GENDER AND LANGUAGE ATTITUDES TOWARDS PUNJABI: A DOMAIN-BASED ANALYSIS

Abstract

Punjabi, despite being the largest language spoken in Pakistan, continues to have a marginal status in the country due to its use in informal domains. Females’ contribution towards shaping the attitudes in a certain language is significant. The study tried to find out if gender plays any role in shaping attitudes towards Punjabi by using Fishman’s (1972) classification of Domains into five types, namely family, friendship, education, relationships and transactions to determine domains of language use and Rosenberg and Hovland’s (1960) Tripartite Model of Language Attitudes as the theoretical framework for determining attitudes towards Punjabi. Thirty males and thirty females who identified themselves as ethnic Punjabis were asked to respond to a language attitudes Likert Scale questionnaire. The results showed that the females did indeed have a negative attitude towards Punjabi language, thus corroborating the initial hypothesis of the study. However, the age of the participants and their educational level had no bearing on the attitudes of Punjabis towards the Punjabi language. The study proved that gender plays an important role in shaping the attitudes towards a certain language.