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STRONG EXPLETIVES, EMPTY ADJECTIVES AND TAG QUESTIONS USAGE AS A GENDER MARKER IN A SERIAL FILM F.R.I.E.N.D.S
Yuristia Wira Cholifah English Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Padjadjaran Bandung, Indonesia Email: [email protected] Heriyanto English Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Padjadjaran Bandung, Indonesia Email:[email protected] Elvi Citraresmana English Linguistics, Faculty of Humanities, Universitas Padjadjaran Bandung, Indonesia Email: [email protected] ABSTRACT This article examines the phenomenon of men and womens language. This article focuses on three linguistic features of men and womens language. They are expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions usage. These three linguistic features used by speakers in their utterances are believed to convey speakers feelings as well as their social meanings. This qualitative descriptive research socio-linguistically provides the insight of how men and women speak differently through these three linguistic features by Lakoff (1975) and Holmes (2001). The data are taken from a serial film Friends. Apparently, the present writer has found out that strong expletives words found in Friends characters utterances are used to show speakers expression of anger, frightening, start, until frustration and also sometimes to be the curse words to elicit humor. The founding empty adjectives words are to show speakers expression of joy, interest and also gratitude and speakers agreement of something. The tag questions are used by speakers not only to show speakers uncertainty but also to get information more detail, and to involve hearers to agree what speakers have stated before. Another founding mentions that men and women dont speak differently but they just express their feelings in different way through different linguistic features depending on their hearers.

KEYWORDS: Expletives, Empty Adjectives, Tag Questions, Gender Marker, Serial Film.

INTRODUCTION In a social interaction, we can find utterances. These utterances are used as a means for humans to express their feelings, besides by using gestures. Through utterances, we can study peoples feelings whether they are in sadness, happiness, certainty, or even in an uncertainty. 403

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It is because sometimes the utterances contain not only explicit meaning, but also implicit meaning. In Sociolinguistics, the purpose of the language use as a tool for humans to express their feelings is linked with linguistic features in men and womens language. This linguistic features term was first introduced by Lakoff on her research year 1975 to describe the speech characterization based on speakers gender. This speech characterization in linguistic features is varied. For example, there is empty adjectives use in people utterances to convey agreement, excitement, etc. Linguistic features in Sociolinguistics are categorized by speakers gender. Gender is a system of meaning a way of constructing notions of male and female and language is the primary means through which we maintain or contest old meanings, and construct or resist new ones (Eckert & Ginet, 2003). Gender in Sociolinguistics refers to men and womens behavior socially and culturally constructed. In other words, language can be distinguished based on the speakers gender through different linguistic features usage. In Sociolinguistics, the different linguistic features usage as a kind of language use for expressing humans feeling connected to the language and gender issue is shown by the use of strong expletives by men, empty adjectives, and tag questions mostly used by women. Strong expletives refer to the language use uttered by the speakers when they curse something really bothering. Empty adjectives are usually found when women want to compliment something they like. Tag questions can be simply considered as yes-no question but, it is a unique one. This question is unique because it has to be preceded by a clause and has its own function in a social interaction. In short, it is true that from childhood until adulthood or from males until females are believed that they have a different way of speaking from each other. The difference refers to the way of speaking that both reflects and produces a subordinate position in a society. Womens language by Lakoff is rife with such devices as mitigators (sort of, I think) and inessential qualifiers (really happy, so beautiful). This language renders womens speech tentative, powerless, and trivial; and as such, it disqualifies them from positions of power and authority. In this way, language itself is a tool it is learned as a part of learning to be a woman, imposed on women by societal norms, and in turn it keeps women in their place. As a result of this argument by Lakoff, there are two most significant theories on social differences between males and females. They are difference theory and dominance theory. The difference theory between men and women in the same group, living in different or separate cultural worlds resulted that it promotes different ways of speaking (Uchida, 1992). This theory is sometimes called two-culture theory. In simple terms, although men and women live in the same environment they establish different relations with society as if each belonged to a different environment and culture, the result of which is consequently reflected in the language of both genders as in other aspects of their lives. So, cross-gender communication is to be taken as cross-cultural or bi-cultural communication. In dominance 404

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theory, men and women are believed to inhabit a cultural and linguistic world, where power and status are unequally distributed. In this theory, also called power-based theory, the focus is on male dominance and gender division. Thus, this present writer is interested to conduct a mini research about three linguistic features; strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions usage based on speakers gender in the serial film Friends utterances (1994-2004). The present writer found a lot of data about these three linguistic features in the serial film Friends. Besides that, the movie doesnt only have rich characters like in a daily life but also various episodes telling about daily issues in real life.

