Who Said Women Talk Alike? Investigating Women’s Language Variation within Tiaret Speech Community.

Abstract

The present research work is an attempt to investigate women’s speech in Tiaret speech community. The main purpose of this work is to describe the linguistic features of females and the main factors that influence language variation and change. This research consists of three chapters. The first one is an overview of sociolinguistics and gender studies; the significant theories and key concepts included in both fields. The second chapter is dedicated for the methodology and the tools used to conduct this research in the speech community. The third one is devoted for data collection and interpretations, as well as limitations of the study. In this chapter we try to show how speech features differ from one female speaker to another, relating these features to social variables such as the level of education, gender and age. We have collected data using the qualitative method. The results helped us understand that women’s speech varies and changes depending on certain social and structural factors that affect the way they speak