English assesment- Jennifer Lawrence



Following the Sony hacking scandal late last year, a lot of sensitive information was widely leaked across the globe. Revealing the wage of many well respected actors and actresses. Hunger games star Jennifer Lawrence with a net worth of 60 million dollars, noted that she was paid substantially less than her male co-stars and various other male actors. This subsequently led to Lawrence posting a Facebook update expressing her opinion. The post lead to much debate over the gap in pay due and its link to gender, which was immediately all over the internet after its release by Lawrence. The photo received 173k 'likes', 8.2k comments and 25k shares meaning that anyone friends with the person who shared the post could see it as well, rapidly spreading the post and its contents everywhere. Proving that this was one of the biggest debates and uprising of interests in concerning gender equality in recent years.


Lawrence is correct; it is proven in the majority of cases that men are paid more than women. This contradicts with Robin Lakoff's 'Deficit' theory, because Lawrence uses aspects of both 'Male' and 'Female' language.

Lawrence is very dominant and upfront about her opinion; she unknowingly uses male characterised language and dialect to gain social power. Her language does however show politeness in the way she expresses her point. She tries to justify her decision to not participate in the LAS ice bucket challenge. Using a cloaked imperative "but i f@$%ing forgot, okay?” The statement alone is very abrupt and harsh with the use of the taboo word. However the 'okay' and the question mark used as a tag question, softens the sentence and makes it seem far less offensive. Especially with the use of the question mark, because it makes it seem as though she is questioning herself and her own authority/point in the post. The use of this language would shock the reader, because an actress of her status would not be expected to use such inappropriate language. The use of the taboo words portrays a very masculine persona of Lawrence which she overly warns to achieve in her post, because she feels it is a way of gain respect and power as men do.

I agree with her opinion completely, if think that women are very cautious about the way they come across. Whereas men are far more carefree with their choice of language and the persona they create for themselves in a conversation. Jennifer Lawrence protest that she doesn’t want to come across as 'spoiled', whereas actors such as "Jeremy Renner, Christian Bale and Bradley cooper" were far more aggressive and forward when it comes to negotiating 'powerful deals'.

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