Foucauldian Analysis of the Influence of Gendered Clichés on Young Learners: A Case Study

Abstract

This research work is aimed at studying how frequently gendered language is used; how far its usage is recognized, and how far the speakers perceive their ideologies to be influenced by the usage of such language in the sampled population in Chiniot and Faisalabad. This research work extracts its theoretical framework from Michele Foucault’s concept of regulatory power exercised through language (1974), and applies it to gendered language used in Pakistani society. It tries to investigate how gender biased clichés commonly used in Urdu promote and perpetuate women presence as greedy, silly, sentimental and emotional beings. A thirty item questionnaire has been administered to sampled population of 40 students. The data has been analyzed with the help of SPSS (Version 17) by using descriptive statistics. To find how common the statements are, how far are they understood by the users to be gender biased, or can the users find out or quantify the influence of such statements on their minds; frequencies, mean values and sums of responses have been calculated. The results reveal that usage of such statements is quite frequent, and the users also realize that the statements are gendered. However, the results for the third question: how far they think that their ideology is being influenced by such gendered statements, are surprising. A great number of students believe that they are not influenced by such statements, then the question arises how such statements can be so prevalent in any society, if they are not well accepted. The research implies that this area of discourse analysis needs to be properly explored, such statements should be pointed out, and their compromising impacts on thinking process of masses, particularly of young learners, must be studied.