LITERATURE REVIEW The investigation and identification of differences between mens and womens speech date back across time until 1970s. Lakoff (1975) first introduced womens language to distinguish men and womens different speech. Lakoff (1975) proposed theories on the existence of womens language. Her book Language and Womans Place has served as a basis for much research on the subject. She mentions ten features for womens language. As cited in Holmes (1993, p. 314), these ten features are: 1. Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, 2. Tag questions, e.g. she is very nice, isnt she? 3. Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. its really good. 4. Empty adjectives, e.g. divine, charming, cute. 5. Precise color terms, e.g. magenta, acqamarine. 6. Intensifiers such as justand so. 7. Hypercorrect grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms. 8. Superpolite forms, e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms. 9. Avoidance of strong swear words,e.g. fudge, my goodness. 10. Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance. Lakoffs hypotheses have both pros and cons. These pros and cons are shown by some research responded men and womens difference in language. First reaction was made by Dubois and Crouch (1975) launching a critique on Lakoffs claims, especially on tag questions. They examined the use of tag questions within the context of a professional meeting and concluded that atleast in that context males used tag questions more than females did. Their conclusion was that Lakoffs hypothesis might be biased in favor of highly stereotyping beliefs or folk linguistics. Dubois and Crouch (1975) questioned Lakoffs findings as Lakoff had used introspective methods in her study. They argued that her conclusions were made on uncontrolled and unverifiable observation of others and were based on a highly skewed and non-random sample of people. Despite such and many other similar observations, Lakoff believes that the use of tag questions by women is the sign of uncertainty. 405

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Krammarae (1991) discussed the phenomenon of stranger compliments from men to women. It is reported that such street remarks are still heard, sometimes with racist as well as sexist overtones. There is, however, the occasional reversal, with women yelling out numbers as men walk by (Hey, youre at least 9) or appreciative comments on the mens bodies (Love those abs). Another research distinguishing language based on gender was conducted by Elizabeth Kuhn (1992). Kuhn examined university professors use of their authority on the first day of classes to get students to do what the professors wanted them to. Kuhn found male professors displaying more authority than women in both American and German universities at the highest levels in the academic hierarchy. And in both the US and Germany, men still predominate as the recognized authorities in academic and other domains. While analyzing the electronic mails of a number of men and women, Bunz and Campbell (2002) stated that social categories such as age, gender, etc. do not influence politeness accommodation in email. Nemati and Bayer (2007) also studied the same issue about language and gender issue. Their article entitled Gender Differences in the Use of Linguistic Forms in the Speech of Men and Women: A Comparative Study of Persian and English was conducted to to determine whether men and women were different with respect to the use of intensifiers, hedges and tag questions in English and Persian. To conduct the study, R. Lakoffs (1975) ideas concerning linguistic differences between males and females were taken into account.! Their findings of the study did not confirm Lakoffs opinion regarding gender-bound language at least in the three areas and the corpus inspected in this research. Many studies have been conducted about language and gender in the issue of men and women speak differently like mentioned above. However, there is only a little connected to how men and women speak differently by examining some similar relationship among the linguistic features used in their speech. Thus, to examine Lakoffs hypothesis, the present writer selected three linguistic features, from the list above, namely strong expletives, empty adjectives and tag questions used by speakers in a serial film Friends as a means to convey their feelings as the basis of analysis. This research examines whether the speakers based on their gender speak differently in a way of speaking or not.

RESEARCH QUESTIONS The present research is carried out to study the utterances by speakers in the serial film Friends which contain three linguistic features; strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions. The present study, therefore, seeks to answer the following questions: 1. What strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions are used by the speakers in a serial film Friends? 2. What are the functions of the strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag 406

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questions used by the speakers in a serial film Friends? 3. What are the similarities and differences strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions used by the speakers in a serial film Friends?

