STEREOTYPING OF FEMALES IN THE PUNJABI LANGUAGE
Saima Mir  and Rehana Yasmeen 
ABSTRACT
Language is considered as a powerful tool to construct certain stereotypes in a culture. Stereotyping is prevalent in all the cultures across the world. It is a set of cultural expectations to assign specific roles to specific groups in a society. Language has a strong connection with the culture and its norms. The current research aimed to expose the female stereotyping in the Punjabi proverbs. It is also a concern that stereotyping in Punjabi proverbs reinforce gender biased approach in the Punjabi society. The paper also investigated whether negative connotations associated with female gender are the root cause of power, dominance and inequality enacted upon women. The scope of the current research is to create awareness in the Punjabi women regarding the misuse of proverbs in their daily lives. After this research, they will be in a better position to understand the causes and effects of the use of the current proverbs in the Punjabi culture. The qualitative research method has been employed to research purposively selected 10 Punjabi proverbs. It employs critical discourse analysis as its theoretical framework. Norman Fairclough’ 3D model has been used to do textual analysis. The proverbs have been analyzed on the literal, contextual, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic levels. They have also been dissected on the micro, and macro levels to analyze them from the different perspectives. The research concluded that stereotyping in the Punjabi language causes gender discrimination and false representation of female identities. The kind of images constructed in the Punjabi proverbial language truly labels the female gender permanently with the negative connotations. All the females of Punjabi culture will be benefitted with the current research. It will enable them to understand the kind of stereotyping and gender discrimination in the Punjabi language. As a result, they will be able to understand the authenticity and the true value attached to these proverbs.   
KEYWORDS: Stereotyping, Culture, discrimination, gender