International Journal of Scientific and Research Publications, Volume 8, Issue 6, June 2018 479 ISSN 2250-3153 http://dx.doi.org/10.29322/IJSRP.8.6.2018.p7862 www.ijsrp.org On Sociolinguistic Oriented Research on the Relationship between Language and Gender, and the Reality of Gender Condition in Africa Umar Ahmed Usmanu Danfodiyo University, Sokoto-Nigeria E-Mail: ummaru@gmail.com Abdullahi Sani Federal University, Birnin Kebbi-Nigeria DOI: 10.29322/IJSRP.8.6.2018.p7862 http://dx.doi.org/10.29322/IJSRP.8.6.2018.p7862 1.0 Abstract The relationship between language and gender has been a major research topic in sociolinguistics. It has generated a huge amount of discussion and thought in the last four or so decades. This paper focuses on the work of three famous feminist sociolinguistic researchers, Robin Lakoff, Dale Spender, and Deborah Tannen, who have claimed that language has some connections with gender. The paper argues that some of the claims made in these sociolinguistic oriented researches should be re-evaluated rather than totally discarded. The first part of this paper introduces the study, providing a background to the discussion in the paper. In the second part some of the key questions which sociolinguistic oriented research on language and gender attempt to address are presented. The third part reviews three influential sociolinguistic oriented research on language and gender. Part four concludes the study. Key words: gender, language, sociolinguistics, and Africa. 1. Introduction In recent years, there have been some thoughts and discussions on the possible relationships and intersections between language and gender. According to Wardhaugh (2006:315), ‘the literature on these issues is now vast; it has been one of the biggest ‘growth’areas within sociolinguistics in recent years.’ The sociolinguistic research into the possible connections between language and gender began with Robin Lakoff in 1973. Lakoff (1973, 1975) asserts that women’s speech style had some linguistic features that mark it as different from men’s speech style. Since then, as Alkadi (2012:115) observes, ‘a huge amount of exploration has been produced in order to investigate this relationship at various levels which embody the effects of gender on particular language features’. He further observes that these gender-language studies have resulted in fascinating research findings (ibid), which both require further investigation and reflection. Based on this, this paper reviews the work of three famous feminist sociolinguistic researchers, Robin Lakoff, Dale Spender, and Deborah Tannen on the subject. These researchers have employed sociolinguistic approaches to explore the relationships between language and gender, and have come up with some interesting research outcomes. I argue in the paper that some of the claims made by these authors should be re-evaluated rather than totally discarded. This is important because in the larger African society, boys and girls, men and women are still largely been exposed and subjected to different socialization patterns, which tended to impact on their gendered behaviour, including language use. 2. Sociolinguistic oriented research on the relationship between language and gender