Study on Female Linguistics Features in New Sunday Times' Feature Stories by Male and Female Journalists

Wong, Elise Huey Wen (2022) Study on Female Linguistics Features in New Sunday Times' Feature Stories by Male and Female Journalists. Final Year Project (Bachelor), Tunku Abdul Rahman University College.

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Abstract

‘Sob sister’ journalism has set irreversible stereotypes for the pioneering female journalists that certainly hold them back in the newsroom. This has stopped female journalists from being hard news reporters and beat journalists because they are presumably in the masculine field in the newsroom. Contrary to the previous sociolinguistic studies on novels and films, this research explores the use of female language features in feature stories by male and female journalists from two particular sections in New Sunday Times which are “Sunday Vibes” and “Cars, Bikes and Trucks”. In this research, 128 feature stories by both male and female journalists from New Sunday Times are analysed through content analysis to determine the amount of emotional and sentimental linguistic features used by each gender. At the same time, 103 news readers are recruited to answer a survey questionnaire to study their perception towards the relationship between the use of emotional and sentimental linguistic features by male and female journalists. Results of the research show that the use of sentimental and emotional linguistic features is not necessarily determined by the gender of the journalists and the respondents have inconsistent perceptions towards the relationship between the use of sentimental and emotional linguistic features and the gender of the journalists. Similar to the first assumption of the muted group theory, the majority of the respondents still believe that female journalists write more emotionally and sentimentally than male journalists