Female Language in Popular Science

Q4 Social Sciences

Gender Studies Pub Date : 2023-12-01 DOI:10.2478/genst-2023-0040

Olga Li̇mni̇os

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引用次数: 0

Abstract

Abstract Fewer women than men are involved in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) fields and one of the reasons might be a lack of exposure to familiar linguistic structures in reading materials designed to spark interest and to recruit new scientists. Popular science, as a multifaceted genre, creates an accessible kind of exposure to the scientific world that can potentially lead to a career in that field. Considering this potential of the genre and keeping in mind that most popular science is written by men, the present study examined fifteen articles (five written by men, five by women, and five co-written by authors of both genders) for the presence of female language. Female language was differentiated from gendered language (which is tied to female stereotypes) and identified based on the frequency of certain linguistic markers found in texts produced by women. The results demonstrate that women and teams of authors that include women write differently than men do, thus confirming previous investigations into differences in linguistic production between men and women. The study suggests that exposing young women considering a career in science to popular science written by females might be beneficial in cementing their aspirations, as language has a strong connection to self-perceived gender identity.

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科普中的女性语言

摘要从事 STEM（科学、技术、工程和数学）领域工作的女性人数少于男性，原因之一可能是在旨在激发兴趣和招募新科学家的阅读材料中缺乏对熟悉的语言结构的接触。科普作为一种多层面的体裁，为人们提供了接触科学世界的机会，从而有可能在这一领域找到自己的职业。考虑到这一体裁的潜力，并牢记大多数科普文章都是由男性撰写的，本研究对 15 篇文章（5 篇由男性撰写，5 篇由女性撰写，5 篇由男女作者共同撰写）进行了检查，以确定是否存在女性语言。女性语言有别于性别化语言（性别化语言与女性刻板印象有关），是根据女性文章中某些语言标记的频率来识别的。研究结果表明，女性和包括女性在内的作者团队的写作方式与男性不同，从而证实了之前对男女语言创作差异的调查。这项研究表明，让考虑从事科学工作的年轻女性接触女性撰写的科普作品，可能有助于坚定她们的志向，因为语言与自我认知的性别认同有着密切的联系。

本文章由计算机程序翻译，如有差异，请以英文原文为准。

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来源期刊

Gender Studies Social Sciences-Gender Studies

CiteScore

0.30

自引率

0.00%

发文量

157

审稿时长

14 weeks

期刊介绍： Gender Studies is a journal addressing academics and a general readership at the same time and its main goal is to provide a gendered approach to literature, language and society and also to highlight attempts of educationalists and Gender Studies esperts in various parts of the world to institutionalize Gender Studies in the academe. The GS journal publishes high-quality peer-reviewed articles from various Humanities and Social Sciences areas. The GS journal is interdisciplinary—gender proving an excellent analytical category enabling a new perspective on literature, anthropology, social and political studies, cultural studies, linguistics and mass media studies. The GS journal provides state-of-the-art research in all such fields.