Introduction

Gender differences, which are socially and culturally constructed, are one of the interesting

phenomena in contemporary society. Discourse on gender differences, in fact, also exists

in the use of language for communication, highlighting that men and women are different
in their ways of communication, and therefore they should be treated differently.

It is not a myth that gender influences language use-but that is not simply because men
and women are naturally different kinds of people. Rather, gender influences linguistic
behavior because of its impact on other things that influence linguistic behavior more directly.
The way people use language can be related to the social network they belong to, their
habitual activities, their identities as particular kinds of people and their status relative to
others. Each of these things is potentially affected by gender divisions which are characteristics
of our society.

Observations of the differences between the way males and females speak were long
restricted to grammatical features, such as the differences between masculine and feminine
in morphology in many languages. However, in the 1970s women researchers started
looking at how a linguistic code transmitted sexist values and bias. Many linguists raised
questions such as: Do women have a more restricted vocabulary than men? Do they use
more adjectives? Are their sentences incomplete? Do they use more ‘superficial’ words?
Consequently, researchers started to investigate empirically both bias in the language and
the differential usage of the code by men and women.

The question of gender differences in intelligence, in the way they think and learn or
academic achievement has been debated for centuries. The most important thing to keep
in mind about this debate is that no reasonable or proved fact that any male-female
differences on any measure of intellectual ability are larger in comparison to the amount of
variability within each sex. In other words, even in areas in which true gender differences
are suspected, these differences are so small and so variable that they have few
practical consequences (Fennema, Carpenter, Jacobs, Franke and Levi, 1998).

Eckert (1998:64) states that ‘gender practices differ considerably from culture to culture,
from place to place, from group to group, living at the intersection of all the other aspects of
social identity’. Therefore, practices in language and gender may also vary in a particular
society or groups.

Cultural and historical background of …

Popular understandings of gender and language had existed probably for centuries before
‘gender and language’ was considered worthy of study. There were Prescriptive ideas
of how women and men should speak, and to ‘folk-linguistic’ ideas about how
they actually do (apparently differently).

The issue of women interacting differently from men has been discussed for hundreds of
years. However, feminist movements in the 1960s realized that language was one of the
instruments of female oppression by males. As a matter of fact, language not only reflected
a patriarchal system but also
emphasized male supremacy over
women. Proverbs captured these
folk-linguistic ideas, often referring
disparagingly to women’s verbosity.
Jennifer Coates (1993:16) cites the
following:

 ‘A woman’s tongue
wags like a lamb’s tail’
(England).
 ‘The North Sea will be
found wanting in water
than a woman at a loss
for a word’ (Jutland).
 ‘Many women, many words, many geese, many turds’ (England).
 ‘Three women make a market’ (Sudan).
 ‘Three women together make a theatrical performance’ (China).
 ‘Women are nine times more talkative than men’ (Hebrew).
However, Dale Spender writes ‘The talkativeness of women has been gauged in
comparison not with men but with silence [so that] any talk in which a woman engages can
be too much’(1980:42).

The content of women’s talk has certainly met with conventionalised rebuttals.
Examples from traditional China, and Japan include:

 ‘Women’s and children’s opinion’(China).

 ‘A woman’s tongue spreads gossip fast’(China).
 ‘Men talk like books, women lose themselves in details’(China).
 ‘Never listen to a woman’s words’(China).
 ‘Three inches of a woman’s tongue can slay a man six feet tall’(Japan).

Explicit reference to women’s use of language can be found also in fiction, for
example in the words of characters created by  Sophocles, Chaucer
and Shakespeare:

 ‘Silence gives the proper grace to women’(Sophocles, Ajax )

 ‘As men/Do walk a mile, women should talk an hour/After supper.’ Tis their
exercise’(Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher, Philaster, II.iv).
 ‘How hard it is for women to keep counsel!’(Shakespeare,  Julius
Caesar,II.iv.9).
 ‘Her voice was ever soft,/Gentle and low, an excellent thing
in woman’(Shakespeare, King Lear ,V.iii.274).
 ‘She has brown hair, and speaks small like a woman’ (Shakespeare, Merry
Wives of Windsor,I.i.48).

