LANGUAGE & GENDER: A SOCIOLINGUISTIC STUDY OF HILLS LIKE WHITE ELEPHANTS

Abstract

The study explored the relationship between language and gender in the context of the short story entitled “Hills like White Elephants" by Earnest Hemingway. The basic purpose of it has been to make a comparison between the expressions of both genders in terms of language use. As already mentioned above, the data has been taken from a short story from American literature by the use of purposive sampling technique. Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell Ginet (2013) model of gender and language has been utilized as a theoretical framework. While, in term s of data analysis, the researcher has made the use of content analysis approach. The findings of this particular study revealed that throughout the story, the male character has been dominant in terms of language use as he used complete meaningful sentence within an element of confirmation while the girl continuously has been observed making the passive use of language as she made the vast use of tag questions which showed her lack of decisiveness, confidence and confirmation about her relationship.