Females are usually more polite in their conversations. Together with the use of tag questions, their speech appears much more polite than men’s. By keeping the conversation open, asking for further direction and not imposing their views on others, polite requests rather than forced obedience result. ( Lakoff, 1991: 294). While men use imperatives with greater frequency ( Answer the phone,) women will make polite requests ( “ please answer the phone” or “ Will you please answer the phone?”).
In studying verbal interaction between parents and children, Bellinger and Gleason (1982) show that fathers produce more directives phrased as imperatives, than mothers. Both men and women share the same stereotypes about what is considered “polite” speech (Kemper, 1984). Women should never speak like men. ( Lindsey,1994,p 73)
Society in general especially for females forbids profanity in language. Men tell dirty jokes, and women are often the targets of them. Males believe profanity demonstrates social power and ironically, can be used to make them socially acceptable ( Selnow, 1985). While both men and women use expletives, women not only use them less frequently but still maintain a degree of politeness when uttering them. They also use substitute expletives that are deemed more acceptable. In spilling coffee on herself in front of other people, a woman’s angry and embarrassed response may be “ Oh dear!” or “ Demn it!” The stronger expletive men would use are obvious.
A research on African – American children ( Lindsey, 1974) who use verbal duels called “ playing the dozens” to assert dominance and gain respect from their peers showed that girls are more adept at verbal dueling. Boys do so with much stronger expletives and profanities, and rarely will a girl and boy challenge one another. For children of both races, boys begin to use profanity earlier than girls.
Women also use language to negotiate relationships and establish connections. Men converse to maintain independence and status in a society which is hierarchical, especially in the workplace ( Tannen, 1990). Tannen points out that men do “ report-talk” and women do “ rapport – talk”.
Women in most situations tends to be less competitive, more co-operative and work harder to make things run smoothly; for instance, encouraging others to talk and using more face-saving politeness strategies. (( Maybin, Mercer, p 19 ) This is supported further by Janet Holmes who characterized women’s linguistic behaviour as affiliative, facilitative and co-operative.
The fact that women give and receive many more compliments than men is consistent with the above research findings. ( Maybin, Mercer, p 20 ) Compliments are positive speech acts which are used to express friendship and increase rapport between people. A range of studies, involving American, British, Polish and New Zealand speakers, have demonstrated that compliments are used more frequently by women than by men, and that women are complimented more often than men ( Nessa Wolfson, 1983; Janet Holmes, 1988; Barbara Lewandowska- Tomaszczyk, 1989; Robert Herbert, 1990 ).
Mostly these compliments refer to just a few broad topics: appearance ( especially, clothes and hair ) a good performance which is the result of skill or effort, possessions and some aspect of personality or friendliness. ( Joan Manes, 1983; Homes, 1986; Herbert 1990)
Compliments are remarkably formulaic speech acts. Most use a very small number of lexical items and a very narrow range of syntactic patterns ( Wolfson, 1984; Holmes, 1986; Herbert , 1990 ). A small range of adjectives, for instance, is used to convey the positive semantic message in up to 80 per cent of compliments. In Wolfson’s American data ‘ two thirds of adjectival compliments in the corpus made use of only five adjectives: nice, good, beautiful, pretty and great. (1984, p236 ) In the New Zealand data, the five most frequently occurring adjectives were nice, good, beautiful, lovely and wonderful. Most of the non-adjectival compliments also depended upon a very few semantically positive verbs ( like, love, enjoy and admire ) with like and love alone accounting for 86 per cent of the American data and 80 per cent of the New Zealand data. ( Maybin, Mercer, p 33 )
Evidence suggests that in mixed-gender conversations males dominate females. This is an indication of differential power, and contrary to the stereotype, it also implies that men are more talkative than women. In mixed-gender groups, research consistently reveals a highly degree of male talkativeness. In classroom interaction at all educational levels, male students talk more and for longer periods than female students ( Brooks, 1982; Best, 1983).