METHODOLOGY The method used in this research is descriptive qualitative method. Qualitative approach is concerned with the process of certain phenomenon (Fanani, 2010). This method focuses on words and description rather than numbers (Maxwell, 2000). Descriptive research method is conducted by making a description systematically, knowing the characteristics and relationship among phenomena investigated. The data are taken from the utterances in a serial film Friends (1994-2004) created by David Crane and Marie Kauffman production. It is one of American blockbuster sitcoms. The film revolves around a circle of friends in Manhattan, a borough of New York City. The episodes provoke issues close to real life issues. The focus of this study is to find the utterances containing strong expletives, empty adjectives and tag questions and their functions. Social dimension by Holmes (1992, 2001) and context by McMannis et al. (1987) are mainly used in this research to examine their functions.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION To answer the research questions, the selected utterances containing strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions are firstly categorized and then analyzed based on speakers gender and their context by using social dimension by Holmes (1992, 2001). There are four social dimensions used in this research. They are social distance, social status, formality scale, and two functional scales. The social distance is used to measure the relationship among participants. If the speakers are close to each other, the relationship will bear solidarity. If the speakers relationship to each other is not close, it will result to the existence of power to one speaker in the social interaction. A status scale concerned with participant relationships causing high and low status by looking at the power of the speakers. A formality scale relates to the setting or type of interaction. And two functional scales refer to the purposes or topic of interaction. To figure out the second research question finding the functions of the use of expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions, the present writer connects the social dimension to the context theory by McMannis et al. (1987) in order to examine the meanings explicitly and implicitly. There are 4 types of context by McMannis (1987) as follows: 1. Physical context includes setting and the object or topic that is discussed in the social interaction. 2. Social context is context that explains the social relationship and social background 407

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between speaker and hearer. 3. Epistemic context is context describing one schemata about something discussed in the social interaction owned by speaker and hearer like the similar schemata owned by speaker and hearer about one certain place or object of the discussion. 4. Linguistic context, this context explains the relationship between the discussed utterances and previous and also the next utterances as the intended meaning. Epistemic context is the basic knowledge that shared by the speakers and listeners. Everything that the speakers and the listeners share is related to epistemic context. To answer the third question, the present writer then analyzed thoroughly the data found in the research to find out the similarities and differences between the use of strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions in men and women utterances. To answer the research questions in this paper, the present writer also refers to these two tables below as scales to help determine which expletives are strong or weak, and to classify the function of linguistic features used by speakers in the serial film Friends.
Table 1: expletives words scale (by Klerk in Johnson and Meinhofs article, year 1997: 157-158) Value of Expletives Words Expletives beggar, blinking, blooming, bother, brother, crikey, cripes, darn, Value of 1 dear, drat, flick, flip, fool, golly, gosh, grief, heck, hoender, jeepers, mother, Petes sake, pluck off, rash, ruddy, Schweppes, shaving cream, sherbet, shirt, shivers, shize, shoot, shot, shucks, sugar, wow. ass, blast, bull, buzz off, can it, clot, cork up, cow, creep, damn, dog, Value of 2 dozz, egghead, imbecile, gag it, GCM, geez, gits, heavens, holy mackerel, idiot, jis, jislaaik, jissus, jurrah, moron, shiff off, shut up, shut your trap, sow, tripe, twerp, twit, voetsek, vrek, wench drop dead, f, faggot, Glory, god, hell, holy cow, holy mother, jerk, Value of 3 Lord, mess off, Mother Mary, scab. bastard, bitch, bloody, bulldust, donder, dosball, go suck, slut, stuff Value of 4 you, tit, up yours. bumface, Christ, crap, drol, dwat, dwax, fart, gwat, Jesus, kak, kaffir, Value of 5 shittoes, siffy. bulldung, bullshit, moer, shit, shithouse, son of a bitch, wank a plank, Value of 6 wanker. Value of 7 jerk yourself, piss off, screw yourself, wop. arse, arsehole, bugger, cock, dick, dickface, dickhead, dildohead, Value of 8 doos, dushbag, fucket, poephol, prick, shitface, shittrap. Value of 9 cunt, cuntface, cuntsucker, fuck, fucker, fucking, poes. Value of 10 mother-fucking.

