For my final paper I would like to explore the fact that some people use the term ‘girl’, others use the term ‘woman’, and some use the term ‘female’.  I was actually just having a conversation with one of my friends last week because I noticed that he uses the word ‘female’ to refer to a woman.  I personally found this intriguing because I don’t think I’ve ever heard someone casually say “this female in my class…” as opposed to using the word “girl” or “woman”.  When I asked why he says “female” instead of a more common term, he said that he feels as though using the term “female” seems to come off as more respectful towards women that are his age or older.  I think it is incredible how unique everyone’s individual use of language is and I feel that targeting this one paradigm of terms would be fascinating because I can gain a better understanding of how frequently each of these terms are used as well as why that is.  Seeing as how I would like to understand the ‘why’ behind this idea, I think that I’m first going to create a survey with indirect questions so that the respondents are not aware of what exactly it is that I’m looking for.  Then, in order to gain an understanding of their reasoning behind using a particular term, I can create a second survey in which I state what I was researching in the first one and then ask them for a response as to why they use the terminology that they do.

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