Can She Talk the Talk? What Speech Patterns Say About Viola/Cesario

Abstract

Two key themes in Twelfth Night are gender and language. The plot revolves around Viola taking on a male role, and the humor draws deeply on the clever use of language throughout. This is a natural play for the study of gender and language in Shakespeare’s work, and yet little of the feminist criticism that exists on Twelfth Night focuses on language. Much of that criticism centers on the eroticism of the ambivalent gender roles.¹ On the other hand, the linguistic criticism of Twelfth Night does not look closely at the gender differences.