GENDER AND LANGUAGE IN NIGERIA: A RELIGIO-CULTURAL APPROACH

Abstract

Gender refers to the societal differences and relations between men and women which are learned, vary widely among societies, cultures and religious institutions and change overtime. Gender is used to analyze the roles, responsibilities, constraints, opportunities and needs of men and women in all areas on any given social context especially on language. There is gender differences in the discourses of men and women. It is observed that women are more likely to use language to build and maintain relationships, while men are more likely to use language to communicate factual information. Language is an important communication tool in everyday life and an understanding of how language reflects and shapes gender roles can provide valuable insights into the social construction and perception of gender in the religious and cultural settings of the society. Gender roles are learnt. They vary from culture to culture and from religion to religion. In the traditional African societies, the girl child is taught how to talk, sit down, take care of her siblings, sweep and maintain a home, help her mother in the kitchen and other domestic chores. The boy child, on the other hand is taught how to split firewood, keep lawns clean, fish in the river (for the fishing houses) and cultivate crops like yam. In the above learning process, language is used. This is because language is a code whereby ideas about the world are presented through conventional system of arbitrary signals for communication. The condition of activities, tasks and responsibilities are perceived as male or female. This paper discusses Gender and Language in Nigeria: A Religio-cultural Approach. In this article, the researcher clarifies the role of language in gender issues, discusses the nature of gender and explains religion and culture in Nigeria. Qualitative Descriptive method was used. The study made use of the theory of communicative competence propounded by Dell Hymes (1966). The data for this study were gathered from secondary sources which include libraries, published research papers, published books and websites. From the discussion so far, the findings show that men and women use language differently.