Gender and Communication in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out

Authors

  • Dr. Abha Pandey Professor and Head, Department of English, Government Mahakoshal Arts and Commerce College, Jabalpur
  • Mona Gupta Assistant Professor of English, Government Arts College Panagar, Jabalpur

Keywords:

gender, communication, linguistic features

Abstract

It is a well-known fact that gender differentiation is all pervasive. It permeates all spheres of life. The domain of language is no exception to it. In the early 1970’s, linguists and psychologists began to give great attention to dominance and differences in male and female communication. Robin Lakoff, a well-known linguist, finds link between language and gender in her book Language and Woman’s Place (1975) in which her theory affirms that there is a distinct male and a female language. Her theory was supported as well as challenged by other known theoretical approaches. This paper aims at addressing major theories of language along with gender and tracing its applicability in Manjula Padmanabhan’s play, Lights Out. The study of expressions in language spoken by male and female characters in Lights Out will search linguistic features which can be used to redress gender traits.

Author Biographies

Dr. Abha Pandey, Professor and Head, Department of English, Government Mahakoshal Arts and Commerce College, Jabalpur

Abha Pandey is Professor and Head, Department of English, Government Mahakoshal Arts and Commerce College, Jabalpur. She has a teaching experience of 40 years. She has guided many research scholars and many more are registered under her. She has presented papers at international and national conferences. To her credit are articles published in International National journals and a book entitled Indian Diasporic Literature.

Mona Gupta, Assistant Professor of English, Government Arts College Panagar, Jabalpur

Mona Gupta is an Assistant Professor of English at Government Arts College, Panagar, Jabalpur. She has a teaching experience of 30 years. Presently, she is registered as a research scholar at Rani Durgavati University Jabalpur, under Dr. Abha Pandey.

References

Holmes, Janet., Miriam Meyerhoff (ed). The Handbook of Language and Gender. UK: Blackwell publishing 2003.

Jennifer, Coates. Women, men and Language: A Sociolinguistic account of gender difference in Language. Routledge:2004.

Lakoff, Robin. “Language and Woman’s Place”. Lang. Soc. 2, 45-80.

Litosseliti, Lia. Gender and Language Theory and Practice. Routledge:2014

Padmanabhan, Manjula. Lights Out, Body Blows: The Three Plays. Calcutta: Seagull Publication Calcutta 2000.

Downloads

Published

01.07.2020

How to Cite

Dr. Abha Pandey, & Mona Gupta. (2020). Gender and Communication in Manjula Padmanabhan’s Lights Out. Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literature, 11(3), 23–27. Retrieved from https://journals.eltai.in/index.php/jtrel/article/view/32

Issue

Vol. 11 No. 3 (2020): July

Section

Research Articles

License

Articles are the intellectual property of the authors. The Journal of Teaching and Research in English Literature does not take ownership of the copyright of any published article. Authors retain the copyright to their articles and may republish these articles as part of a book or other materials. However, while republishing an article published in JTREL, the author must ensure that the following conditions have been met:

  • The source of the publication (the title, volume, number and URL of the Journal) should be acknowledged.
  • The article will remain published on the JTREL website (except on the occasion of a retraction of the article) and licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.
  • We do not allow the distribution and transmission of plagiaristic works based on the articles that appear in our journal.
  • Readers may not use the articles for commercial purposes unless they get the written permission of the author and publisher. To disseminate copies for commercial purposes, write to editor.JTREL@gmail.com