Naughty boys and sexy girls

21st Century = equality, right? Cathrine Norberg decided to investigate, using the New Model
Corpus, a 100 million word corpus of current English drawn from the web, to see if there were
any differences in the usage of the words GIRL and BOY.

Norberg started by examining verbs and found that boys are frequently associated with physical
activities. Jump, runand kick for example, were mainly found with BOY. GIRL was principally
used with non-movement verbs, like sit andwait. Play was strongly linked to BOY, although the
thinking verbs,discover and understand were also exclusive to BOY, suggesting they are more
curious and mentally active.

Girls were the objects of verbs far more often than boys. The violent verbs rape, traffick,
abduct, assault, attack and steal were all exclusively found with GIRL, whereas the only similar
verbs with BOY as the object were beat and drown, suggesting that girls are more frequently
represented as victims. GIRL was much more frequently the object ofmarry, indicating that the
idea of girls being given in marriage still persists. GIRL was often used as the object of date,
love, and fuck, showing that females are seen as passive objects of male sexuality.

Norberg also analysed adjectives, dividing them into three groups:

 In physical appearance, female identity was closely connected to appearance, often with sexual
undertones. Attractive andsexy are more frequent with GIRL and the use of naked suggests that
there is a stronger connection between nakedness and sexuality when it is a girl who is without
clothes (I spot a naked young boy chasing a cow vs. ...viewing naked girls was a matter of
sexual delight). Boys were discussed in terms of their physical size, with big also used in the
sense of importance. Girls were more often described as little but in the sense of sweetness and
innocence (...that little girl is so cute). Young was also used more with GIRL, although
freshness, in terms of girls sexuality, was a more common meaning than age (I could...enjoy
this young girls body for pleasure). Old was used more with BOY, although rarely with
reference to age; more commonly it had the sense of belonging to a club. Similar
to big, old indicates male importance (Study finds corporate old boys have positive impact on
governance reform.)

In personal characteristics, naughty was used for both BOY and GIRL but with a difference, often
including sexual aspects for girls (Can you make your skirt slit any higher, you naughty girl?)
and only conduct for boys (Weve got a naughty boy in school.) Norberg found a set of
adjectives used more with GIRL that diverged from the traditional image of girls as agreeable
and passive: words like tough, crazy and popular. However, once again, many of them alluded
to sexuality (Edith, a very pretty blonde, was the popular girl, who received lots of valentines.)

In roles and social identity, Norberg found that boys were associated with activity (delivery boy)
whereas girls were associated with sexuality (call girl). Only GIRL occurred
with singleand unmarried, indicating that females are more likely to be referred to in terms of
their marital status. This also happened with nationality words like Swiss and religious terms
likeChristian, suggesting that females are seen as others, becomingMuslim girls, whereas males
were just Muslims.

So, our language reveals that we still think in gender specific terms, sometimes to an alarming
extent. Definitely not 21st century equality.

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Norberg, Cathrine (2016). Naughty boys and sexy girls: The representation of young individuals
in a web-based corpus of English.Journal of English Linguistics 44: 291-317.