A Study Of Lord Of The Flies From The Perspective Of Gender Differences In Language

Lord of the Flies, published in 1954, is considered as one of Sir William Golding's most important and controversial works, in which he describes a group of children, stranded on an uninhabited island, fail to imitate adults to build up civilization on the island. Prior to its publication, British literature on deserted island works emphasize the initiative of mankind. In Lord of the Flies, however, Golding extends the connotation of the deserted island novel, and breaks its traditional creation mode"from desert to paradise"by describing mankind's anxiety, confusion, and anarchy.Critics have made various interpretations on the themes of the novel from different perspectives. However, these critiques mainly concentrate on the dark side of human nature, or simply reduce to introductory comments. With the passage of time, there seems to be much repetition in the critiques. But as far as the prominent man-only phenomenon of the novel is concerned, there has always been disagreement. The vast majority of critics did not analyze the language of the novel itself. Some conclusions appear to be made hastily due to much subjectivity and insufficient proof. In the hope of unraveling the profound meaning of its unique subject, this thesis intends to explore the themes of Lord of the Flies from a new perspective; that is, gender differences in language.With a perspective of sociolinguistics, the thesis discovers that there are languages with typical gender characteristics everywhere in the novel. For one thing, both the protagonists and the antagonists display distinct gender differences in language. For instance, Piggy, who is intelligent and sensitive, shows obvious femininity; Jack, who is hunger for power, uses a language with a clear masculinity in the struggle for authority. For another, the language that Golding uses for describing setting also presents distinct feminine characteristics.From the perspective of gender differences in language, the thesis finds that their language characteristics, their statuses on the island, and their fates are closely associated. Then a new interpretation for the theme of Lord of the Flies has naturally come into being in this thesis. Solely based on the analysis of the language itself, it can be seen that the assertion"Lord of the Flies wants to strengthen the dominance of male culture"is open to question. Though there is no biological sense of female characters, his description language with femininity creates a complete language system as the outside world, which set the stage for expression of his themes. And his theme in this novel was made to depart from his predecessors. In Lord of the Flies, the author Golding's exclusion of females left men no chances to make excuses for their fault. By such a delicate arrangement, he attacked the widely-held western belief; that is, women are the seducer responsible for men's downfall. He intended for his readers to realize that men themselves are at fault for their degradation.