Table 2: List of kinds and functions of tag questions (cited from Axelsson, 2011: 41-45) Type of Tag Function Example Informational To get information. You havent got the ages of these

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Tag questions are divided into two types (Eckert and Ginet, 2003: 167-168). They are tags containing an inverted auxiliary form, called as canonical tags (Holmes, 1983) or variant tags and a pronoun that agrees with the subject of the main clause (anchor) and invariant tags. Canonical tags include the auxiliary form followed by the subject of the anchor such as is it, dont you, etc. The invariant tags are simple tags like no?, eh?, right, okay, innit? and werent it? These tags are not affected by the clause or anchor preceded the tag. Based on the data analysis, it is resulted that strong expletives in the serial film Friends are used by both men and women characters in their utterances. They use strong expletives to curse, or insult. However, strong expletives are mostly found in mens utterances in the serial film Friends. So, it can be inferred that the use of strong expletives as a means to curse or insult something annoyed the speakers is one of the characteristics in mens linguistic features. Empty adjectives use in the serial film Friends shows that not only women use empty adjectives but also men do it too. However, the most frequency of the empty adjectives use is showed in womens utterances. It can be said that empty adjectives use is categorized as womens linguistic features to signs agreement of the speakers to hearers. In addition, there is actually a difference between the uses of empty adjectives in both speakers. Tag questions use in the serial film Friends shows that both genders; men and women use tag questions in their utterances. The tag questions uses found in data include two types of 409

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tag questions; canonical and invariant tags. Yet, the number of the tag questions as the data in this research shows that men use more tag questions than women do (10 out of 17). So, it cannot be said that tag questions is one of womens linguistic features. The tag questions uses in the data are mostly used as a means to get information and to involve the hearers by them agreeing the statements. Here are the explanations of the result: Strong Expletives Strong Expletives used by men
(1) Season 8, episode 04 [Scene: Joey and Rachel's, Joey is standing at the counter as Ross enters.] Joey : Whoa! What are you doing here? How did your date go? Ross : Great! Im across the street having sex with her right now. Your story sucks! Joey : Hey! Look, if it didnt work its because you didnt tell it right! Show me how you did it. Ross : No! No, I dontdont want to. (2) Season 10, episode 10 [Scene: Monicas apartment. Monica is cleaning with a vacuum and then she cleans it with a dust buster. The guys enter the room.] Chandler: Hey! Joey: (to Chandler) You son of a bitch! Chandler: Is it me, or have the greetings gone downhill around here? Monica: (goes to Chandler) Phoebe and Rachel saw you with Nancy today and... em... they think you're having an affair. Rachel: Who's Nancy? Ross: What's going on? Monica: (turns to them) Ok, alright, you guys, you'd better sit down, this is pretty big. (3) Season 10, episode 07 [Scene: Monicas apartment. Somebody knocks the door] Laura: Oh, it's nothing. I went on a date with a guy who lived in this building and it didn't end very well. Monica: Ohh... that wouldn't by any chance be... Joey Tribbiani? Laura: Yes! Chandler: Of course it was! Laura: Yeah, we had a really great night and in the morning he promised he would call me and he didn't. Chandler: RAT BASTARD! Laura: So you're not friends with him? Monica and Chandler: OH GOD NO! Nope, no, no, no. No! No, no. Nope! No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. NO! (finally Monica concludes) No!

From the data above, strong expletives are used by men speakers in (1), (2), and (3). They are sucks, son of a bitch, and rat bastard. They are uttered by men speakers to deliver their anger to insult to hearers (other men). Besides to express speakers anger, strong expletives 410

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are also used to express solidarity (3). Strong Expletives used by women
(4) Season 10, episode 01 [Scene: Mike's apartment] Precious: He proposed to you? This is the worst birthday ever. (she starts to cry again) Phoebe: Look, Precious... Mike's not worth this. You're an attractive, intelligent woman and let's face it, Mike's kind of a wang. I mean, he proposed to me while he was still seeing you... He was gonna break-up with you on your birthday? And, I don't like to kiss-and-tell, but he cheated on you a lot this weekend. Precious: Oh, my God, maybe you're right. Maybe I don't need him. I deserve to be treated with respect. (Mike enters the apartment.) Precious: Screw you, Mike! You're a coward and a bastard, and I hope you rot in hell. (she slaps him in the face, Mike looks like he doesn't believe what just happened. Precious leaves, and he turns to Phoebe.)

