Gender Differences Of The Language Use In Personal Advertisements Based On The Cognitive Sociolinguistics

Cognitive Sociolinguistics, a convergence of Cognitive Linguistics and sociolinguistics, is a new and burgeoning field of research exploring the social issues of language with the theories in the Cognitive Linguistics. In recent years, a series of researches and academic achievements have been made in this field by foreign and domestic linguists. The personal ad, as an indispensable part of the modern society, is a sort of ads used by men and women at marrying age to market themselves and find a life mate. A large number of researches have already been made on personal ads mainly from the perspective of psychology, functional linguistics and cross-cultural communication. In attempting to study the personal ads based on the Cognitive sociolinguistics, this thesis analyzes the gender differences in language use and expounds the causes brought by the social history and culture by applying the theory that linguistic stereotypes metonymically evoke the social stereotypes associated with the group in question, put forward by Kristiansen, a social linguist.The vital questions involved in this research are listed as follows: What are the gender differences of language use in the personal ads based on the Cognitive Sociolinguistics? What are the social causes for the gender differences of language use in the personal ads? What is the role of personal ads playing in the society? 80men’s and 80 women’s personal ads are selected from the “Zhong Guo Zheng Hun Wang” and “Xu Zhou Zheng Hun Wang” to make the qualitative and quantitative analysis.Four stages are included in this analysis and exploration: firstly, statistic data from the 80 men’s and 80 women’s personal ads are listed in tables; secondly,description and summary are made on the data in tables; thirdly, the gender differences in language are concluded by comparing the data in tables; lastly, this research probes the following issues- the personal ad as a genre with communicative function, social stereotypes metonymically reflected by the language used in the ads,the social and cultural origins for stereotypes and the evaluation on the social constructionism.It can be seen through this research that the personal ad is a genre with the communicative function whose language metonymically reveals the gender differences in our society. The origins of these gender differences, as it were our social stereotypes, are the social division of labor, the social roles, the social status,the social changes and the influences from the confucianism which take place and exist in China from ancient times to the present. Simultaneously it verifies the scientificity of the social constructionism, as the language and the society are mutually constructed when moving forward.