Sexist Language in the Social Magazines of Iran: A Case Study of Four High-Circulating Magazines

Language is a social phenomenon affected by various factors including gender. In different societies, language sexism causes oppression and discrimination against one of the genders (usually females) explicitly and implicitly. The aim of the present study is to see if there is language sexism in Iranian social magazines and if so, whether it is explicit or implicit. To accomplish the above goal, a random sample of sixty stories was drawn from four high-circulating periodicals: Khanevade Sabz, Ruzhaye Zendegi, Khane Sabz and Fazilat Khanevade. The texts of these stories were scrutinized with respect to such features relevant to men and women as depiction of names, emotional and personality characteristics, reaction in stressful situations and finally attributes, metaphors and allusions employed to portray them. The results of data analysis revealed that the language of the stories was not sexist with regard to the depiction of namxxxxxes and representation of characters but gender discrimination was significantly observed in other cases under study both explicitly and implicitly.