A McMaster Undergraduate Study of the Social Origins and Implications of Slang and Gendered Language

Abstract

Previous American studies on university slang such as Pamela Munro’s UCLA Project have stated that there are more derogatory terms to describe women than men, and that there are more complimentary and varied terms for men. In “The Semantic Derogation of Women” and “Gender Marking in American English,” Muriel Schulz and Julia Penelope remark that women are mainly described in relation to men. Florie Aranovitch observes that women are labeled in positive and negative extremes in Munro’s Slang U. Finally, Schulz and Penelope claim that men are mainly using the derogatory terms for women. The purpose of this original study is to investigate how gendered words are used in a Canadian university context, particularly in McMaster University of 2005. The McMaster survey reveals that the number of complimentary and derogatory terms used to describe men and women are almost equal, and that traditional stereotypes of men and women still exist but are more relaxed. Another interesting result is that women appear to be using derogatory terms as often, if not more than men. According to this study, the usage of gendered language in McMaster University does not privilege men and degrade women to the extent that was maintained in previous American slang studies.