An Investigation into Differences between Men’s and Women’s Language Stylesin Nahj-ul-Balagha and Fadakieh in Light of Lakoff’s Theory

Language is one of the fundamental elements in stylistics and gender, in turn, is of significance to the language of literary texts. Robin Lakoff is the first theorist of linguistics to discuss his views on the female speech patterns in discourse. From his point of view, male and female language is more projected in speech than in writing; a sample of Nahj-ul-Balagha and the guidance of Fadakieh of Hazrat Zahra sermons were selected for their similarities in terms of the conditions and subjects and were analyzed based on Lakoff's theory. Lakoff's phonological, lexical, and syntactic elements along with emotional - related concept were employed to descriptively analyze the selected sermons in terms of the linguistic features manifested in the speech of males and females. The patterns obtained appeared to match up, though partially, with Lakoff’s model in difference between males and females in terms of rhyme, pun, using adjectives, questions, syntactic coordination. They, however, did not differ in terms of emphatic expressions, oaths, and taboo words. The mismatch of the western point of view and that of the infallibles is utterly obvious. It is stands to logic to argue that the infallibles did not discriminate for/against one gender rather depending on the condition and topic of their speech resorted to different styles.