Some dialectologist argued that women were using language
which reinforced their sub-ordinate status. Social dialect research focused on
differences between women’s and men’s speech. Robin Lakoff identified a number
of linguistic features used more often by women. She suggested that women’s speech was
characterized by linguistics features like:
- Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see.
- Tag questions, e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?
- Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it’s really good.
- ‘Empty’ adjectives, e.g. divine, charming, cute.
- Precise color terms, e.g. magenta, aquamarine.
- Intensifiers such as just and so, e.g. I like him so much.
- ‘Hypercorrect’ grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms.
- ‘Superpolite’ forms, e.g. indirect request, euphemisms.
- Avoidance of strong swear words, e.g. fudge, my goodness.
- Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance.
Lakoff didn’t claim her list was comprehensive. But many
researchers treated it as definite. Lakoff identified can be illustrated by
dividing them into two groups”
1. Linguistic devices which may be used
for hedging or reducing the force of an utterance.
2. Features which may boost or intensify
a proposition’s force.
According to Lakoff, both hedges and boosters reflect women’s
lack of confidence. Most researchers, but not all, claimed women used more
boosters or intensifiers than men.
Lakoff said that tag question may express uncertainty. But
actually not all tags are signal of their uncertainty. Tags may also express
affective meaning, may function as facilitative or positive politeness devices,
providing an addressee, etc. And sometimes the tag is not to hedge but to
strengthen the negative force of the utterance.
The difference between women and men in ways of interacting
may be the result of different socialization. Women like to gossip. In gossip
session women provide a sympathetic response, focusing almost exclusively on
the affective message rather than its inferential content.
Meanwhile man discussion tend to focus on thins and
activities, rather than personal experiences and feelings. Men provided
conflicting accounts of the same event, argued about a range of topics. Their
talks contrasted completely with the cooperative, agreeing, supportive, topically
coherent talk of the women. It explains why women and men sometimes
miscommunicate.
Sexist language
Feminists have claimed that English is a sexist language.
Sexism involves behavior which maintains social inequalities between women and
men. There are number of ways in which it has been suggested that the English
language discriminate against women. Animal imagery is one example where the
images of women seem considerably less positive that man. Women may also be
described or referred to in terms of food imagery. There are lots of English
metaphors available to describe women include the number of derogatory images
compared to those to describe men.
The basis for claims that English renders women invisible is
the use forms such as he and man as generic forms. The use of man as
a generic form has a long history. But its generic use is no longer acceptable
to many English speakers because this meaning has become overshadowed by its
masculine meaning.
The relative status of the sexes in a society may be
reflected in the language used about women and men. Women are often assigned
subordinate status by virtue of their gender alone, regardless of their actual
power in a particular context.
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