LANGUAGE IN INDIA

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Volume 24:12 December 2024
ISSN 1930-2940

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A Comparative Study of Gender Inequality Represented in English and Bangla Short Stories

Mohd Twarique Ahsan, M.A. (Linguistics)

Abstract

The paper aims to examine the issue of gender inequality in Bangla and English short stories. Discrimination based on sex or gender that frequently favours or prioritises one sex or gender over another is known as gender inequality (Hudson, 1996). In our communication system, even without realising one gender treated another gender unequally. In everyday context, the language is significantly biased towards men in Bengali society: A man is called strain (henpecked) if he accepts his wife's opinion, but a woman is called a protivakti nari (a devoted woman) if she obeys her husband, even if he wrongs or tortures her. A woman is known as a besya (prostitute), bidhoba (widow), and rokhita (concubine) whereas men are free of any such terms. The study tries to examine how gender discrimination terms used in short stories.

For this study qualitative methods were used to collect the necessary data. Randomly three famous short stories were selected from each of the languages. After that, the language of the stories were analysed in various linguistic and non-linguistics Levels. The findings of this study indicate that, overall, gender inequality favours males in both languages. The implications of the study have far-reaching effects in terms of the goals of achieving gender equality in society.

Keywords: Bangla, English, gender, equality, bias, sexism

Introduction

Language is a means of communication. In our communication system, even without realising gender is not something we are born with and not something we have, but something we do (West & Zimmerman, 1987), something we perform (Butler, 1990). Sex is a biological categorisation based primarily on reproductive potential, whereas gender is the social elaboration of biological sex (Eckert & Ginet, 2003). People think of gender as the result of nurture- as social and hence fluid, while sex is given by biology. In our social phenomenon, men and women are not treated equally. The treatment may arise from distinctions regarding biology, psychology, or cultural norms prevalent in society. Language is a vehicle by which we transport our thoughts, ideas and expression. However, these ideas also have been influenced by the male gender in our society.

According to Dale Spender (1980), language belongs to men, and men own it. He refers that English is a man's language. We use many words, phrases or lexicons to express our ideas, but these are sometimes biased to a particular gender, mostly in favour of men and against women. This discrimination may be termed sexism in language.

Bangla is an Indo-Aryan language that originated in South Asia's Bengal region. It is the second most commonly spoken language of India's 22 scheduled languages. It is also Bangladesh's official, national, and most widely spoken language. West Bengal, Tripura, and the Barak (Indian states) Valley region of Assam all have it as their official language. At the same time, English is an Indo-European language in the West Germanic language group. In India, English is used as a lingua franca all over the country. It has the status of the country's second official language and is the official language of many states in the country. Bangladesh does not have an official second language. However, apart from Bangla, English is the only language widely used in the country.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Mohd Twarique Ahsan, M.A. (Linguistics)
Language Instructor, Department of Foreign Languages
Jazan University, Saudi Arabia
mahsan@jazanu.edu.sa
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