Jennifer Lawrence speaks of her disgust with the fact that
her male co- stars, from the same movie, get made a great deal more than she
does, playing the same sort or part. She only became aware of this due to a
Sony phone hacking scandal, which revealed to her the salary her co-stars were
earning doing the same job as her but they had ‘dicks’ she said. In her article
she shares who view on why she thinks it is wrong for men and women to be
treated differently in this situation. She uses the evidence of women fighting
for equality many years ago and how this being successful was supposed to set
up a fair scheme where men and women are treated equally.
Throughout the text she manipulates he language to change
depending on which gender she is talking about. When she is talking about men
she uses words in the semantic field of anger; she uses words such as “fierce”
and “tactical” she uses typical stereotypical language to describe the actions
she believes a man would take if he was in this situations and how they would
be praised for this type of behaviour. It’s thought that men are controlling
and dominant in many situations- such as in conversations, this is proved by the
Zimmerman and West theory, which says that men are keen to take a lead and
control a conversation when talking to the opposite sex.
When talking about the difference between her money and her
male co-stars difference in pay cheques she also highlighted the difference between
her and them physically by referring to them as “lucky people with dicks”, this
phrase is contradictive in itself as it uses abrupt and aggressive language in
itself which Lakoff connotes to a masculine way to talk. The light hearted
phrase also suggests that the fact that their biological make up is different
is hers automatically gives them an advantage without taking into their acting ability
(which they should be being paid for).
She refers to feminine language as equally as she does the
masculine language (ironically), she says she doesn’t want to seem “difficult
or spoiled” which are examples of empathetic language which Lakoffs study says
is trend of the feminine spoken language. The adjective “adorable” is used in a
sarcastic manner to mock the stereotype of girls being ‘cute and adorable’ all
the time, looking sweet an innocent, as if they click their fingers and what
they want falls at their feet, because in this instance it isn’t the case. She
is showing that when women have to
Right up until her very last word she is criticising the ‘male
way’ to do things and how they dint think about what they say or do they just
do it unlike the thought through process women take. I commend her for getting
the courage to post the article online, she stands up for herself in a
situation she thought she wasn’t treated equally in. Throughout her article she
backs up points made by many theories such as Lakoff and Dehorah Cameron to
prove her points, I believe having this attitude toward her job and lifestyle
will help her a great amount in the future.
