1、1 Literature Review A Statistical Analysis on Pragmatic Characteristics of American Womens Lexical Usage Sociolinguistic is a discipline which investigates languages and social relations. Wardhaugh pointed out that “sociolinguistics is concerned with investigating the relationship of the structure o
2、f language and of how languages function in communication.”(2000, p.12) Since sociolinguistics is a discipline investigating the relationship between languages and society, it is about how people use languages and how do they convey information. Peoples expression of languages is influenced by socia
3、l activities. People from different cultures would have different characteristics of language usage. While language usage can be reflected in several aspects, such as lexicon, tone, pronunciation and so on. This thesis aims to study the characteristics of American females lexical usage, and the reas
4、ons leading to these characteristics. This literature review is about the references that will be used and quoted in the thesis, among which three books and three journals will be chosen to discuss here: The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, The Sociolinguistics of Language, Sociolinguistic Research Met
5、hodology Theory and Practice; Discussion on the Characteristics of Womens Language Usage in English, A Brief Analysis on the Characteristics of Female English from the Aspect of Sociolinguistics. The Handbook of Sociolinguistics written by Florian Coulmas (2001) is useful to this thesis. This book i
6、s mainly concerns about the up-to-date writings on the most important branches of linguistic studies, which are written by famous scholars who are recognized as leading authorities in their fields. The eighth writing of the book entitled “ Gender as a Sociolinguistic Variable: New Perspectives on Va
7、riation Studies” written by Ruth Wodak and Gertraud Benke gives us the definition of gender and a brief reason that may cause the different language usage between men and women. The writing also goes around solving the question that how is the context of language behavior analyzed, and which variabl
8、es are relevant. Through this book, people can get a better understanding of gender and the relevant variables to the 2 differences between women and men. This book describes the theories while practices are also needed. A research must base on a methodology. Sociolinguistic Research Methodology: Th
9、eory and Practice written by Zhang Tingguo and Hao Shuzhuang (2008), which introduces the theory of sociolinguistic and the methodology used in sociolinguistic. The authors introduce the methods that can be used in the research of sociolinguistics, which includes questionnaire, interviews and observ
10、ations. In each method, they give very specific introduction including the procedures, types, concerns, and ways of applying the method. This part is very important to this thesis which will combine the analysis with methodology together. It gives the methodology and advices to write the paper. Thus
11、, its the most important to the thesis. Theories and methodology are listed above. Putting theory into practice is needed. Itll mainly talk about the practice as follows. In The Sociolinguistics of Language edited by Ralph Fasold (2000), theres one chapter entitled “Language and Sex” discussing mens
12、 and womens language forms, sex differences in language use, terms related to sex in language and etc. Not like the chapter described in The Handbook of Sociolinguistics, The Sociolinguistics of Language gives a detailed analysis of gender differences in language usage. The chapter in The Sociolingu
13、istics of Language particularly discusses the lexicon related to sex in language. According to the book, the author points out that some fixed terms are used by men, while theres no such use in womens speech. The author also claims that women and mens usage of language is sharply different from each
14、 other which can be described into six categories that are lexical distinctions such as color terms, strong verses weak expletives, womens versus neutral adjectives, tag questions, questions intonation with statement syntax and strength of directive speech acts. The book gives us better understandin
15、g on the differences between men and womens usage of language and this is useful to the paper. While in the thesis Discussion on the Characteristics of Womens Language Usage in English chosen from the Journal of Fuzhou University (Social Science) written by Lin Xiaoying (1994) describes the characte
16、ristics of females speech from 3 the perspective of lexicon, standardability and elegancy. On describing womens usage of lexicon, she describes three aspects of lexicon: color terms, adjectives and adverbs. However, she doesnt give us a comprehensive analysis on females lexicon usage. She also doesn
17、t mention the methodology used in doing the research. She gives us statistical analysis when describing the differences of sentence structure between men and women. But she doesnt make the statistical analysis on the lexicon usage of females. Thus, people cannot easily and clearly see the difference
18、s of the characteristics of lexicon usage between males and females. In another thesis A Brief Analysis on the Characteristics of Female English form the Aspect of Sociolinguistics chosen from Journal of Hubei TV University written by Dong Fang (2007) analyzes females lexicon usage from the view of
19、usage of exaggerate adjectives, particles, adverbs, color terms, polite words and the avoidance of curse words. Though compared with the former journal, she makes more specific description on the characteristics of females lexicon usage form more aspects, she doesnt put the methodology into consider
20、ation and make more specific analysis of the lexicon usage. The result of that would be lacking of preservation. She also states the causes of the phenomenon. The reasons she states including three aspects: social status and physiological factors, social conception and mental factors. These are the
21、brief reasons she gave us. By investigating more deeply, more reasons would be found out. All these books and articles are helpful to this thesis. They give a better understanding and the methodology of doing the research. But more statistical data are needed to have a further analysis on the charac
22、teristics of females lexicon usage. Reference 4 1 Florian Coulmas. The Handbook of SociolinguisticsM. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社，2001. 2 Ralph Fasold. The Sociolinguistics of LanguageM. 北京：外语教学与研究出版社， 2000. 3 董芳 (Dong, Fang). 运用社会语言学简析女性语言风格特色 J. 湖北广播电视大学学报，2007, 27(3):57-59. 4 林晓英 (Lin, Xiaoying). 谈英语中女 性使用语言的特点 J. 福州大学学报 (社会科学版 )，1994, 8(1):54-57. 5 张廷国 (Zhang, Tingguo)和郝树壮 (Hao, Shuzhuang). 社会语言学研究方法的理论与实践M. 北京：北京大学出版社， 2008.
