Analysis of ‘’Nora’s First Job’’ in relation to Language and Gender

Analysis of ‘’Nora’s First Job’’ in relation to Language and Gender

 

1)      With detailed reference to Text H and to relevant ideas from language study, explore how language is used to represent gender.

 

Text H is a third person narrative written in the 1960’ about a woman named Nora and her job, from this we can assume that the main target audience are young females who might be able to relate to Nora’s experience. Like most narrative the primary purpose of text H is to entertain.

During the opening we meet two potential main characters of this story: Nora Robinson and Lisette Alexander; through the use of verbs, adjectives and lexical field of fashion the author uses both women to represent each gender. Nora Robinson is said to be wearing ‘’new-high heeled shoes, new tan-coloured suit and a gay little hat.’’ The adjective ‘’new’’ is used as a pre-modifier to describe her clothes, this shows that she might have bought her clothes specifically for this occasion and is therefore making a lot of effort. From the title we can assume that Nora did this because she badly wants the job, the audience might find this relatable as maybe they might have been in this situation before. The adjective ‘’gay’’ when describing the hat could also be seen as a representation as to what Nora herself is like as a person: happy, carefree and bubbly, because of the age of the narrative this might have been the standard expectation of women back then. ‘’little’’ could suggest that Nora herself is physically small which again could suggest that this is what women were meant to be.  Throughout the narrative Nora is shown to be the weaker person of the two women, which could be further evidence to the fact that she is meant to represent females, she is also portrayed to be the more emotional one.  When telling Lisette about her job interview she did so ‘’eagerly,’’ when realizing that her and Lisette had the same job interview she was said to let out a ‘’little gasp.’’ The adverb ‘’eagerly’’ shows that Nora is a very enthusiastic person as does ‘’little gasp,’’ this again could imply that women are very emotional person. Lisette Alexander contrasts against Nora greatly, and because of this we can assume that she is meant to represent the male gender. One way we can see this is through Lisette’s speech: ‘’you should be more careful!’’ this fits in with Lakoff’s theory that suggests men use more imperatives than women.  The exclamatory suggests that Lisette was displeased by Nora barging into her; it also shows that Lisette is the more dominant speaker and holds the most power. This is because only those who are sure of their power would be able to use an imperative, and in such a tone. Nora’s language on the other hand is more deficient, this is due to her over use of intensifiers ‘’so much’’ as well as empty adjectives.  In comparison to Nora, Lisette’s actions contains more force with them for example ‘’examined.’’ The dynamic verb suggests a methodical and emotionless approach to her actions. It also suggests power behind her actions as well as sureness. Nora’s actions lack more the confidence that Lisette’s contains and is generally more incompetent. When seeing Lisette enter the building of her interview Nora ‘’hesitated;’’ the verb shows that Nora was second-guessing her decision.  This situation might appeal to the target audience because they too might feel that they are unqualified for a job and can therefore understand Nora’s in-decision.