Language and Gender Differences in Jordanian Spoken Arabic: A Sociolinguistics Perspective

Abstract

Studying the differences between men and women's language has been the obsession of many sociolinguists recently. This study aims to investigate the gender differences between men's and women's language in Jordanian Spoken Arabic. It studies both genders' conversational styles and phonological variations. Twelve dyadic conversations (mixed and same-sex) were conducted at Yarmouk University (Jordan) each conversation lasted for 30 minutes. The theoretical framework for this study draws on sociolinguistics, Conversation Analysis and politeness theory. The findings of the study indicate that Jordanian women and men have different linguistics styles that distinguish their gender in conversations , and women are more linguistically conservative than men.