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11. Gender Representation In Religious Discourse In Nigeria
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193 11 Gender Representation In Religious Discourse In Nigeria Akin Odebunmi University of Ibadan, Nigeria Introduction Gender and religion strike a lot in common. This is because religious roles are largely earmarked on the basis of gender differences and assumed capabilities of members of the genders by societies. Leadership roles, for example, in many religions are reserved for men, while other roles are largely retained for women, a situation that is quite evident in the Christian religion. While the situation is changing in some parts of the world, the status quo has remained in some others. It is against this background that this paper examines how gender is represented in the language of Christian religious expression in Nigeria. To address the issue correctly, it is essential to devote some attention to the concept of gender per se. “Gender, in broad terms, refers to the sex-role identity used by humans to emphasise the distinctions between males and females” (Adegbite, 2009:12). It differs from sex in that while sex works with biological and physical features of humans, gender is social and relates to roles and behaviours performed by sexes (Lamidi 2009). Research in gender-bound language has, therefore, focused on the wary gender comes into communication and how this has influenced the structure and functions of language in general. It has shown how language is drawn upon to construct and come to terms with the semantics and identities of personal, social and cultural dimensions (cf Yusuf 1988, 1993,1997a; Adegbite 2009). As would be established, existing studies in gender linguistics have focused on the differences and similarities between male and female linguistic expressions in general and specific terms across several domains. They have also considered how power, race and class have 194 influenced gendered language (Mills 2003). Except in the West and north Africa (see Walsh 2002; Jule 2006; Sadiqi 2003), the studies have however not attended seriously to how gender is expressed in religions, especially Christianity, from strictly linguistic perspectives. Much of what has obtained hitherto have been studies with sociological and anthropological orientations. The other dimension has been the concern about the language of religion in general with reference to Christianity without any specific attention given to the gender aspect in Africa and Nigeria in particular. These are gaps that should be filled as the sociological and anthropological studies cannot provide a full x- ray of the gender picture in religious discourses. It is essential to determine the linguistic tools drawn upon in the Christian religion, and the possible influence of the institution on the choices made. The paper thus has the ambition to illuminate the gender linguistic and discoursal resources engaged in religious expression in Nigeria and clarify, to some extent, the state of gender theorizing in religious discourse in the country. Methodology and Design Two religious institutions, namely, The Nigerian Baptist Theological Seminary, Ogbomoso and the Dominican Institute, Ibadan, representing the Baptist and Catholic denominations (both being orthodox churches) were purposively sampled. The two institutions offered degrees in Theology (and philosophy), and were, therefore, considered appropriate for the data needed for the study as the students were advanced ones who had largely formed their own opinions about issues and were capable of some level of critical thinking. At different times, each of the Use of English classes of the institutions (where I teach as an adjunct lecturer) was subjected to a spontaneous writing exercise on “God and Humans”. A total of 78 essays were collected. These were subjected to linguistic and pragmadiscoursal analyses. Insights were particularly deployed from gender theories, discourse tracking and critical discourse analysis. In the next section (i.e. 3), I review gender and theo-religious discourse. In section 4, I establish theoretical perspectives within which the data is housed. In section 5, I review studies on gender and religion. In Section 6, I [3.236.145.110] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 13:12 GMT) 195 review gender theories. In Section 7, I analyze the data and present my findings. In section 8, I conclude the paper. Gender Linguistics and Theo-Religious Discourse Gender linguistics refers to the study of language elements that point to human sexes. This however does not work perfectly within the traditional grammatical concept of gender. According to Corbett (1991:1), To understand what linguists mean by ‘gender’, a good starting point is Hockett’s definition: ‘Genders are classes of nouns reflected in the behaviour of associated words’ (1958:231). A language may have two or more such...