Interpersonal Perception in Self-Promotional Discourse 1

Zouhair Maalej
(University of Tunis I)
E-mail: zmaalej@gnet.tn

Abstract
Research on gender speech variation in sociolinguistics has taken roughly two
differing but complementary directions, namely, showing the extent of speech
variation among men and women on the one hand, and identifying and analysing the
linguistic moulds both genders couch their self-perception and interpersonal
perception, on the other. Capitalising on the study of the language of a small corpus
of English dating ads (DA) taken from two local publications, the paper considers
the sociolinguistics of gender through both self-perception and interpersonal
perception. The linguistic devices targeted are the word classes of nouns, adjectives,
and verbs. The main argument of the paper is that the task of perception is a
collaborative one between nouns and adjectives. The results of this investigation
reveal patterns of interpersonal perception significantly at odds with one another
and at variance with research whose proponents have argued for dominance as a
sociolinguistic framework for speech variation among men and women.
Key words: gender, interpersonal perception, self-perception, self-promotion,
persuasion

INTRODUCTION
From a methodological viewpoint, earlier research on gender as style variation focused on the
linguistic levels of phonology, morphology, and, to a lesser degree, syntax, while later
studies, under the initiative of Robin Lakoff, shifted the focus to syntax, semantics,
pragmatics, and stylistic differences (Coates 1986: 3, Cameron et al 1988: 74, Holmes 1992:
313, Holmes 1997: 199, Tannen 1994: 41). Most researchers in the area agreed on the
existence of linguistic variation between man and woman (Holmes 1997: 197). However,
disagreement exists as to the variables to attribute it to. Some of the variables that have been
advanced include power or dominance (Lakoff 1974, Tannen 1994: 56, Wodak and Benke
1998: 129), cultural difference (Cameron 1995, Tannen 1994: 12), interactional variables
(Tannen 1994: 10, Holmes 1997: 199).
Sex is different from gender, in that the former is strictly biological while the latter is
cultural. Hence, because of its cultural dimension gender is a complex continuum which
interacts with other social dimensions such as social status, ethnicity, age and power
(Holmes 1997: 203). Research on the sociolinguistics of gender centred roughly on two major
issues, namely (i) the extent to which the speech of men and women could be shown to differ
at more than a level with reference to the factors which it interacts with (Trudgill 1974: 78,
Lakoff 1974, French and French 1988: 207, Fasold 1990: 92, Holmes 1992: 164, to name
only a few); and to a lesser degree (ii) the nature of the linguistic forms used by both genders
to refer to each other (Bolinger 1980: 91, Poynton 1985: 50, Romaine 1994: 106), and
establish social patterns of perception and address capable of showing the interplay between
linguistic and social structures.
1

I am greatly indebted to Maik Gibson, a sociolinguistics colleague from Reading University, for accepting to
read a first draft of this paper. His comments have been constructive and encouraging. However, responsibility
for the contents is incumbent on the author.