In data (4) above, strong expletives is used by a woman speaker delivered to a man hearer to convey her anger to him. The strong expletives used above is screw you. The speaker is upset because the man, Mike, treated her previous girl bad. Besides to express anger, it can also be inferred that the use of strong expletives there is to show speakers solidarity uttered by a woman, Phoebe, about what happened to other woman, Precious. Empty Adjectives Empty adjectives used by women
(5) Season 3, episode 10 [Scene: Monica and Rachel's, Chandler is entering numbers on a calculator as Ross reads off how much hes sold.] Joey: What? Rachel, listen, have you ever heard of Fortunata Fashions? Rachel: No. Joey: Well my old man is doing a plumbing job down there and he heard they have an opening. So, you want me to see if I can get you an interview? Rachel: Oh my God! Yes, I would love that, oh, that is soo sweet, Joey. Joey: Not a problem. Rachel: Thanks. (6) Season 8, episode 14 [Scene: Joey and Rachel's, Rachel is balancing an aluminum can on her stomach as Ross enters.] Rachel: Hey Ross! Check it out! I learned a new trick! Ross: Hey uh, I brought you some lunch. Rachel: Ohh! Thats so sweet of you! Oh yum! (Takes a bite out of the sandwich and starts to get sick.) Did you put pickles on this? Ross: Well yeah!

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(7) Season 10, episode 4 [Scene: Joeys Apartment. Joey is in charge to make sure that nobody (Monica, Chandler, Judy, or Joey) leaves the Emmas birthday party while Ros is picking up Rachel who forgot to bring her driving license] Judy: Well, we better get going, it's late. Jack's not allowed to drive at night anymore. He has trouble staying in his lane. Jack: Last winter I went up on a church lawn and drove right through a manger scene. The papers thought it was a hate crime. Judy: Anyway, it was lovely seeing you. Joey: Ok! (Opens the door for them) Judy: Bye... Bye dear. Joey: Nighty-night! Judy: Nighty-night! Joey: Bye, bye.

In (5), (6), and (7) the empty adjectives used there are sweet, and lovely. They are used by women speakers to men and women hearers. The empty adjectives use there is to express their agreement of something and that they are also happy about something offered by the hearers. Empty adjectives used by men
(8) Season 3, episode 13 [Scene: Richards apartment, Richard is giving an apartment tour to his date] Richard: Ah well, this is the living room. Richards Date: Impressive. Richard: All right. This is the kitchen. Richards Date: Oh, thats real pretty. Wait a minute, dont I get to see the bedroom? Richard: The bedroom. Well its pretty much your typical... (opens the door as Monica hides under the covers, and quickly closes the door before his date can see the room.) bedroom. Richards Date: Were still on this side of the door. Richard: Um-hmm. Richards Date: Yeah, but I didnt get to see it. Richard: Oh shoot! Maybe next time. (yawns) Thanks for a lovely evening. (shows her out)

In data (8) above, the empty adjectives use is uttered by a man speaker to a woman hearer. The empty adjectives used is lovely. The empty adjectives use in the data above is to express speakers feeling as a compliment or gratitude to the woman hearer and also to end of the social interaction. Tag Questions Tag questions used by men
(9) Season 1 Episode 1

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[Scene: Central Perk, Chandler, Joey, Phoebe, and Monica are there.] Phoebe: Ooh! Oh! (She starts to pluck at the air just in front of Ross.) Ross: No, no don't! Stop cleansing my aura! No, just leave my aura alone, okay? Phoebe: Fine! Be murky! Ross: I'll be fine, alright? Really, everyone. I hope she'll be very happy. Monica: No you don't. Ross: No I don't, to hell with her, she left me! Joey: And you never knew she was a lesbian... (10) Season 1 Episode 1 (There's a knock on the door and it's Paul.) Monica: Hi, come in! Paul, this is.. (They are all lined up next to the door.)... everybody, everybody, this is Paul. All: Hey! Paul! Hi! The Wine Guy! Hey! Chandler: I'm sorry, I didn't catch your name. Paul, was it? Monica: Okay, umm-umm, I'll just--I'll be right back, I just gotta go ah, go ah... Ross: A wandering? Monica: Change! Okay, sit down. (Shows Paul in) Two seconds. Phoebe: Ooh, I just pulled out four eyelashes. That can't be good. (Monica goes to change.) Joey: Hey, Paul! Paul: Yeah? (11) Season 1 Episode 5 [Scene: Central Perk, all are there.] Chandler: So, Saturday night, the big night, date night, Saturday night, Sat-ur-day night! Joey: No plans, huh? Chandler: Not a one. Ross: Not even, say, breaking up with Janice? Chandler: Oh, right, right, shut up. Monica: Chandler, nobody likes breaking up with someone. You just gotta do it.

