Animals, embryos, thinkers and doers
Metaphor and gender representation in Hong Kong English
Research into the linguistic descriptions of women have revealed that females tend to be defined in terms of their relationships to men, their appearance and/or sexual attributes, and that women and their activities tend to be trivialised (Pauwels 1987; Thorne et al. 1983). Additional, more recent research into gender representation has revealed dehumanising descriptions of women as food and as animals, such as birds and horses (Hines 1994; Stirling 1987). Such metaphors reflect individually or socially constructed conceptual associations between real-world phenomena that may serve to trivialise or enhance members of a given group. This paper reports on an investigation into lexical representations of men and women in the Hong Kong variety of English. Analysis includes all nominal and verbal descriptors of men and women and the acts performed by them. These descriptors were distributed into semantic classes on the basis of the qualities they reveal about their human referents. Results show that men are conceptualized as pro-active and assertive beings, to some extent born to succeed; while women are under-developed, emotional and in need of protection. The gender metaphors of women are compatible with concepts of both early stages of human development and subhuman entities, such as animals.
References (27)
Baron, D.
(
1986)
Grammar and Gender. Yale University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Bryant, P.
(
1980)
Australian questioning intonation: as addition to speaker’s response-seeking repertoire. BA Hons Thesis, ANU Australia.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Coates, J.
(
1986)
Women, men and language. London, Longman.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Coates, J. and D. Cameron
(eds) (
1988)
Women in their speech communities: New perspectives on language and sex. London, Longman.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cameron, D.
(
1990)
The feminist critique of language: A reader. New York, Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Fillmore, C.
(
1975)
An alternative to checklist theories of meaning.
Proceedings of the 16th Meeting of the Berkeley Linguistics Society 11:123–131.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hall, K. and M. Bucholtz
(eds) (
1995)
Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self. New York, Routledge.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Hines, C.
(
1994)
What’s so easy about pie?: The lexicalization of a metaphor. In
A. Goldberg (ed.)
Conceptual structure, Discourse and language. Cambridge, CUP.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Holmes, J.
(
1986)
Functions of you know in women’s and men’s speech.
Language in Society 15,1:1–22.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Holmes, J.
(
1989)
Sort of in New Zealand women’s and men’s speech.
Studia Linguistica 42,2:85–121.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Horvath, B.
(
1985)
Variation in Australian English: the sociolects of Sydney. Cambridge, CUP.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lakoff, G.
(
1987)
Women, fire and dangerous things: What categories reveal about the mind. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lakoff, G.
(
1993)
The contemporary theory of metaphor. In
A. Ortony (ed.)
Metaphor and thought. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson
(
1980)
Metaphors we live by. Chicago, University of Chicago Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Lakoff, G. and M. Johnson
ms.)
Philosophy in the flesh: How the embodied mind creates philosophy.
Langacker, R.
(
1986/1991)
Foundations of cognitive grammar. Stanford, Stanford University Press.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Luchjenbroers, J.
(
1995)
Cognitive linguistics and gender representation.
HKPU: Working Papers in ELT and Applied Linguistics 1,1:73–104.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Ortony, A.
(ed.) (
1979)
Metaphor and thought. Cambridge, CUP.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Pauwels, A.
(ed.) (
1987)
Women and language in Australian and New Zealand society. Mosman, Australian Professional Publications.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Radtke, H.L. and H.J. Stam
(eds) (
1994)
Power/gender: Social relations in theory and practice. Thousand Oaks, CA., Sage.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Shnukal, A.
(
1982)
You’re getting somethink for nothing: Two phonological variables of Australian English.
Australian Journal of Linguistics 2,2:197–212.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Stirling, L.
(
1987)
Language and gender in Australian Newspapers. In
A. Pauwels (ed.)
Women and language in Australian and New Zealand society. Mosman, Australian Professional Publications.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Sweetser, E.
(
1991)
From etymology to pragmatics: Metaphorical and cultural aspects of semantic structure. Cambridge, CUP.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Talmy, L.
(
1983)
How language structures space.
Berkeley Cognitive Science Report No. 4. Cognitive Science Dept., UC Berkeley.
![DOI logo](https://benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tannen, D.
(
1993)
Gender and conversational interaction. New York, OUP.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Tannen, D.
(
1994)
Gender and discourse. New York, OUP.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Thorne, B., C. Kramarae, and N. Henley
(eds) (
1983)
Language, gender and society. New York, Newbury House.
![Google Scholar](https://benjamins.com/logos/google-scholar.svg)
Cited by (3)
Cited by 3 other publications
Abdel-Raheem, Ahmed
2023.
Cartooning and sexism in the time of Covid-19: Metaphors and metonymies in the Arab mind.
Discourse & Society 34:2
► pp. 147 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Yu, Yating
2021.
Metaphorical representations of “leftover women”: between traditional patriarchy and modern egalitarianism.
Social Semiotics 31:2
► pp. 248 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
Koller, Veronika & Elena Semino
2009.
Metaphor, Politics and Gender: a Case Study from Germany. In
Politics, Gender and Conceptual Metaphors,
► pp. 9 ff.
![DOI logo](//benjamins.com/logos/doi-logo.svg)
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 29 june 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.