While (i) has been attracting substantial attention, (ii) witnesses comparatively fewer
studies. Indeed, noticing fewer investigations in this area French and French (1988: 207) take
it as a relevant research avenue in sociolinguistics to embark on the study of the disparity
between the language used to address women and that used to men. In the same line of
thought, Holmes (1997: 203) suggests that a more satisfactory way of studying the linguistic
realisations of gender thus involves examining the way individuals express or construct their
gender identities in specific interactions in particular social contexts. Such an endeavour
would most certainly enlighten us on how language is used to contribute to the building of the
gendered world individuals construct for themselves and for the others.
To believe with Coates (1986: 12) that sociolinguistics aims not only to describe
linguistic variation and the social context in which such variation occurs, but also to show
how linguistic differentiation reflects social structure is crucial. This kind of belief may shed
some light on the interaction between language and society. To do so, this paper focuses on
self-promotional discourse as represented by DA, and studies the language of over 400 dating
ads taken from two local tabloid publications in Peterborough, Lincolnshire (Talking Ads, a
bi-monthly magazine, and Stamford Herald and Post, a weekly newspaper) published in April
and May 1997, arguing that DA are a typical index of the interaction between language and
society.
This paper does not intend to defend or refute a given model of sociolinguistic stylistic
variation among men and women, neither is it about derogation in language though this
will be alluded to. Rather, it purports to contribute to interactional sociolinguistics research
(Tannen 1994: 10). It does not, however, do so by analysing man-woman conversation, but by
investigating the way language is used by both genders to refer to one another. In a social
context of use, the disparity in interpersonal perception of men and women is of paramount
importance for social behaviour. The paper includes six parts: the first one links promotional
discourse to the general discourse of advertising by pointing out the social function of DA.
The second part investigates the linguistic structure of DA in view of identifying which
section of the traditional pattern (S)ubject + (V)erb + (O)bject corresponds to the types of
perception studied. The third part looks at how, by selecting nouns and adjectives, men and
women perceive themselves respectively. The fourth part deals with the way men perceive
women, and analyses some of the assumptions behind the linguistic choices made. The fifth
part concerns itself with the way women perceive their respective counterparts. The last part
brings together the results arrived at, and addresses the social implications of these patterns of
perception.
1. ADVERTISING AND PERSUASION
Advertising is a discourse type whose main protagonists are people with specific ideas in
mind seeking to cause a larger group of potential participants to change their beliefs and
buying habits, by creating in them the impulse to buy (ONeill, 1986: 117). To obtain , this
impulse is wrapped up, among other things, in a language of finely engineered, ruthlessly
purposeful messages (ONeill, 1986: 118). Vestergaard and Schroder (1985: 1) point out that
in commercial advertising firms advertise not a commodity or a service, but rather a name or
an image. The main social function of advertising is always to persuade people to buy a
particular product although it may also amuse, inform, misinform, worry or warn (Cook,
1992: 5).
The history of advertising has always been linked to the issue of persuasion, which
consists in causing attitude change (Severin and Tankard 1992: 147). The study of persuasion
in promotional discourse has given rise to ethical controversies for some time because it
arouses a greater strength of condemnation or support than most other contemporary
2

discourses (Cook 1992: xiv Foreword). Quite recently, Cook (1990: 69) studied promotional
and literary discourses, and claimed that both discourses share the same linguistic features
but, on a closer schematic analysis, advertising appears to be involving different plans and
goals. Triki (1997), on the other hand, showed through an impressive battery of tools from
modern linguistics, discourse analysis, pragmatics, schema theory, etc., how persuasion in
promotional discourse is articulated. The present author (1997) studied billboards stylistically,
and showed how phonology, syntax, and code-mixing are exploited as strategies of
persuasion. Holmes (1997: 211) argues that adverts often operate within a mythological
social domain, drawing on stereotypical rather than realistically representative societal values,
attitudes and beliefs. If this is exploited as a strategy of persuasion in general advertising, no
such reliance on mythical phenomena has been witnessed in DA, though stereotypes are often
exploited for that effect.
In self-promotional discourse, protagonists are not selling any man-made or
manufactured product; rather, the self as a biological commodity is being commercialised.
Thus, self-promotion through DA is different from commercial advertising, in that: (i) it may
be thought of as less elaborately and consciously worded by its senders than the rest of
advertising; (ii) it owes its wording to the sender, who is presumably the source of the
message; (iii) its intended recipient is of the opposite sex of the sender. The corpus under
consideration does include homosexual and lesbian ads, which have been deliberately
excluded from consideration, as the objective of this study is to investigate patterns of
heterosexual perception of women by men and vice-versa.
Like the rest of advertising, DA are closely linked to persuasion. Discussing the
impact of law on sociocultural change, Chris Kennedy (private communication) showed how
the Sex Discrimination Act (1975) as amended by the Sex Discrimination Act (1986)
discouraged the use of sexist and discriminatory lexical items such as young, attractive,
etc. in the context of job opportunities. When I invoked the use of far more marked sexist
linguistic forms in DA, he acknowledged that DA defy the anti-sexist legislation enforced in
Britain because it clashes with fundamental personal liberties. An alternative explanation of
the use of such sexist linguistic items in DA in relation to gender perception should be sought
in persuasion or what has been called the engineering of consent - a way of exercising
power without creating resentment (Brooks and Warren 1979: 108).
2. THE STRUCTURE OF DA
Contrasting the features of western and Indian DA, Nair (1992: 238) offers a syntactic-cumsemantic structure for the sample of western DA she studied, showing greater grammatical
details and relative length as illustrated in Table 1 below:
Table 1: Nairs DA structures
Description X
Seeks/
M/[F]
desires/
wants/
needs/
Complex
NP VP
with several pre- (obligatory)
and
postmodification
s (obligatory)

Description Y
F/[M]

+S
[question clause,
imperative,
greeting, exclamation, etc.]