Men also interrupt women more than women interrupt men ( Zimmerman and West, 1975; Eakins and Eakins, 1978; West and Zimmerman. 1983; 1985). Interruption is viewed as an attempt to dominate and control a conversation by asserting one’s right to speak at the expense of another. Men’s interruption of women is an indication of differential power which asserts that it is the “right” for a superior to interrupt a subordinate. This is reflected in research which demonstrates that parents and adults, as superiors frequently interrupt children, their subordinates (West and Zimmerman. 1977 ).
Kimble and Musgrove (1988) find that men dominate women in arguments but that women’s visual behaviour during the argument is more dominant. Also, structured conversations are more likely to be dominated by men, with women exerting more control of free discussion ( Kimble et al., 1981)
In arguments men talk more than women opponents (Kimble and Musgrove, 1988) and in structured conversations where expertise is an ingredient, male “experts” talk more than female “experts” ( Leeft-Pellegrini, 1980). Swacker (1975) finds that when asked to describe paintings, males outtalked females four times over. In unstructured situations, Hoffman et al., ( 1984) demonstrate that women do not respond on the basis of a child’s gender but that men speak more and use longer utterances with boys than with girls.
Even though males dominate in amount of verbal output in mixed-gender groups, but when they are with other males, they engage in activities, such as sports, which tend to discourage lengthy conversations ( Arliss, 1991:46)
However, women use open, free flowing conversations as a bonding source and appreciate self-disclosing information. Men feel uncomfortable in this regard. Women tend to like both men and women who self-disclose but men do not ( Petty and Mirels 1981). “ Safe” topics like sports and politics dissuade men from revealing details of their personal lives to one another.
When comparing talk within same-gender groups, women talk more frequently and for longer periods of time, enjoy the conversation more, converse on a wide variety of topics and consider talk as a preferable social activity ( Haas and Sherman, 1982; Dabbs and Ruback, 1984; Tannen, 1990). It is in these same gender contexts, where power and domination are inconsequential and efforts at bonding are ongoing, that female talkativeness is higher than for males.
Jennifer Coates in her detailed qualitative study of informal talk among female middle class friends in England found that these women did not stop talking when they were overlapped, nor did they seem to find the overlaps intrusive. Rather, overlaps were part of the solidarity, like the collaborative production of utterances and the co-operative sharing of the floor. ( Coates, 1993, p 182)
When we see groups of two or three women in a restaurant engaged in lengthy conversation long after they have eaten, young girls who are best friends intently and quietly conversing in their rooms, or female teens talking on the phone for hours, we are not wrong to presume that they are engaging in “ gossip.” ( Lindsey, 1994, p 76 )
In fact, the term is used almost exclusively to indicate a specific kind of talk engaged in by females- talk that is viewed by many, especially males as negative and pointless. If gossip is defined as talking about others or oneself by revealing personal information, women may gossip more than men. Men gossip about others and do not reveal personal information about these people, but they talk about themselves without doing so. ( Lindsey, 1994, p 76)
Levin and Arluke (1985) show that men gossip about distant acquaintances and celebrities while women gossip about close friends and family. Tannen ( 1990) suggest that revealing personal information is what cements friendships between females. Therefore telling secrets is evidence of friendship, especially for women. According to Arliss (1991: 50) review of research on what women and men talk about, several trends are clear. Men today report that women are a frequently discussed topic, whereas previously they talked about other men. Both men and women talk about work and sexual partners.
To summarize, there is definitely significant evidence that women’s speaking style in English differs from men. Women’s talk involves more hesitations, indirectness, qualifiers, polite forms and tag questions and that in most situations they are less competitive, more co-operative and work harder to make things run smoothly. They are less control oriented, more concerned with ‘connection’ rather than status ( Philip Smith, 1985; Holmes 1990; Deborah Tannen, 1991 ) Some researchers relate this to women’s inferior social position, having to play deference towards men and men’s domination in cross gender talk through their control of the topic, interruptions and giving less feedback and support. ( Maybin, Mercer, p 21)
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Robin Lakoff (1975) also suggests that women use more tag questions like ( isn’t it? Don’t you think?) more indirect polite forms (eg. Could you possibly? ) more intensifiers (eg. Really) ; and weaker vocabulary (eg. Words like lovely and Oh dear ) She also observed that men tend to dominate the topics and the management of mixed gender conversation, interrupting more and giving less feedback and support