In (9), (10), and (11) above, there are tag questions uses. They include canonical and invariant tags like was it, and huh, okay, alright. The tag questions are used by men speakers to express their feeling like confirmatory, and uncertainty to both men and women hearers. Tag questions used by women
(12) Season 1 Episode 1 [Scene: Iridium, Monica is working as Frannie enters.] Frannie: Hey, Monica! Monica: Hey Frannie, welcome back! How was Florida? Frannie: You had sex, didn't you? Monica: How do you do that? Frannie: Oh, I hate you, I'm pushing my Aunt Roz through Parrot Jungle and you're having sex! So? Who? Monica: You know Paul?

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Frannie: Paul the Wine Guy? Oh yeah, I know Paul. (13) Season 1 Episode 13 [Scene: Central Perk, Phoebe is there with her boyfriend Roger, talking to Rachel and Monica.] Phoebe: Thanks. Okay, now go away so we can talk about you. Roger: Okay. I'll miss you. Phoebe: Isn't he great? Rachel: He's so cute! And he seems to like you so much. Phoebe: I know, I know. So sweet... and so complicated. And for a shrink, he's not too shrinky, y'know? Monica: So, you think you'll do it on his couch?

In data (12) and (13) above, the tag questions use are uttered by women speakers other women hearers. The tag questions uses there include canonical and invariant tags such as didnt you and yknow. In (12), the use of tag questions is uttered by speaker to elicit information of something being discussed. In (13), the speaker uses the tag question there is to involve the hearer by them agreeing to a statement. CONCLUSION This papers goal is to examine the use of strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions based on the speakers gender, their functions, and their similarities and differences. It can be concluded that the findings of this research include three big points as the answer of the research questions. Firstly, strong expletives found in the serial film Friends include two categories. The first category is strong expletives uttered by a man (as a speaker) to other man (as a hearer) such as sucks, and son of a bitch (uttered face to face), and crap, stupid son of bitches, rat bastard. The second one is strong expletives directly uttered by a woman (as a speaker) to a man (as a hearer) such as screw you. Secondly, empty adjectives are mostly found in womens utterances in the serial film Friends. They are used by women (as the speakers) when they talked to both men and other women (as hearers). The empty adjectives found in this research are sweet, fantastic, adorable, and lovely uttered by women speakers to both men and other women as hearers. But, the empty adjectives uttered by men speakers to women hearers is lovely. Thirdly, tag questions used by speakers include two types of tag questions; canonical and invariant tags. They are was it, is it, didnt you, okay, alright, yknow, and huh. Men speakers use more tag questions women do. Based on linguistic features function, it can be inferred that strong expletives are used to express speakers anger and show solidarity to the hearers that also upset speakers. The empty adjectives used by speakers, mostly women, is to express speakers joy and to agree something that makes them please. Tag questions in this research are used by speakers to get more information and to involve hearers to agree with what speakers have stated before, as a facilitative. 414

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Another finding in this research is that both men and women are actually use strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions. However, they are used in different way. Men speakers use strong expletives only to men hearers. Women speakers use strong expletives only to men speakers. Men speakers use strong expletives only to men hearers but, women speakers use strong expletives only to men hearers. It can be said that strong expletives is mens linguistic feature since it is used mostly by men speakers. In the empty adjective use, women use it more than men do. Women speakers use empty adjectives to both men and women hearers, but men speakers use empty adjectives only to women hearers. So, it can be said that empty adjectives is womens linguistic feature. Tag questions use in this research is also used by both men and women speakers. Yet, men speakers use it more often than women do. The invariant tags are used by speakers only to close hearers like best friends while canonical or variant tags are used by speakers to their acquaintances as the hearers and when speakers and hearers are in a formal situation like in a work place. Limitations of the study This study examines the men and womens language and focuses only on three linguistic features usage; strong expletives, empty adjectives, and tag questions. There are some limitations for this study related to the topic discussed in this article as follow: 1. This article considers only at three kinds of linguistic features by men and women in their utterances. And also this article only concerns on the reason of men and womens linguistic features usage seen from social factors. So, the future research is needed to be able to study this issue not only from social factors but also from other factors. 2. The data taken in this article are from a serial film Friends scripts. It is suggested the future research take the data from more natural sources by using recording technique and etc. 3. The data in this article mostly describe informal setting like conversation between friends at home, caf, etc. So, a less informal setting like in a work place between participants different social status is suggested to future research.

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