Exploring the Role of Gender in Lexical Creations

Abstract

The present study aims at identifying gender differences, in the use of lexical inventions in Foreign Language (FL) writing within a school context. Gender is one of the most basic criteria of classifying people into groups. Myriad studies have concentrated on examining gender differences in different areas of cognition and learning. The main areas in which gender differences have been researched are verbal skills, mathematical skills and visual-spatial abilities. Gender differences in language acquisition have been repeatedly demonstrated with results pointing to girls as more able language acquirers than boys. The appearance of lexical creations in language learners’ productions can be considered as a manifestation of a productive use of vocabulary. These lexical inventions provide insights into the mental processes that underlie productive vocabulary use. Studies devoted to the exploration of gender differences in productive vocabulary use as regards the particular aspect of the creation of new, innovative lexical items are scarce. The present research intends to fill this gap in the literature. Then, the study conducted to explore gender differences in the production of lexical creations is accounted for and the main results are detailed and discussed. Finally, conclusions are drawn, the shortcomings of the study are stated and some future lines of research within this field are suggested.