Semantic realisations
Complex NP with Sentence or clause (optional)
several pre- and
postmodifications
(obligatory)
3

Syntactic forms
The DA in the sample under investigation, however, show an important difference both at the
level of syntactic structure and length. While the DA studied by Nair could attain a short
paragraph, the present DA have an average of 20 words. On the other hand, they have a
syntactic structure similar to that of a declarative sentence but more elliptical, with a subject
noun phrase (NP) whose head noun (HN) is often heavily premodified and/or postmodified,
but lacking in determination; a verb of wanting, liking, or wishing (often modalised or nonfinite in the active voice); an NP functioning as a direct object (Od) whose structure is similar
to that of the NP subject (more often postmodified than premodified); and a PP (optional).
The following DA illustrate this:
1. SLIM divorced female 56 [NP] seeks [VP] genuine male 54 plus [NP]
for special caring friendship, possibly leading to lasting relationship [PP].
2. FEMALE 26, 6ft tall, slim, blonde hair/green eyes [NP] WLTM [VP]
male 27-34, 6ft plus, preferably dark haired [NP] for
friendship/relationship [PP].
3. ATTRACTIVE female 25, recently moved from Ireland, blue eyed and
very lonely [NP] wishing to meet [VP] a man [NP].
Very few cases have deviated from this regular pattern in using the passive instead of the
active voice. The following example illustrates this:
4. GORGEOUS guy required for stimulating conversations by sensual girl.
The unmarked and marked structures of DA are summed up in Table 2:
Table 2: Unmarked and marked syntax of DA
Subject
Verb (active)
Od
HN pre- and/or post- finite or non-finite HN often postmodified
modified
form
(obligatory)
(obligatory)
(obligatory)
Unmarked structure
Subject
Verb (passive)
Agentive noun
HN pre- and/or post- non-finite form
by-phrase
modified
(obligatory)
(obligatory)
(obligatory)
Marked structure

Adverbial

(optional)
Adverbial

(optional)

It is interesting to note that the sections of the DA concerned with perception are the
Theme and the Od, where Theme section tackles self-presentation or self-perception, and the
Od section tackles the perception of the other. Chafe (1980: 11-12) argues that thinking
involves information, the self, and consciousness. Of importance to perception in DA are
the notions of information and self developed by Chafe. The sources of information are
the (i) perception of the world around us, (ii) memory, and (iii) the emotions, feelings
and attitudes associated with what we perceive and remember. The self has a variety of
needs, and a variety of interests in things which are associated with the goals and their
attainment. Thus, DA could be seen as dealing in information manipulated by the self for
particular purposes or goals.
4

3. MEN AND WOMENS SELF-PERCEPTION

There is much to be gained from the insights of a trend in linguistics known as Critical
Linguistics, whose main proponents are Roger Fowler (1986) and Fowler and Kress (1979).
Most relevant for this study is the fact that lexical choices play a crucial role in conveying
attitudes and perceptions (Fowler and Kress, 1979: 185). Holmes (1992: 166) explains that
sex differences in language are often just one aspect of more pervasive linguistic differences
in the society reflecting social status or power differences. Since patriarchal societies
indoctrinate the two sexes to act out the two diverging gender roles, therefore the members of
these societies will behave according to how and what they have been taught.
Self-perception is a kind of self-representation or self-demarcation. Studying selfconstruction in a corpus of narratives, Holmes (1997: 205) argues that individuals are
continually defining and redefining themselves in interaction. In DA, this defining effort is
presented in initial position, occupying the Theme slot, and drawing on the grammatical
categories of noun and adjective. The noun takes care of how respective genders refer to
themselves or self-reference. Customarily associated with description, adjectives serve for
senders to enhance their self-description. It is worth noting that adjectives in DA are mostly
evaluative, hyperbolic, and surreal (Williamson, 1996: 397). In the self-perception section,
adjectives are self-evaluative. But before tackling this, a few words need to be said about the
role of verbs in conveying something of self in DA.
Bolinger (1980: 80) argues that of all three major classes of words, verbs seem least
hospitable to bias. This is probably due to the relatively transitory nature of what they name.
A THING, designated by a noun, and a QUALITY, designated by an adjective, are stable
enough to build up associations of approval or disapproval; a process is not. Even though
verbs are less important in reflecting the self, still the choice of verb in DA is highly
significant. In the DA under discussion, women using WLTM (an acronym for Would Like
To Meet), a modal construction, outnumber males. The point was made more than two
decades ago by Trudgill (1974: 87) that women in our society are, generally speaking, more
status-conscious than men. Though this has been better explained by Holmes (1992: 178) as
womens sensitivity to contextual factors, still womens tendency to use more politeness
strategies has been attested by many a sociolinguist (Brown and Levinson 1987, Coates 1986,
Holmes 1993, to name only a few). According to Leech and Svartvik (1994: 162), would
like expresses a tentative and tactful wish. It is tentative in that it does not constitute an
imposition on the receiver, which counts as a politeness strategy by giving receivers options
(Lakoff 1977: 88). It is also tactful because it is a more polite form than want. The verb
forms that recur in DA are summed up in Table 3.
Table 3: Verbal forms contributing to self-perception
Type of verb
men
Wish
8
Finite/active
Seek
75
Require
2
Look
0
looking for
30
Non-finite/active
Wanting
1
Wishing
1
Seeking
9
waiting for
1
5

