’s theories. Within this scope, for the analysis part, two utopias were examined in terms of linguistic and lexical variants, used by and for the female characters. The analysis revealed that Gilman’s Herland bears strong similarities with İsmail Gaspıralı’s Kadınlar Ülkesi: both authors emphasized the potential strength of women in actual worlds, female characters were portrayed as both masculine and feminine and Lakoff\\\'s theories on women’s speech could be observed in both novels. In conclusion, although they were written in and for different cultures, the female characters, in both novels, are physically and linguistically prominent, while the male characters portray women in a derogatory manner.
Keywords : Toplumdilbilim, Robin Lakoff, Kadınlar Ülkesi, Herland, kadınların konuşması

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