Far more important are differences caused by cultural expectations and norms. For example,
major studies shows that males scored better than females in math, whereas the opposite was
true on English tests. The most important cause is that females in our society have traditionally
been discouraged from studying mathematics and therefore take many fewer math courses
than males do. In fact, as females have begun to take more math courses over the past two
decades, the gender gap on the SAT and on other measures has been steadily diminishing
(Fennema,et al., 1998: 278)

Male and female babies have traditionally been treated differently from the time they are
born. In early studies, adults described boy or girl babies wrapped in blue blankets as
being more active than the same babies wrapped in pink. (Baxter,1994). Children do
begin to make gender distinctions and have gender preferences around the age of 3 or 4.
Thus, children enter school having been socialized into appropriate gender-role behavior
for their age in relation to community expectations (Delamont, 2001). Socialization into
this kind of approved sex-role behavior continues throughout life, and schools
contribute to it. Schools differentiate between the sexes in a number of ways. In
general, males receive more - attention from their teachers than females do. Males
receive more disapproval and blame from their teachers than females do, but they also
engage in more interactions with their teachers in such areas as approval, instruction
giving, and being listened to. Teachers tend to punish females more promptly and
explicitly for aggressive behavior than they do males. Torrance (1986) found that the
creative behavior of males was rewarded by teachers three times oftener than that
of females. Other differentiations are subtle, as girls are directed to play in the house
corner while boys are provided with blocks or when boys are given the drums to
play in music class, girls are given the triangles.

Gender and Language

As Cameron (2000) claims, there is a complex relationship between language and
gender in the academic studies of language and gender. Holmes (cited in Bergwall 1999)
formulates six candidate universals regarding language and gender:
1. Women and men develop different patterns of language use
2. Women tend to focus on the affective functions of an interaction more often than
men do.
3. Women tend to use linguistic devices that stress solidarity more often than men do.
4. Women tend to interact in ways that will maintain and increase solidarity, while especially in
formal contexts men tend to interact in ways that will maintain and increase their power and
status.
5. Women use more standard forms than men from the same social group in the same social
context.
6. Women are stylistically more flexible than men.
Although there are dangers in seeking generalizations as above, Holmes’s formulations
support the common assumption that there may be some common ground underlying the
linguistic positions of women and men in the world (Bergwall, 1999).
Lakoff (1976) and Tannen (1990), in their study on English speaking countries, illuminated
the concept of women’s language which highlights the existence of men and women
differences in communication. In 1975, Robin Lakoff published an influential account of
women’s language in her book entitled Language and Woman’s Place. In another article she
published a set of basic assumptions about what marks the language of women. Among them
she made some claims that women:
• Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”, and so on.
• Use (super)polite forms: “Would you mind...”,“I'd appreciate it if...”, “...if you don't mind”.
• Use tag questions: “You're going to dinner, aren't you?”
• Speak in italics: intonational emphasis equal to underlining words - so, very, quite.
• Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, and so on
• Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and clear
enunciation.
• Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more often.
• Have a special lexicon: women use more words for things like colors, men for sports.
• Use question intonation in declarative statements: women make declarative statements into
questions by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a statement, expressing uncertainty.
For example, “What school do you attend? Eton College?”
• Use “wh-” imperatives: (such as, “Why don't you open the door?”)
• Speak less frequently
• Overuse qualifiers: (for example, “I think that...”)
• Apologize more: (for instance, “I'm sorry, but I think that...”)
• Use modal constructions: (such as can, would, should, ought - “Should we turn up the
heat?”)
• Avoid coarse language or expletives
• Use indirect commands and requests: (for example, “My, isn't it cold in here?” - really a
request to turn the heat on or close a window)
• Use more intensifiers: especially so and very (for instance, “I am so glad you came!”)
• Lack a sense of humor: women do not tell jokes well and often don't understand the punch
line of jokes.
Other research on language and gender also reveals the differences between men and women
in using language for communication. One of them is that women are more polite than men.
Researchers connect politeness in language with women and their communicative competence.
Hobbs (2003:243) notes that when talking with the same sex peers, women will use many
positive politeness strategies. On the other hand, men in similar circumstances do not show this
tendency. Lakoff (1976:74) also states that ‘women tend to speak with reference to the rules of
politeness, conversational implicature, and interpersonal explora-tion whereas men tend to
speak with reference to the rules of conversation and straight factual communication’.
One researcher named Gleason (1980) made a study on child language, where she focused on
the way parents teach ‘polite language’ to their children. She found that parents were consistent
in convincing their children to respond with socially appropriate items, such as greetings and
thank you. Both parents were eager for their children using polite language but provided
different models. It turned out that the mothers themselves used far more polite language than
the fathers which was also observed by the children.

