Linguistic construction of gendered lives in Alice Munro’s “Boys and Girls”

In Alice Munro’s short story “Boys and Girls,” society’s involvement in creating gendered lives is narrated by an eleven-year-old girl. To provide a linguistic analysis of her psychosexual development shaped family, this study, all utterances are analyzed employing theoretical framework composed Austin’s (1962) Speech Act Theory Lipsitz Bem’s (1981) Gender Schema Theory. Analysis the postulates that family’s stereotypical value-ridden statements affect child’s understanding making woman as narrator’s occurs under influence sex-typed individuals who mainly use implicit performatives primarily marked verdictive utterances. Hence, immediate social environment exerts their authority power through specific constructions, exemplified forceful verdictives.