The Evolution of Girl in English: From a General Term for Youth to a Gendered Identity
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63313/LLCS.9217Keywords:
Girl, Semantic change, Semantic narrowing, Gender, Language, SocietyAbstract
Language is a dynamic social system that reflects and responds to historical, cultural, and ideological changes. This paper examines the semantic evolution of the English word girl from a diachronic perspective, drawing on Saussurean structural linguistics and theories of semantic change. It traces the development of girl from its early use as a gender-neutral term referring to young people of either sex to its modern association with female identity. The study argues that this transformation was primarily shaped by changes in social structures, gender roles, and cultural values rather than by purely internal linguistic mechanisms. Through an analysis of different historical periods, the paper demonstrates that girl underwent semantic narrowing when gender distinctions became increasingly established, and later experienced semantic extension through contemporary cultural expressions such as girl power. The evolution of girl reveals the complex interaction between language and society, showing that lexical meanings are continuously reconstructed through social practices and cultural discourse. This case study highlights how changes in vocabulary can reflect shifting perceptions of gender, identity, and social relationships.
References
[1] Alcott, L. M. (2004). Little women. Penguin Classics. (Original work published 1868)
[2] Baugh, A. C., & Cable, T. (2002). A history of the English language (5th ed.). Routledge.
[3] Chaucer, G. (1987). The Riverside Chaucer (L. D. Benson, Ed.; 3rd ed.). Houghton Mifflin. (Original work published c. 1400)
[4] Curzan, A. (2003). Gender shifts in the history of English. Cambridge University Press.
[5] Guo, C. (2012). On the change and development of English lexical semantics. Journal of Qionzhou University, 19(3), 80, 124–125.
[6] Johnson, S. (1755). A dictionary of the English language. W. Strahan.
[7] Langland, W. (1995). The vision of Piers Plowman (A. V. C. Schmidt, Ed.). Everyman. (Original work published c. 1370–1390)
[8] Li, M. (2004). Metaphor: An important way of lexical semantic change. Shandong Foreign Language Teaching, (5), 43–46, 60.
[9] Oxford University Press. (n.d.). Girl, n. In Oxford English Dictionary. Retrieved January 11, 2026, from https://www.oed.com/view/Entry/76750
[10] Saussure, F. de. (2011). Course in general linguistics (W. Baskin, Trans.). Columbia University Press. (Original work published 1916)
[11] Shakespeare, W. (1987). The complete works (S. Wells & G. Taylor, Eds.). Oxford University Press. (Original work published c. 1597)
[12] Zhang, Z., & Zhang, Q. (2005). Lexical semantics. Commercial Press.
Downloads
Published
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2026 by author(s) and Erytis Publishing Limited
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.
How to Cite
