Sociolinguistics: Gender, Politeness, and Stereotypes
SOCIOLINGUISTICS
Gender, Politeness and Stereotypes
a. Woman’s Language and Confidence
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. He suggested that women’s speech was characterized by linguistics features like: o Lexical hedges or fillers (e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see) o Tag questions (e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?) o Rising intonation on declaratives (e.g. it’s really good) o Adjectives (e.g. divine, charming, cute) o Precise color terms (e.g. magenta, aquamarine) o Intensifiers such as just and so (e.g. I like him so much)
Lakoff didn’t claim her list was comprehensive. But many researchers treated it as definite.
In some studies, women were reported as using more tag questions than men. But tags may also express affective meaning, such as:
• As facilitative or positive politeness devices; tag questions provide an addressee with an easy entrée into a conversation. • As the facilitative way; with tag question, the host provides the guests with a topic of conversation. • As confrontational and coercive devices; tag question is used to force feedback from an uncooperative addressee. • To strengthen the negative force of the utterance in which it occurs.
The explanation of the differences between women’s and men’s speech behavior which refer only to the status or power dimension are likely unsatisfactory. The social distance dimension is at least as influential. 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
Gender, Politeness and Stereotypes
a. Woman’s Language and Confidence
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. He suggested that women’s speech was characterized by linguistics features like: o Lexical hedges or fillers (e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see) o Tag questions (e.g. she’s very nice, isn’t she?) o Rising intonation on declaratives (e.g. it’s really good) o Adjectives (e.g. divine, charming, cute) o Precise color terms (e.g. magenta, aquamarine) o Intensifiers such as just and so (e.g. I like him so much)
Lakoff didn’t claim her list was comprehensive. But many researchers treated it as definite.
In some studies, women were reported as using more tag questions than men. But tags may also express affective meaning, such as:
• As facilitative or positive politeness devices; tag questions provide an addressee with an easy entrée into a conversation. • As the facilitative way; with tag question, the host provides the guests with a topic of conversation. • As confrontational and coercive devices; tag question is used to force feedback from an uncooperative addressee. • To strengthen the negative force of the utterance in which it occurs.
The explanation of the differences between women’s and men’s speech behavior which refer only to the status or power dimension are likely unsatisfactory. The social distance dimension is at least as influential. 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