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This study is trying to examice gender differences by analyzing the written narratives in Chinese, especially personal narratives about one's father or mother. I choose to use personal narrative of one's father or mother as the bases for my study because personal narratives serve as self-portrait. By writing on our relationship with our father or mother, we are revealing our fellings, sense of identity of ourselves and our parents and how these sets of relationship were constructed via a series of linguistic devices. Thus, written personal narrative is a rich resource for the display of self and identity constructed through verbal socialization. By studying written narratives and analyzing them from sociocultural perspective, this study has tried to alert readers to areas of language and society, viewing language as a locus for discourse formation where various social forces take place and where speakers actively construct their sense of identity. Through the study, we are able to see that the linguistic differences used by women and man are not innate nor idiosyncartic, and being aware of the cause of the difference of language use between men and women leads us to take another look at the social relation between the two sexes. Therefore, the linguistic differences between men and women are worth studying because they can help us understand where such differences come form and be aware of the impact that such differences have on our percepotions of ourselves and our everyday socialization. In conclusion, the present study has been an attempt to find out how gender difference is constructed in language and explore the sociocultural causes for such difference. By comparing linguistic devices such as topics, settings, language, roles, and physical descriptions used for one's father or mother, we are able to see how our interaction and expectations of father and mother are constructed, reflected and reproduced. This enables us to know how our societ impose certain stereotypical expectations on indeviduals, men and women, through personal narratives.
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