women
7
95
5
1
44
1
1
25
1

Non-finite/passive

Modal verbs

Hoping
Sought
Wanted
Required
WLTM

3
2
3
0
44

0
2
2
4
84

3. 1. Self-perception through the HN

Quirk et al (1985: 1238) propose the following structure for the English NP: determinative,
premodification, head, and postmodification. Halliday (1994: 180) offers an experiential
structure of the nominal group in terms of Deictic, Numerative, Epithet, Classifier, and Thing.
In his terminology, determinative and premodification in Quirk et als have been split into
deictic and numerative, and epithet and classifier, respectively. The Thing corresponds to
Quirk et als head. As noted earlier, DA under study include no determinative of any kind,
and postmodification is so insignificant to deserve investigation. However, premodification is
so vital a tool of perception, and deserves to be dealt with in a separate part. This part focuses
on the importance of the HN in DA.
In MDA, self-perception through the HN is realised by common and proper nouns.
Note that men show a clear preference to presenting themselves as male (which accounts
for 74% of the total). Male, as defined in The New Shorter Oxford Dictionary (1993), is a
male person, animal, plant; the member of the male sex; a man or boy as distinguished from a
woman or girl. Quite clearly, this definition confounds sexual differences with social gender
distinctions. By presenting themselves as male, men may be seeking to activate the sexual
connotation of male in the minds of women, which is not to be excluded as a motivation for
such a choice. One confirmation of the power of the word male among women is the
popular stereotype of male as escort of female (Poynton, 1989: 53). Moreover, men use
proper names to present themselves. Even though they have no denotation, proper names have
their own charm. It has been claimed by Marmaridou (1989: 371) that proper names convey
implications about some other object the speaker has in mind. A proper name may stir in the
mind of recipients their own experience with it as part of a specific schema. In this sense, it
may be telling, suggestive, meaningful or even connotes with something sexy.
The reason why other designators than male and proper names have been statistically
less important, could be explained by a strategy of avoidance on the part of men. For instance,
guy is slang or colloquial, and makes what Leech (1981: 14) calls social meaning (social
origin or class) leak out. Dad, in contrast with father, evokes an emotive charge or what
Leech (1981: 15) calls affective meaning. Presenting oneself as dad is, besides
presupposing children, carries a lot of fatherly affection. However, it is not in the interest of
the sender to adopt this if he knows that most women prefer single men. Gentleman,on the
other hand, is the exploitation of the age-old myth of the English as gentlemen. The fact that
gentleman accounts for only 5 instances can be explained by the fact that it has lost most of
its connotations, which, according to Possin (1994: 99), have to do with the decent,
honourable, disciplined embodiment of duty, loyalty and good form. Maik Gibson (private
communication) assured me that as a native gentleman for him connotes with old,
eccentric, not approachable, and even haughty.
In FDA, however, women present themselves as female (42%), lady (20%), and
mum (0.8%). Cameron et al (1988: 76) explain womens attitude to themselves by arguing
that they are taught to display the feminine qualities of weakness, passivity and
deference to men not just in linguistic but also in behavioural terms. Talking about Rogets
Thesaurus, Bolinger (1980: 91) points out that even the simple word woman itself is listed
6

