The Gender Paradox and Its Reception in Hungarian Sociolinguistics

Abstract

According to the traditional approach of Labovian quantitative sociolinguistics, language use of women and men can be described in terms of their inherent sex differences. One of the models explaining these differences has been articulated in the so-called gender paradox, which posits that women are both innovative and conservative language users in opposition to men. In this study I contrast the international and national reception of this paradox in order to show if third-wave feminist critique has emerged in Hungarian sociolinguistics related to the study of gender differences as manifested in the gender paradox, or if sociolinguistics research of gender and language is (necessarily) dominated by strategic essentialism.