Idioms and Gender : Can Language Corpora Tell Us Something about the Gendered Use of Idioms?

DOBIÁŠOVÁ, Sarah. Idioms and Gender : Can Language Corpora Tell Us Something about the Gendered Use of Idioms? In ESSE Doctoral Symposium, Lyon, France (online), 31 August - 1 September, 2021. 2021.

Basic information

• Original name: Idioms and Gender : Can Language Corpora Tell Us Something about the Gendered Use of Idioms?
• Authors: DOBIÁŠOVÁ, Sarah.
• Edition: ESSE Doctoral Symposium, Lyon, France (online), 31 August - 1 September, 2021, 2021.

Other information

• Original language: English
• Type of outcome: Presentations at conferences
• Field of Study: 60203 Linguistics
• Country of publisher: France
• Confidentiality degree: is not subject to a state or trade secret
• WWW: URL
• Organization unit: Faculty of Arts
• Keywords (in Czech): idiomy; gender; korpus
• Keywords in English: idioms; gender; corpus
• Tags: International impact, Reviewed

Abstract

The aim of the talk is to analyse how idioms - their meanings and usage - might be influenced by gender. The influence of gender on idiomatic meaning and usage can be examined in at least three ways: first, at least one of the components of an idiom can be gendered, either directly (e.g. a man of means) or indirectly (e.g. apron strings); second, some idioms may tend to be employed to refer to men rather than women and vice versa; and third, some idioms may be used more often by men than women and vice versa. As pointed out by some researchers (e.g. Skulikowska, 2019), such information remains mostly uncaptured by idiom dictionaries. Moreover, relying on native speakers’ intuitions does not allow us to generalise any findings. Nevertheless, gender differences in the idiomatic use, as well as gender-linked differences in the idiomatic meaning, can be observed by means of language corpora. So far, only scarce attempts to investigate the relationship between the use of idioms and the gender of the users have been made (e.g. Rabinovich, Gonen & Stevenson, 2020). In the presentation, various ways of looking for gender-related patterns of idiomatic meaning and usage in language corpora will be discussed. Additionally, some preliminary findings regarding the gender-linked differences in the use of English idioms will be presented.