as a synonym of prostitute, and argues that the language OF women is evidence of

womens self-perceptions of themselves (1980: 98). This may at least partly explain the
restricted number of times woman has been used in FDA.
Some of the results arrived at in this study suggest that if the characterisations used for
self-perception were deemed derogatory, women would not capitalise on them in their attempt
to persuade men. Women in the DA under study seem to identify with these characterisations
as carried by the concepts chosen, and use them as part of a plan to win a goal, and persuade
the other sex to consent to accept them as such. Indeed, by calling attention to themselves
through female, a more sexually-biased term than lady, women aim at exploiting this
natural, physical resource in them for a particular goal. Although, according to Romaine
(1994: 107), lady itself is no longer used exclusively for women of high rank, it accounts
in the present corpus for 20% of womens self-perception. The nouns that men and men use
for self-presentation are presented in Table 4:
Table 4: Men and women self-perception via nouns
Male
Count
Female
Male
201
female
Proper name
25
lady
Man
07
mum
Businessman
06
girl
Gentleman
05
blonde
Dad
05
widow
Guy
03
mother
Father
03
woman
Playboy
03
proper name
Widower
03
divorcee

Count
84
41
16
09
08
07
05
05
05
03

3. 2. Self-perception through premodifying adjectives

Quirk et al (1985: 1338-1339) classify premodifying adjectives into four major slots, namely,
precentral, central, postcentral, and prehead adjectives. Precentral adjectives include
peripheral, non-gradable adjectives like the intensifying class; central adjectives make up
the common core of adjectives; postcentral adjectives include participles and colour
adjectives; and pre-head adjectives are mainly denominal ones denoting nationality and ethnic
background. As part of the central slot, Quirk et al mention emotive, evaluative, or
subjective adjectives. As noted earlier, Halliday (1994: 184) offers Epithet and Classifier
instead of Quirk et als four categories of the premodification slot. What is interesting about
Hallidays classification is that it renders account of the difference between experiential
(objective) and interpersonal (evaluative) adjectives. 2
As Halliday points out, the epithet indicates some quality, which can be an
objective property of the thing in itself; or it may be an expression of the speakers subjective
attitude towards it. Halliday mentions that attitudinal adjectives can even precede
Numeratives as in those lovely two evenings in Bali. The classifier, on the other hand,
which makes a unit with the HN, tends to be preceded by epithets. It seems, therefore, that the
attitudinal subclass of epithets and, to a lesser degree, classifiers are the ones that DA draw
upon in self-perception and interpersonal perception.
2

On the structure of the NP in English, Jucker (1992) offers a good fourth chapter as a synthesis of Quirk et al
(1985) and Halliday (1985).

Adjectives qualify or modify nouns, and can precede nouns; they are known as
attributive in this position. Fowler and Kress (1979: 212) find the positioning of adjectives
highly revealing. Choosing one position instead of the other is determinative for perception.
Quirk et al (1985: 1243) argue that just as some modifiers are too strongly identified with
temporary status to appear in prehead position, so there can be modification constrained to
prehead position because it indicates permanent status. Commenting upon the pragmatic role
of adjectives, Bolinger (1980: 124) argues that the adjective in front of the noun wakens no
doubts. The prehead slot is no doubt the one that is mostly exploited for perception.
Commenting upon the nature of the premodifiers immediately hugging the HN, Quirk
et al (1985: 1341) argue that these modifiers are the ones relating to properties which are
(relatively) inherent in the head of the noun phrase, visually observable, and objectively
recognizable or assessable. Indeed, adjectives that hug nouns to the left tend to be the ones
that are the most important and affective for their users. Consider the following MDA:
5. MID 30s, tall, dark, professional, solvent male.
6. NICE looking, well-groomed, slim single, white male.
7. GOOD looking muscular male.
In (5), adjectives highlight age, physical, and socio-economic features of the senders
personality. Romaine (1994: 127) argues that to call a man a professional is a compliment.
But such a designator, if used by a woman, would be understood by society in the sense of
prostitute, thus making such words what Holmes (1992: 166) calls sex-exclusive speech
forms. However, in (6) and (7) self-presentation is done in a different way. In (6), the
rightmost adjective is white, suggesting the racial issue, and the rest of adjectives are
mostly physical. On the other hand, in (7) the focus is exclusively on physical details.
Nair (1992: 247) notes that among the most ubiquitous adjectives in the western
context are the words interesting and attractive. In the sample of DA under study,
however, attractive, single, divorced among women and professional, single,
divorced among men have been found to be the most frequent attributive adjectives. MDA
and FDA make use of adjectives to highlight physical, moral, social, and psychological
features. Table 5 classifies adjectives into 6 major semantic fields, namely beauty, marital
status, physical detail, psychological detail, professional status, and age:
Table 5: Men and women self-perception via adjectives
Semantic fields Men self-perception
attractive; cute-looking;
1.
Beauty
good-looking; handsome;
single; divorced; separated
2.
Marital status
slim; white; attractive;
3.
Physical state
sensual; fair-haired; darkhaired; muscular; wellgroomed; tactile; goodlooking; tall
genuine; mature; lively;
4.
Psychological
sincere; straight; lonely;
state
romantic; inexperienced;
warm-hearted; straight;
adventurous
successful; professional;
5.
Professional
8

