The topic I am considering exploring is the textbook’s discussion of the word “girl”.  The textbook uses the word “girl” to give an example of binary feature analysis.  In this example, the word “girl” is said to have the feature [-adult].  However, during our own class discussion, most female students preferred this word over woman or other similarly meaning words.  I agree with this, when I speak about myself, I always use the word “girl,” and almost never refer to myself as a “woman.”

For my final paper, I would like to discuss why the word “girl” can be so controversial and how its meaning can be interpreted in different ways.  For some people, the word is very juvenile and can even seem misogynistic.  Although I do not personally subscribe to this theory, I think it would be very interesting to go into more detail and try to understand this line of thinking.  Then I would like to discuss the other side of the argument and try to give reason to why some people may prefer this word over its counterparts.  I would also like to do my own research.  I am hoping to get as large of a sample group as possible by asking not only my female friends but also many of my female coworkers and other people that I come across.  This is so I can make sure that I have as diverse a sample as possible, if I only used my friends it may be biased because over the years, we have mirrored some of each other’s vocabularies and share many of the same opinions.

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