Verbal markers of Gender Roles Expression in the English-Language Literary Discourse through Truman Capote’s novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale”
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Published:
Jun 30, 2026
Keywords:
Genderlect, Discursive Performance of Identity, Subversion of Gender Stereotypes, Pragmatic Signaling, Lexico-Semantic Nuances, Stylistic Signifiers
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Abstract
Gender identity and gender stereotypes constitute important dimensions of social communication, and their study in literary discourse contributes to understanding the mechanisms through which they are formed and represented. Examining the verbal expression of gender roles in literature makes it possible not only to trace the linguistic strategies used by authors but also to analyse their potential impact on readers. Despite growing scholarly interest in gender studies, insufficient attention has been devoted to comparative analyses of the verbal means through which gender roles are constructed in English-language literary discourse. This study addresses this gap by examining the linguistic representation of gender in selected literary works. The research employed several complementary methods: the inductive-deductive method was used to observe, describe, and classify gender characteristics in English-language literary discourse; the descriptive-analytical method supported direct analysis of linguistic features at the empirical level, followed by comparison and generalisation; and componential, contextual, and stylistic analyses were applied to describe semantic components and identify patterns of realisation in the texts. The analysis of verbal means expressing gender roles in Truman Capote’s Breakfast at Tiffany’s and Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale demonstrates the diversity of approaches to gender representation in English-language literary discourse. The study shows that lexical, stylistic, and semantic means play a central role in shaping character images and in reflecting social norms, stereotypes, and cultural expectations. The findings and conclusions are of practical relevance for linguists and other specialists interested in gender linguistics, literary discourse, and the language-based construction of identity.
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Shchyhlo, L., Movchan, D., Aleksenko, S., & RohuliaА. (2026). Verbal markers of Gender Roles Expression in the English-Language Literary Discourse through Truman Capote’s novella “Breakfast at Tiffany’s” and Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” . Traduction Et Langues, 25(01), 345-362. Retrieved from https://revue.univ-oran2.dz/revuetranslang/index.php/translang/article/view/1088
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References
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Searle, J. (1989). Conversation. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Selivanova, O. O. (2010). Linguistic encyclopedia. Dovkillya-K.
Shevchenko, I. (2005). Cognitive-pragmatic studies of discourse. In Discourse as a cognitive-communicative phenomenon (pp. 105–117). Konstanta.
Sousa, A. (2022). Gender representation in French Eurolect: An open dialogue between supranational and national legal varieties. Journal of Pragmatics, 196, 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.04.014
Subon, F. (2013). Gender differences in the use of linguistic forms in the speech of men and women in the Malaysian context. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3, 67–79.
Tang, J. (2022). Evaluative language and gender stereotyping: A case study of the perpetuation of sexism in literary translation. Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 30(6), 1027–1042. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2022.2050930
Thiele, M. (2023). Geschlechterstereotype und Geschlechterrollen. In Handbuch Medien und Geschlecht. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20707-6_10
Widdowson, H. G. (1991). The description and prescription of language. In Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 11–24). Georgetown University Press.
Belova, A. (2020). Gender vs. grammatical gender in modern English. Studia Linguistica, 17, 9–21. https://doi.org/10.17721/StudLing2020.17.9-21
Capote, T. (2000). Breakfast at Tiffany's. Penguin Books. https://fatimekerimli.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/12/breakfast_at_tiffanys-truman_capote.pdf
Charlesworth, T. E. S., Yang, V., Mann, T. C., Kurdi, B., & Banaji, M. R. (2021). Gender stereotypes in natural language: Word embeddings show robust consistency across child and adult language corpora of more than 65 million words. Psychological Science, 32(2), 218–240. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620963619
Dev, S., Monajatipoor, M., Ovalle, A., Subramonian, A., Phillips, J. M., & Chang, K.-W. (2021). Harms of gender exclusivity and challenges in non-binary representation in language technologies. arXiv. https://arxiv.org/abs/2108.12084
Eagly, A. H. (1998). Sex differences in social behavior: A social role interpretation. Psychology Press.
Efing, C., & Heinemann, S. (2024). Geschlechterstereotype in den Medien: Genderlinguistische Einblicke in aktuelle Diskurse und Kommunikate. Budrich Academic Press.
Formanowicz, M., & Hansen, K. (2022). Subtle linguistic cues affecting gender (in)equality. Journal of Language and Social Psychology術, 41(2), 127–147. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X211035170
Goodhew, S. C., Reynolds, K., Edwards, M., & Kidd, E. (2022). The content of gender stereotypes embedded in language use. Journal of Pragmatics, 196, 1–15. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0261927X211033930
Jespersen, O. (1922). Language: Its nature, development and origin. Allen & Unwin.