Women self-perception
attractive; blonde; stunning; jolly;
pretty; dishy; feminine
single; divorced; separated
long-haired; blue-eyed; slim; fitlooking; leggy; plump; tall; coffee
with cream coloured; nicely-shaped

genuine; homely; caring; sensitive;

mature; lonely; independent;
bubbly; outgoing; intelligent;
disillusioned
professional

6.

status
Age

solvent
Young

young; young-looking

Adjectives can also follow nouns. They are called predicative in this position.
Adjectives of this kind have a more temporary reference than the attributive ones. Out of 270
males, only 91 used pre-nominal modifiers. However, out of 196 females, 157 used
premodifiers and 37 used only postmodifiers. This implies that fewer males use adjectives
attributively, and almost all of them use them post-nominally while women are more
numerous in using adjectives attributively. This might suggest more sensitivity on the part of
women to how language can be used to do things.
4. MENS PERCEPTION OF WOMEN
Cameron (1995: 33) divides the rather short history of concern with feminist issues in
linguistics into three trends or models, namely the deficit model, the dominance model,
and the cultural difference model, and argues that the difference model gained ground
while the dominance and deficit approaches lost it. The cultural difference model might be
used here to explain the different lenses through which man and woman in DA perceive one
another as if they were from different cultures or altogether from different planets.
Evidence from different cultures suggest that sex differentiation through linguistic
means is almost a pan-cultural recourse. Studying how a taboo topic such as sex is resolved in
Chagga (a Bantu language of Tanzania), Emanatian (1995: 164-5), for instance, argues that
such handling challenges us to come to terms with cultural universality and particularity,
and explains that such a practice is due mainly to our panhuman sharedness of basic
experience. Romaine (1994: 115) suggests that if the perception of women is culturally
derived, then we might expect anthropological research to reveal some interesting crosscultural differences in the position of men and women. Even if anthropologists could furnish
us with different lists of gender perception across cultures, this would not change anything to
the way one gender perceives the other within the same culture. Perhaps such an undertaking
will encourage more contamination (both positive and negative) of one culture by another.
This part builds on Bolingers (1980: 68) assumption that language is not a neutral
instrument. It is a thousand ways biased. Adopting a Critical Linguistics stance, Stubbs
(1998: 371-372) expresses the same belief that language is never neutral and texts are never
innocent, and that all selections are ideological. Mens perception of women in the
western culture is not different from other cultures dealings with the relations between men
and women. Poynton (1989: 57) claims that derogatorily women are frequently primarily
characterised in terms of their appearance, their marital status, and their fecundity. Studying
the representation of women in the English newspapers, Caldas-Coulthard (1995: 238)
pointed out that even when women are described in their professional status, the nominal
groups qualifying them tend to be shorter. Fasold (1990: 113), too, points out that terms used
to refer to women have worse connotations associated with them than the corresponding
mans term. Likewise, Holmes (1992: 336) draws attention to the fact that the English
metaphors available to describe women include an extraordinarily high number of derogatory
images compared to those used to describe men.
The section used to place the perception of women by men and the perception of men
by women is the Object section. Like in the previous part, the perception of women by men is
tracked through nouns and adjectives. Comparing an adjective to a noun, Bolinger (1980: 79)
argues that the noun OBJECTIFIES in a way the adjective cannot. A quality may come and
go. In MDA, womens perception by men is dominated by female and lady, which
9

account for 82% of the total. Minor uses of nouns in the perception of women, together with
others, are shown in Table 6. Perception through adjectives is centred round items such as
beauty, psychological, mental, and physical states, marital status, and homely qualities.
Commenting on the first item, Bolinger (1980: 92) claims that the skin-deep phenomenon of
physical beauty is overwhelmingly feminine Women carry the burden of opposite
stereotypes. They are angels, because they are beautiful - and also long-suffering and
uncomplaining in their subordinate role.
It should be noted that men in the corpus have been more economical on adjectives
than women, and the adjectives in Table 6 should be seen with a careful eye:
Table 6: Interpersonal perception via adjectives
Semantic fields Mens perception by women Womens perception by men
good-looking; attractive
beautiful; feminine; attractive;
1.
Beauty
good looking; sensual
2.
3.

