Language and the Social Construction of Gender Roles: Roles in Transition This book reports results of an investigation into how language reflects the sociocultural perceptions of women and men in the Shona society of Zimbabwe as evidenced in the language of proverbs, poetry and other language forms. The study sought to identify language about men and women and examine it for evidence about the nature of gender roles. Language relating to different contexts within which Shona women and men interact was identified and analysed syntactically and semantically. It was found that ...