Robin Lakoff Research

Robin Lakoff wrote a study based on Language and the way in which Women use language. It was called, "Language and Woman's place." It points out how women tend to hedge a lot more in their language and use very vague language but in polite forms such as, "Would you mind?" and "sort of" , "maybe" so they want you to do something but are saying it in a very polite and vague form. It is also said that women give indirect commands such as "its cold in here" meaning they want you to do something about how cold it is. Females also use modal verbs to suggest and hint to people what they want to happen such as "shouldn't we turn up the heat?" etc. The way in which this compares to men's language is that men tend to just ask directly what they want and are not so polite in the way they go about it compared to women. This makes the women seem more weak and shy compared to the men are are confident when asking for things and are not as polite.

The study also outlines how women use lots of adjectives to describe things but they have no meaning because of how often they are used. For example, it is said that the word "adorable" is used often by women and because they call lots of things adorable, it has no meaning behind the word and they in fact do not think it is adorable because the adjective is in fact empty. Women tend to put more emotion into their language as well by adding intensifiers and adjectives into their language to show how happy or sad they are feeling.
Whereas men tend to paraphrase more and if they use an adjective it tends to have more meaning behind it because they do not go into detail about things as regularly as women do. Men tend to get to the point more instead of showing emotion through their language. Men also tend to create more punchlines and find them more funny compared to women who apparently lack a sense of humor and apparently do not tell as great jokes as men do.

Peter Trudgill’s Norwich Study (1970s Study)

Peter Trudgill’s Norwich Study (1970s Study)

- The study took place in Norwich in the 1970s.

·   -  The point in the study was to find out why people speak differently and why certain sounds were ignored in words due to the person’s accent.

 n  -Trudgill noted that this way of speaking (saying “talkin” instead of “talking”) was not unique to Norwich. "Nearly everywhere in the Eng-speaking world we find this alternation between higher-class/formal ng and lower class/informal n. It goes back to the fact that in Old English (and later) there were two forms, a gerund ending in -ing(walking is good for you) and a present participle ending in -end (he was walking). The -end form was the ancestor of -n' and -ing (obviously) of -ing.”

·    -  He noted also that it depended on what class you were in whether you mispronounced these words or not and were more careful with your speech.

·    -   He also says that it was mainly common in the lower working class for these changes in the way they speak to be more common.

·     -  He also finds out that it is more common for men to use these variations in speech compared to women. “When women were questioned about what they thought they were saying, they tended to say they used the standard -ing forms more often than they really did.  When men were questioned about what they thought they were saying, they tended to say they used the nonstandard -in' forms more often than they really did.”

·     - When conducting the study he split people into groups depending on their gender and social class. 

 - He found that women wanted to sound more standard whereas the men wanted to sound more non-standard.

Language and Gender: Differences between men and women in their language

Language and Gender

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2008/03/080303120346.htm  - Article on biological reasons for differences in boys and girls' language. 

When it comes to language and gender I do believe that there is a difference between how men use language and how women use language. Women are stereo typically said to speak more in detail about topics they are talking about, whereas men are stereo typically known to get to the point quickly and not say as much in many words. These are the stereotypes of men and women using language but I do think it depends on the person whether these assumptions of language use are true or not.  

There are certain aspects of language which is seen to be more masculine, for example swearing is seen to be a more masculine form of language because of the stereotype that women are elegant and "lady-like" and so it is seen for it to be a more male dominated form of language. However, I do not believe that nowadays this is true. It may have been true once upon a time but nowadays since men and women have been given an equal status at the latest, swearing is a very gender equal form of language now.

Personally, it is a very female dominated form of language to use acronyms. In my personal experience I see more females saying acronyms like "lol" or "omg" than males. This goes back to the saying that women talk more and go into more detail than men in conversations. Using acronyms is also seen as not a very masculine thing to say and is more associated with the female gender. Then again, this may depend on the person because I do know personally of a few men that do use acronyms. 

It is said that girls have a larger vocabulary than boys even from a young age due to their more "talkative" natures so expand their vocabulary more quickly than boys do, this gives girls an advantage when it comes to starting school maybe due to them knowing what more words mean than boys as well. It is said that at the age of 10 months a baby girl will have twice the vocabulary of a 20 month year old boy. There was research done on this very topic to suggest that there are biological reasons to why girls seem to have a "superior language" from birth to boys. Girls apparently have a more active part of their brain which alerts them to more forms of language than boys at a young age leading to them wanting to talk more and learn more and more words than boys.  

Boys are known for "getting to the point" of conversations when talking to someone instead of explaining what happened and dragging things out. I personally agree with this as when I was younger I remember joking with my parents about how when my brother was on the phone to his friend, it was the same conversation every time. It consisted of "Hey" "Yeah you?" "Okay. Bye" and that was it. Whereas when I am on the phone to my friends, we can talk for ages on the phone and go completely off topic to why we were on the phone to each other in the first place. There is a difference in the way boys and girls talk which is definite because that is the nature of our language. But our language could also depend on how we have been nurtured instead of it being nature. You could have a very talkative boy and a very abstract girl which is different to the stereotype I just mentioned. I think if you are nurtured to talk in a way that boys stereo-typically talk like then you will have that kind of abstract language of getting to the point of things very quickly. It is the same with girls, it could also however depend on your age, my language use has changed since I was 7 years old completely. i talk a lot more now than I did back then due to my personality changing from being shy to being more confident in what I talk about in front of people.