Kikinezhdi, O. M., Zhyrska, H. Ya., Chip, R. S., Vasylkevych, Y. Z., & Hovorun, T. V. (2020). Psychology of the gender-equitable environment: Research of problems. Journal of Intellectual Disability – Diagnosis and Treatment, 8, 538–547. https://doi.org/10.6000/2292-2598.2020.08.03.31
Kotek, H., Dockum, R., Babinski, S., & Geissler, C. (2021). Gender bias and stereotypes in linguistic example sentences. Language, 97(4), 653–677. https://doi.org/10.1353/lan.2021.0060
Laoli, C. I. M. (2021). Gender differences in the use of personal pronouns in television advertisements. Annual International Conference on Language and Literature (AICLL), 175–188. https://doi.org/10.18502/kss.v5i4.8676
Lewis, M., & Lupyan, G. (2020). Gender stereotypes are reflected in the distributional structure of 25 languages. Nature Human Behaviour, 4, 1021–1028. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-020-0918-6
Martin, C. L., & Halverson, C. F., Jr. (1981). A schematic processing model of sex typing and stereotyping in children. Child Development, 52, 1119–1134. https://doi.org/10.2307/1129498
Mauthner, F. (1982). Beiträge zu einer Kritik der Sprache. Ullstein.
Monzó-Nebot, E. (2021). La representació de la dona i els usos lingüístics: Revisió d’estudis sobre la interacció entre les formes masculines i el biaix de gènere. Revista de Llengua i Dret, (76), 141–168. https://doi.org/10.2436/rld.i76.2021.3730
Novosad, Y., Tsepeniuk, T., Golovatska, Y., Yarema, O., & Chumak, H. (2022). Gender discourse: Representation of ideas about the distribution of gender roles. Studies in Media and Communication, 10(3), 152–159. https://redfame.com/journal/index.php/smc/article/viewFile/5846/5965
Obaidullah, M. (2021). Meaning and definitions of gender. University of Barishal. https://www.academia.edu/39900774/Meaning_and_Definitions_of_Gender
Obidovna, D. Z. (2022). Gender speech behavior in the context of the socio-linguistic factor. Web of Scientist: International Scientific Research Journal, 3(6), 190–198. https://wos.academiascience.org/index.php/wos/article/view/1859/1762
Plaza-del-Arco, F. M., Cercas Curry, A., Curry, A., Abercrombie, G., & Hovy, D. (2024). Angry men, sad women: Large language models reflect gendered stereotypes in emotion attribution. In L.-W. Ku, A. F. T. Martins, & V. Srikumar (Eds.), Proceedings of the 62nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (Volume 1: Long Papers) (pp. 7682–7696). Association for Computational Linguistics. https://doi.org/10.18653/v1/2024.acl-long.415
Pryzgoda, J., & Chrisler, J. (2000). Definitions of gender and sex: The subtleties of meaning. Sex Roles, 43(7–8), 553–569. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1007123617636
Ratanaphithayaporn, J., & Rodrigo, R. (2020). Gender inclusive language impacts on international university students' perception of how involved they are in society. In Proceedings of the 5th National Undergraduate Conference on Humanities and Social Sciences (pp. 72–86). Prince of Songkla University. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/351692102_Gender_inclusive_language_Impacts_on_international_university_students_perception_of_how_involved_they_are_in_society
Romaine, S. (1998). Communicating gender. Psychology Press.
Sankaran, A. N., Shankaran, V., Lonka, S., & Sharma, R. (2024). Revisiting the classics: A study on identifying and rectifying gender stereotypes in rhymes and poems. In N. Calzolari, M.-Y. Kan, V. Hoste, A. Lenci, S. Sakti, & N. Xue (Eds.), Proceedings of the 2024 Joint International Conference on Computational Linguistics, Language Resources and Evaluation (LREC-COLING 2024). ELRA Language Resources Association. https://arxiv.org/abs/2403.11752
Sapir, E. (1990). Male and female forms of speech in Yana (1929). In P. Sapir & W. Bright (Eds.), American Indian languages 1 (Vol. 5, pp. 335–342). De Gruyter Mouton. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110871630.335
Searle, J. (1989). Conversation. John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Selivanova, O. O. (2010). Linguistic encyclopedia. Dovkillya-K.
Shevchenko, I. (2005). Cognitive-pragmatic studies of discourse. In Discourse as a cognitive-communicative phenomenon (pp. 105–117). Konstanta.
Sousa, A. (2022). Gender representation in French Eurolect: An open dialogue between supranational and national legal varieties. Journal of Pragmatics, 196, 54–66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2022.04.014
Subon, F. (2013). Gender differences in the use of linguistic forms in the speech of men and women in the Malaysian context. Journal of Humanities and Social Science, 3, 67–79.
Tang, J. (2022). Evaluative language and gender stereotyping: A case study of the perpetuation of sexism in literary translation. Perspectives: Studies in Translation Theory and Practice, 30(6), 1027–1042. https://doi.org/10.1080/0907676X.2022.2050930
Thiele, M. (2023). Geschlechterstereotype und Geschlechterrollen. In Handbuch Medien und Geschlecht. Springer VS. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-20707-6_10
Widdowson, H. G. (1991). The description and prescription of language. In Georgetown University Round Table on Languages and Linguistics (pp. 11–24). Georgetown University Press.