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Research Paper | Language Research | India | Volume 12 Issue 11, November 2023 | Rating: 5.2 / 10

Phallogocentricism' of English Language: Perceiving under Gender and Colonial Theories

Suparna Roy | Prasenjit Bhattacharjee

Abstract: Otto Jespersen believed in the "reciprocal influence of language and the personality of its speakers" (Jespersen, 1983). Language and culture has an integrated and complex dynamics, a nature that has frequently sparked the desire to question the Language systems that exists. Amidst the numerous and diversified cultures that subsists; however, English Language and its supreme authority has resulted in the 'colonial hangover' to prevail over the colonized psyches till date. Language is one of the branches among many that allow 'power' to flow. Language rules, it oppresses, it controls, it orders, it denies, it accepts, it silences, it voices, it suppresses, it frees, and above all it does everything to construct a binarized strategical order of existence. Language is composed a signifier, signified and a sign, and all of them are arbitrarily connected. When Derrida in his essay Diff?rance, establishes that language is a flux of is and is not, present and absent, which differs and defers creating its existence in its trace and not its place. In my paper, I would therefore focus on few technical aspects of English Language and how it became a power of cultural oppression till now.

Keywords: Power, binary, post-colonialism, gender, centre, other, oriental

Edition: Volume 12 Issue 11, November 2023,

Pages: 831 - 834