Sexism in the Old Bailey: Gendered Language in the Nineteenth-century Theft Trials

This is a study of the Old Bailey Session Papers to find evidence for sexist language in nineteenth-century court depositions. Historical research found evidence for a bias against men among the Late Modern populace, specifically, the widely-held belief that men were the reason for a supposed crime problem. This thesis employs language analysis software to find out whether this belief translated into sexism in the courtroom. Non-violent theft depositions between 1800 and 1899 available through the Old Bailey Proceedings Online were divided into two corpora, one for male defendants and one for female defendants, and analyzed in SketchEngine. The data showed no linguistic bias against men, instead there was a clear bias against women. The language used was in line with common sexist stereotypes and gender expectations for women. The recommendation is for further research to carry out similar data analysis for different groups of men, to see if the belief of a male crime problem...Show moreThis is a study of the Old Bailey Session Papers to find evidence for sexist language in nineteenth-century court depositions. Historical research found evidence for a bias against men among the Late Modern populace, specifically, the widely-held belief that men were the reason for a supposed crime problem. This thesis employs language analysis software to find out whether this belief translated into sexism in the courtroom. Non-violent theft depositions between 1800 and 1899 available through the Old Bailey Proceedings Online were divided into two corpora, one for male defendants and one for female defendants, and analyzed in SketchEngine. The data showed no linguistic bias against men, instead there was a clear bias against women. The language used was in line with common sexist stereotypes and gender expectations for women. The recommendation is for further research to carry out similar data analysis for different groups of men, to see if the belief of a male crime problem targeted any specific group of marginalized men instead.Show less

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Sexism in the Old Bailey: Gendered Language in the Nineteenth-century Theft Trials