language change;gender

Spinster
The true meaning of spinster is that it is a woman who practices spinning for a regular occupation. The word originated from the 13th century where it began to be regarded with spinning. However, over time the word has semantically shifted towards a negative space and has undergone derogation and has taken the meaning of being a woman which no man wants. This derogation has always had a connection with a single woman as the hobby of spinning was believed to be taken up in order to fill time which would have been spent with a man and to prevent boredom from a single woman, however the shift has caused the idea of spinning to be dropped from the meaning but the idea of an unwanted woman has remained in the current connotations of the word.


Bachelor


The original meaning was that it was a knight who was of a young age and a lack of experience, due to his youth he was unable to support himself in the war grounds. The 14th century meaning still discuss' the idea of a male who is young, fresh and strong , which is still the association which the 21st century make with the lexis. The word has undergone derogation and now takes the meaning of a free spirited independent man who maintains a care-free lifestyle. The word is associated with the male youth however , due to the change in context (the  abolishment of knights) the word has semantically shift it has taken of positive space , it previously had connotations with cowards , whereas now it has connotations which being a 'lad' and freedom.


Mistress


The original meaning of the word mistress was a woman who has control and authority , mainly with regards to children. The initial spelling ('maistresse') differs from the recent spelling, this may be due to a shift in meaning or the an alteration in the pronunciation of the word. However, over time the word has differed from its initial meaning , its the 20th century definition discusses the idea that it is a woman , other than a husbands wife, who the male is having sexual relations with. This derogation as shown a semantic shift into negative space. The word now has negative connotations , whereas its 14th century meaning was associated with the positive idea of power and control , which caused those who had these features to be admired.


Master


The lexis master had an initial meaning of power and authority. However, as the female version of master shifted into a negative space overtime the male version remained the same. In the 21st century meaning has no shifted a far from the original meaning as it still is associated with the idea of having authority and power, mainly over children in regards to a school setting.

langauge and gender linguists

Deborah Cameron- Theory of verbal hygiene

Both men and women believe that they have certain expectations about the conduct and mode in which they verbally represent themselves. It is believed that women tend to follow stereotype and follow the instructions of which they are taught on how to speak, which translate into other areas of their gender such as the way in which they are instructed to dress.  However she investigated the learning of grammar and research shown that basic grammar orientated methods used to teach children, regardless of sex, contained verbal hygiene. This is where the content which is used during the cognitive stage of learning is gender neutral and gender holds no influence of the use or content of the information learnt, ie punctuation pyramid. From her findings it is apparent that the context of the situation and is dependent on the environment and topic which is being discussed. For example, a group of girls are likely to use girlification if they are discussing and gender stereotyped topic, such as makeup. She also discovered that we should use non sexes lexis as they can cause offence or segregation.

Muriel Schulz- semantic derogation

Schulz contrasted an essay which explains the semantic derogation of sexes. During her investigation she discovered that there was more negative connotations attached to the lexis associated with women than men. Her study was followed up Julie Stanley who recorded negative connotations which were made towards sexes and expanded her investigation by proving how these lexis shifted between positive and negative connotations via discovering their collocations. She stated that women are unable to shift out of the negative semantic space.

Sara mills

 Mills investigated the various lexical pairs and how they are lexical asymmetric to one another. She also did further research in the correlation between femininity and politeness and masculinity and impoliteness. She also considered whether the politeness used was hereditary. Essentially she focused on the way in which certain genders speak and the hereditary traits in which they entail.