Assignment six: Gender differences in Reality TV
This paper aims to explore whether there is a relationship between the use of swearing and gender. It focuses on swearing occurred in two episodes of a reality TV show entitled Hell’s Kitchen hosted by celebrity chef Gordon Ramsay. In this cooking reality show, a team of men and a team of women engage in a number of cooking challenges and dinner services, competing for the position of head chef at one of the finest restaurant owned by Ramsay.
Expletives found in the dialogue and monologues of the two selected episodes have been recorded in a table according to the frequency of occurrence, word uses, and the gender of its user.
Table 1 The characters’ frequent uses of the swearing
Expletives Number
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As the table above indicates, both men and women frequently used the word ‘F**k’ in its adjectival form, either as a modifying intensifying negative adjective, as seen in the example “the f**king crepe”, or emphatic adjectival filler, as in “in our f**king kitchen”. Another form of the word ‘f**k’ is the verbal formal accompanied with a particle as in “we are f**ked off” and was only reported twice in men’s speech when they were describing how bad was their loss at the cooking challenge. The third expletive in the list is the word ‘B**ch’ which was only used by the female characters either for insulting their female partners (N=2) or for indexing power and leadership (N=2) as in “you’ll see these b**ches show you how to cook”. Number four in the list is the swear word ‘D**n’ which is used by two women and a man to indicate an extreme temper when things did not go well in the cooking challenges. Next expletive in the list is the word ‘H**l’ which is used only by two male characters to convey a negative message when talking about the female cooks. The fifth expletive in the list is ‘S**k’, which appeared once in the women’s speech when a female cook was describing a disgusting punishment for her team loss at the challenge by drinking a seafood shake. The last expletive in the list is ‘P**s off’, which is found only once in host’s speech when he was angrily describing his …show more content…
As implied by the title of the TV show, this cooking competition is not a regular competition but it is like going to the hell as it includes huge distress accompanied by yelling, tears, and a burst of negative emotions. So, most of the competitors should have used a lot of swearing to indicate the dreadful experience they have in the Hell’s Kitchen. In other words, both male and female characters seemed to use a lot of swearing to reflect the furious moments they underwent in the Hell’s Kitchen, which in turn, represents the theme of this reality show. Besides the above mentioned explanation, analyzing the nature of the TV show could explain men’s and women’s equal swearing occurred in the selected episodes of this TV
Michael Abernathy’s article “Male Bashing on TV” uses many television sources and percentages to explain how men are treated like idiots inside of the media. Abernathy is a television reviewer, cultural critic, and queer culture commentator (350). While Heather Havrilesky's article “TV’s New Wave of Women:Smart, Strong, Borderline Insane” is the opposite and uses television sources to explain how women are treated as smart yet crazy inside of the media. These two articles describe how men and women are portrayed differently in television shows and the media. The articles have smaller subtopics in common which are the portrayal of men and women in the media, the comparison of men and women in each article, and how Abernathy and Havrilesky want
It is often said that the media and the arts are an accurate reflection of any given community. This is especially true in American pop-culture, where television shows depict the various stereotypes attributed to men and women and the roles they play in society. House, a highly popular medical drama that revolves around Dr. Gregory House and his diagnostic team, is a particularly good example as it represents the true state of the traditional gender roles in American culture today by, both, redefining and reinforcing them over the course of the show.
Quentin Tarantino’s film, Pulp Fiction, uses words to the fullest of their meanings. Words in the film amplify meaning through their duplicity. Characters call one another names wherein the names’ meanings enhance our understanding of what the character is saying. Even if the author or speaker does not consciously intend the meaning, the language that this paper analyzes contains meaning of psychological importance. Characters’ actual names in the film are also of particular significanc e. Nearly every character’s name reflects his personality or role in the film. Because people are human and integrating a name and personality is difficult, it is only genius for every name to be significant and meaningful. Yet, it may be surprising ho w well thought out the naming of the characters is. Pulp Fiction also touches on the interpretive value of words. Oftentimes, a person or group of people may understand the same definition of a word but interpret it differently. Language is prim arily a means of communicating ideas. The film makes an interesting point of how the actual words used may be irrelevant to the idea being portrayed. In sum, Pulp Fiction demonstrates how the meaning of speech can depend either on the choice of w ords used or on the prescribed reaction to word’s usage.
There were countless uses of the word fuck and motherfucker. Also, there were instances of moderate to mild language such as “dickhead”, “jerking me off”, and “pricks”. Finally, some of the language used is sexual/biological such as "go fuck yourself", "motherfucker", and “butt-fucked.” (I apologize for typing the language used here, but I felt it helped to answer the question.)
After discussing the use of swear words amongst Tourette’s patients she begins to discuss the physiological aspects of swearing. She speaks on “higher order linguistic circuits are tapped, to contrive the content of curse. The brain’s impulse control center struggles to short-circuit the collusion between limbic-system urge and the neocortical craft, and it may succeed for a time.” (772). While this is interesting to look at the chemical and physiological processes carried out by the human brain in the urge to swear she does not finish she thought process. She ineffectively ends the article with “Yet the urge still mounts, until at last the speech pathways fire, the verboten is spoken and archaic and refined brains alike must shoulder the blame.” (772). This is in no way a conclusion to the article and is likely to leave the readers with an uneasy feeling of confusion.