4.

5.
6.
7.
8.

Single
active; smart; slim; tall;
white; long/dark haired;
good-looking
understanding; honest;
Psychological
genuine; caring; sincere;
state
loyal; considerate; nice;
adventurous; kind;
affectionate; sensitive; loving
Professionalism professional; solvent
younger; older
Age
intelligent; open minded
Mental state
Home qualities homely and caring; fun
loving
Marital status
Physical state

single
slim; slender; slimish; strong

genuine; romantic; nice;

independent; honest; assertive;
sincere; kind; broad minded;
cuddly; caring; kind hearted;
funloving; humorous; trustworthy
young
intelligent; Christian
home loving; sociable; family
minded; homely

The list is exhaustive, but one ad might use up to 4 of adjectives consecutively such as in
assertive strong feminine caring lady, while many others might not use any. Also, it should
not be understood by inventorying them in a list that they enjoy equal frequency of
occurrence; some of them have been used once by one MDA, some others by many.
5. WOMENS PERCEPTION OF MEN
There is comparatively much less attention paid to the way women perceive men most
probably because feminists have always been busy counterattacking males in society, who
were encouraging uses language about women with a lot of pejoration and gender bias.
However, since most researchers on gender differentiation agree that women use more
favoured sociolinguistic variants than men (Trudgill 1974: 87, Fasold 1990: 92, Romaine
1994: 124, to name only these), it is more likely that this social value in women precludes
them from using forms of address which are at variance with the social stereotype which they
seem to quite readily adhere to, at least in connection with the DA at hand. 3
In FDA, men are perceived by women as male, man, and gentleman, which
together account for 77% of the sum total. Other minor uses of nouns are offered in Table 6.
3

Here, extreme cases of feminism are not excluded but abstracted away.

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Basically, no derogatory uses of nouns could be mentioned except for very few uses for
endearment like toyboy or pussycat, which cant have been used derogatorily for the
simple reason that one cannot seek to win someone to ones side by insulting them. Bloke
used to designate non-peers may be said to be rather too colloquial but not derogatory. 4 Such
uses may be explained as rather establishing intimacy between sender and recipient.
On the adjective side of perception, recall what has been said about men being more
economical on adjectives than women. The use of premodifying adjectives, among other
things, by women is a feature that has initially been analysed by Lakoff (1974) in an effort on
her part to isolate characteristic features of the speech of women. In the FDA under
consideration, the adjectives studied are not of the intensifying kind, but are full objective or
subjective adjectives like attractive, active, honest, solvent, open-minded,
homely, etc. Such adjectives describe the qualities women wish to find in men. A fairly
exhaustive list of them is in Table 7. Adjectives denoting physical beauty and psychological
states are quantitatively more important than other types denoting mental states (intelligence
and open-mindedness).
6. DISCUSSION
The sets of lexical items used in DA could be studied through what Cruse (1977: 155) calls
Inherently Neutral Specificity (INS). For Cruse (1977: 153-154), the class of nouns offers a
range of lexical items of different levels of specificity. Items that have an INS are unmarked,
and draw no attention to themselves. In this study, man and woman are unmarked, and
have an INS. However, male, gentleman, dad, guy, widower, on the one hand, and
female, lady, mum, blonde, mother, widow, on the other, are marked, and carry
implications or affective overtones beyond the literal meanings of the words. It is precisely
this specificity that made the users of DA capitalise on such marked nouns to enhance
persuasion.
In sum, out of 270 MDA about 80% of them present men as male. However, crossreference to how women perceive men reveals that only about 50% of women address
maleness in men. On the other hand, the occurrence of man, which accounts for only 2.5%
of the total of MDA, seems to be much more espoused by women (about 20%). This
discrepancy between how men perceive themselves and how women prefer to perceive them
is revealing, and might constitute an impediment to persuasion. What might be inferred from
all this is that males are too male or macho and less man (or human) for women. One
possible conclusion is that men and women do not seem to be looking for the same thing in
each other.
The same discrepancy between how women perceive themselves and how men refer to
them should be noted. While less than 50% of women present themselves as female, and
less than 20% of them offer themselves as lady, about 50% of men address the female in
women and 30% of them address the lady in women. Bolinger (1980: 78) claims that in
ordinary conversation, female for woman is derogatory in any case. How can we, then,
conciliate what Bolinger says and peoples actual use of this very form of address? Using
female to address a woman does not seem to be in disgrace according to the corpus under
study. As to the use of lady, it might be explained by the fact that men are aware of the
derogatory or ironical dimension in lady, especially that one of the meanings of lady is
any woman, which, by logical implication, includes even prostitutes. Malcom Coulthard
(private conversation) drew my attention to the fact that lady in English is also a woman of
4