Another difference is that women are more passive than men. If they are talking, they tend to
show that they are not sure about what they are saying. The passiveness and tentativeness of
women in communication are affirmed by Vanfossen (2001:2), who showed that women like
using tag questions, (It’s re-ally cold in here, isn’t it?), disclaimers (I may be wrong but…) and
questions as directive statements (won’t you close the door?). These kinds of phrases de-crease
the perceived assertiveness of speech.
Jespersen (1922), who had many things to say about women’s speech, made it clear that
women lack precision in their speech. He did not only have an opinion about that, he also
explained that it was because women frequently used something called intensifiers in their
speech. Others agreed with Jespersen, such as for instance Lakoff (1975) and Mary Ritchie Key
(1972). According to Lakoff women used so more often than men while Key said that women
used such more often than men.
Women’s way of speech is often connected with tentativeness and the reason for this might be
their way of using hedges. These hedges are linguistic forms such as for instance I think, you
know, I’m sure, sort of, perhaps. Lakoff appears to be rather convinced that women’s speech
contains more hedges than men’s speech. She explains that it is because ‘women are socialised
to believe that asserting themselves strongly is not nice or ladylike, or even feminine’ (Lakoff,
1975:54).

Tag questions, such as I did- didn’t I?, He was- wasn’t he? etc. are also one of the linguistic
forms that are connected with tentativeness according to Lakoff who claims that females use
more tag questions then males.

Tymson (1998:8) classifies differences on men and women in communication as following:

Male
Female Style
Style

 Focus on information
 Focus on relationship
 Report style of
 Rapport style of
speaking
speaking
 Goal driven
 Process oriented
 Single-task approach
 Multi-task approach
 Succinct language
 Storytelling style of
speech
 Working towards a
 On a journey
destination
 Want to ask the right
 Need to know the
questions
answers

Women view talking as a way of connecting with others emotionally, whereas men treat
conversation either as a practical tool or a competitive sport. Women are good at listening,
building rapport with others and avoiding or defusing conflict; men confront each other more
directly, and are less attuned to either their own or others’ feelings (Gray,1992: 21).
In fact, women are different from men not only in verbal communication but also in nonverbal
communication. One study by Griffin et al (1999) looked at the use of nonverbal
communication: eye contact, gestures, smiles, personal space, touch, and interpretation of
nonverbal cues, and found that 67.5 per cent of females establish more eye contact than men
do; 75.5 per cent use more gestures than males and 83.7 per cent typically smile more often
than a male does. This result shows that women are more comfortable using sensitive
communicators than verbal communication.

When it comes to men’s and women’s way of using slang it is confirmed by many researchers,
for example by Flexner (1960) that it is an exclusive property of males. When dealing with old
researchers one has to take into consideration that evidence and so called facts are often
somewhat subjective. In 1975, Robin Lakoff claimed that everybody, without exception, knew
that the word shit is part of male vocabulary, while the expression oh dear! is part of female
vocabulary (Spender, 1980:34). Since languages change it is now one has to think about these
statements. The word shit and the expression oh dear! may have another meaning today
compared with their meaning when Lakoff made the statement in 1975. Moreover, languages
reflect our society and at that time, in 1975, perhaps there were not so many women using
taboo words.