Furthermore, Leighton's friends use abbreviations, which is a sign of colloquial speech (Danziger 44): “'What was [Janet's] manner like?' Kate asked. 'Professional. Not at all personal, as some of the younger profs are (…)'” (Cross 98). Instead of speaking of 'professors', he uses 'profs', which represents not only the register used by students, but also that he feels comfortable enough to use familar speech around Kate even though she herself is a 'prof'. Leighton's friend Judith uses vulgar words, such as “crap” (Cross 99), and
Flynn, Charles P. "Sexuality and Insult Behaviour." The Journal of Sex Research 12.1 (1976): 1-13. JSTOR. Web. 04 May 2010.
This inconsistency in the English language is hard to rectify, considering it is not the dictionary definition that needs altering, but the associations society as a whole has with these words. Therefore, in this circumstance the blame for the sexist lexical asymmetry does not lay with the English language, but with society’s interpretation of the vocabulary. The regular occurrence of marked terms for female roles is a second example where the English language may be seen as degrading to women. Illustrations of this include ‘actress’ for females, where a suffix has been added onto the end of the unmarked mal... ...
"TV's Most Offensive Words | Media | MediaGuardian." Latest News, Comment and Reviews from the Guardian | Guardian.co.uk. 25 Nov. 2005. Web. Dec. 2010. .
Woman qua meat is a reiterated conceit”. There is a great deal of truth to Cornyetz’s criticism of women being metaphors for meat and vice versa. Jane herself pitched the “Wife of the Week” featured in the show as “appetizing…the Meat Made Manifest: ample, robust, yet never hard to digest” (Ozeki, 8.2). The show’s goal is to promote masculine American beef to female Japanese consumers (Chiu). In My American Wife, women are relentlessly being linked to meat and Cornyetz also goes further to suggest that they are being linked to “capital – as objects for (male) sexual consumption”. This expansion of Cornyetz’s argument is important since it highlights the depiction of both meat and women in a pornographic light and represents the insinuation of a fractured America (Chiu, 112.1); as “appetizing” (Ozeki, 8.2).
The origins of gendered word and phrases are a debated topic. To clarify, a word that has a gendered meaning is an utterance that refers to a particular gender or is categorized to a particular gender. While some people believe that the interpretation of the listener is responsible for deriving the gendered meanings of words, others believe that the meanings of gendered adjectives and phrases originate from speaker intent. I believe, however, the context in which a word is used, how it is presented, and the context with which it is interpreted, affect its meaning. This “context” also includes the cultural background of both the speaker and the interpreter. From my perspective, gendered words gain their meanings from various sources, which include both the intentions of the speaker and the interpretations of the hearer.
Michelle Johnson Mpj5106 SCA # 2 Family Guy is an animated television show that follows the life of an American family. This show depicts its characters in a gender stereotypical way. Peter, the father, acts typical to his gender role. He is the “man of the house”, working at an assembly line job to bring in money for the family and then coming home to watch television and drink beer for the rest of the day. Peter’s wife, Louis, is portrayed as a nagging housewife character.
Zachary Nelson Brad Flis Eng 114 19 NOV 2015 How I Met Your Mother Gender & Media Analysis The popular comedy television series of How I Met Your Mother is a show that depicts a group of friends living in New York City and somewhat centers its focus on their relationships in a comical fashion. Possesses multiple characters that make up the main cast who all represent different personalities, stereotypes and tropes but my analysis will be focused on Barney Stinson and Robin Scherbatsky. Some examples tropes that appear throughout this show include but are not limited to The Bro Code and The Lad-ette. The restrictive behavior of Barney and the progressive behavior of Robin create a terrible combination for a relationship. Barney Stinson, a man with a passion for suits and bros, is a businessman who spends his free time at the local bar “McLarens” with his friends.
Swearing goes back to the Victorian Era where a woman’s right were extremely limited and their rights were given to their spouse. This is where the notion of power of a swear word comes in and where the stereotypes comes in concerning men swearing more than women. Both men and women have a different view on who swears more and when. There are also many factors that affect when and why a person swears more. It can be due to the age, race, ethnicity, and situation. In this paper I will be focusing on gender differences in frequency of swearing. The theories surrounding this topic include but are not limited to the Separate World Hypothesis, Lackoffs’ “Women’s Language” theory, and Howard Gile’s Accommodation theory.
Maritza sat down at the lunch area for her two hour break sitting in the same spot listening to what both gender students would say. The total for all the curse words heard from females was five and for male five as well. The test was gathered as tallies marking every time Maritza heard any curse word, from both genders the curse word "Shit" was heard two times by females and three times by males. Fuck was not heard by both genders, which was very surprising based on what personal experiences heard at UHD café. The curse word "Damn" was heard twice by both genders, "Bitch" was not said by any male and but was only heard by one female. The last curse word, "M'f" was not heard by both genders. The results were converted to both of the figures shown below, in Figure 3 40% of males used the curse word "damn" and 60% used "shit". In figure 4, 20% of females used "bitch", 40% used "shit" and 40% used "damn". Notice that in figure 3 only two curse words were more common compared to figure 4 were females used the curse word "bitch" and males did