Maik Bibson drew my attention to the fact that bloke in English belongs to a lower register but does not
actually connote derogatorily.

11

forty. Perhaps, what makes recourse to lady sound more ironical and derogatory than, say,
female, is the fact that, like gentleman, it is losing most of its prestige, glamour, and
nostalgic dimension. Or, perhaps because men seem to prefer women younger than forty as is
clear from the use of young as an exclusive adjective in relation to age. It could be
hypothesised, then, that women perceiving themselves as lady are likely to be less
successful than those presenting themselves as female in persuading men, who are fewer to
want a lady. The following table sums up perception through nouns:
Table 7: Self-perception and interpersonal perception via nouns in DA
MDA
FDA
Self-perception
Perception by female Self-perception
Perception by
male
Male
201 male
89
female
84
Female
132
Proper name 25
man
41
lady
41
Lady
92
Man
07
gentleman
22
mum
16
Woman
10
Businessman 06
someone
06
girl
09
Girl
10
Gentleman
05
guy
06
blonde
08
Companion 03
Dad
05
you
05
widow
07
Blonde
03
Guy
03
good times
04
proper name 05
Partner
03
Father
03
bloke
03
mother
05
Someone
03
Playboy
03
gent
02
woman
05
You
02
Widower
03
Mr. Right
02
divorcee
03
Playgirl
02
Chap
02
partner
02
divorced
02
Toygirl
01
He
02
toyboy
02
bombshell
02
Surf babe
01
Surfer
01
businessman
01
beauty
02
Love
01
Quasimodo
01
Tweedle Dee
01
princess
02
Mare
01
Stallion
01
agent
01
nurse
02
Ophellia
01
Toyboy
01
soulmate
01
business lady 01
Bloke
01
pussycat
01
Alice
01
tigress
01
270
196
TOTAL
CONCLUSION
I have attempted in this paper to offer a modest contribution to an interactional sociolinguistic
view of language use exemplified by self-perception and interpersonal perception among men
and women with special reference to self-promotional discourse. I implicitly suggested that
nouns and adjectives should figure higher than verbal categories on the scale of perceptibility.
Perception in DA is a collaborative task distributed between adjectives and nouns, with verbs
lowest on the scale. Adjectives hijack attitudes, value judgements, and perceptions within NP
structure, which makes them least suspected and questioned, and nouns are more noticeably
used.
It has transpired from the analysed data that men and women in their own selfperception do not give the impression to bother too much about some nouns such as female,
mum, blonde, pussycat, etc., or some adjectives such as feminine, attractive,
romantic, cuddly, etc., which they would have refused to identify with at other
circumstances. Holmes (1997: 205) notes that in the construction of a gendered identity
societys prescriptions are kept an eye upon. If society stipulates that, individuals will
12

readily present themselves as conforming to societys definitions of appropriate masculine

and feminine behaviour. It seems that senders in DA are overwhelmed by the linguistic
devices they exploit to make their self-image an attractive one to the others, thus complying
with social stereotypes. The image women want to convey capitalises on familiar issues such
as femininity and related topics such as beauty, physical line, motherhood, etc. Men, on the
other hand, capitalise on maleness, professionalism, and economic solvency.
On the other hand, in interpersonal perception men capitalise on features associated
with femininity such as beauty, physical appeal, psychological attraction, and homely
qualities. Women, quite unexpectedly, also capitalise on the beautiful side in men, their
physical build, psychological and homely qualities. However, apart from that they seem to
expect different psychological virtues from those men expect from them. Further, by requiring
professionalism and solvency in men, women tend to perpetuate, to the dismay of feminists,
the unwanted image of man as a support of woman both economically and psychologically.
What is also interesting in this perspective is that both genders tacitly agree that physical,
psychological, and economic features rank highest among their social priorities as leaks from
their respective uses of grammatical categories.
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