‘A Goose-Quill or a Gander's?’: Female Writers in Johnson's Dictionary

Brewer, Charlotte

doi:10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199654345.003.0011

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“…These modes of speech were supposed to mirror ‘natural’ attributes of their speakers: in other words, male language reflected men’s (physical and mental) ‘strength’, whereas female speech indicated women’s physical and mental ‘weakness’ (cf. Brewer, 2012: 125).…”

Section: Female Speech Jane Austen and Quitementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent scholarship has commented on the ‘series of paradoxes’ that surround 18th-century views on women’s language and women’s writing (Brewer, 2012: 121). Women played an important role in the literary life of the century, and both the intellectual standing and linguistic dexterity of their writings were recognised and celebrated by established (male) authors (Brewer, 2012: 121, 7; Shoemaker, 1998: 282–291). Yet at the same time, women in the 18th century were often depicted as a ‘unified sociolinguistic category’ characterised by idiosyncratic and idiosyncratically ‘inadequate’ 1 language practices (Brewer, 2012: 123ff; Michaelson, 2002: 35ff, 211).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Women played an important role in the literary life of the century, and both the intellectual standing and linguistic dexterity of their writings were recognised and celebrated by established (male) authors (Brewer, 2012: 121, 7; Shoemaker, 1998: 282–291). Yet at the same time, women in the 18th century were often depicted as a ‘unified sociolinguistic category’ characterised by idiosyncratic and idiosyncratically ‘inadequate’ 1 language practices (Brewer, 2012: 123ff; Michaelson, 2002: 35ff, 211). Consider, in this respect, Philip Stanhope’s (1754) well-known recommendations to Samuel Johnson on the inclusion of ‘female’ language in his Dictionary .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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‘I quite detest the man’: Degree adverbs, female language and Jane Austen

González-Díaz

2014

Language and Literature: International Journal of Stylistics

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Burrows’ (1987) stylometric analysis of Austen’s novels associates quite with ‘the speech of the vulgarians, especially the women who predominate among them’. Through a corpus-based analysis, this article takes further Burrows’ (1987) claims by scrutinizing the socio-stylistic mappings between characters and functions of quite in Austen. The results indicate that gender (rather than vulgarity) is the main factor determining the socio-stylistic variation of quite in Austen’s novels. More generally, the study contributes to a better understanding of Jane Austen’s practices of linguistic gendering. Recent literary criticism has commented on Austen’s stylistic manipulations aimed at challenging 18th-century stereotypes of women’s language (Michaelson, 2002: 62–63). The corpus-based study provided in this article can be taken as a concrete example of how such manipulations work at the linguistic level. It suggests that Austen may have drawn on 18th-century stereotypes of ‘female’ language for the stylistic stratification of quite in her novels, although introducing functional and grammatical variations that allow for subtle differentiations across ‘female’ idiolects.

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Section: Female Speech Jane Austen and Quitementioning

confidence: 99%