Differences between Women's and Men's Speech - A Sociolinguistics Article Review (original) (raw)

A Sociolinguistic Exploration Of The Difference Between Male Speech And That Of Female Speech

Volume 1 Issue 7, 2018

It has been observed that male speech and female speech tend to differ in their form, topic, content, and use. Early writers were highly introspective in their analyses; more recent work has begun to provide empirical evidence. Male speech might be more direct. Men tend to use more of the non-standard variety of languages. However, women, more often than not, are more supportive, polite, expressive, talk more about home and family, etc. This study was conducted to sociolinguistically examine whether male speech is any different from that of female speech if age and level of education are treated as confounding variables.

Do Men and Women Speak Differently? -An Investigation into the Linguistic Behaviour of Men and Women

2017

Linguistic variation is an important area of study in Sociolinguistics. One of these linguistic variations is related to gender. One major question in Sociolinguistics is “Do women and men talk differently?” This question is further intensified by Gray‟s book (1992) “Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus”. If men and women are from two different planets, then it is imperative to analyze the relation between language and gender. This paper aims to investigate the relation between language and gender with a view to generate better understanding and avoid misinterpretation and communication failure in male female discourse. This would help minimize gender discrimination in society since the differences between men and women are socially defined and distorted through a lens of sexism in which men assume superiority over women and maintain it through domination. It will also try to explore whether this gender difference has any implication in language teaching and suggest ways to overc...

Effects of gender and topic on speech style

Journal of psycholinguistic research, 1987

Male and female subjects described nine photographs that had been selected to be of interest to males, females, or both. The resulting speech samples were analyzed for the incidence of five features of word production and five features associated with a "'women's language" (WL) speech style. Results showed that topic (photograph type) determined aspects of speech production. However, there were no gender differences in production or style. Correlations between dependent variables suggested that WL is a consistent set of features. Its use by both female and male speakers may reflect social uncertainty.

Gender and Communication: Some Features of Women’s Speech

Journal of Cultura and Lingua

This paper deals with gender and communication in terms of different features of women’s speech based on the previous studies done by many sociolinguists. Gender refers to categories that distinguish people based on their socio-cultural behavior, including speech. In their speech, gender-men and women- use different ways to say a similar thing in communication. This paper described women’s and men’s speeches from several studies in a frame of linguistics perspectives. Some different features were compared with the women’s speeches in Minangkabau community that indicates Minangkabau politeness maxims. This paper also describes how Minangkabau culture is different from other cultures in criticizing among native speakers of Minangkabau both direct and indirect. Then, some hedges are used by women as politeness markers to minimize face-threatening acts (FTA), a concept proposed by Brown and Levinson (1987).

Gender Differences in Communication

Language and communication are considered acquired behaviours that develop through a combination of nature and nurture, genetic predisposition and environmental stimulation. Human beings have different styles while communicating with one other. Style depends on a number of things such as where we are from, how and where we are brought up, our educational background, age, and gender. In recent years, communication styles of men and women have been studied scientifically. Linguists have documented these perceived differences. The primary purpose of these intensive investigations is not to determine which communicative style is best or to motivate others to change completely, but to identify differences for the purpose of understanding and adaptation.

The effect of gender on the choice of speech style

ITL, 1998

The analysis of a number of linguistic variables reflecting formality in the advanced oral French interlanguage of 27 Dutchspeaking students showed significant differences between male and female speakers. Female speakers were found to produce a much more vernacular and deictical speech, especially in informal contexts. As the situation became more formal, the differences between male and female speakers weakened. The same variation was found in native Dutch.

Male-Female Discourse Difference in Terms of Lexical Density

Research Journal of Applied Sciences, Engineering and Technology

The development of gender roles often begins as early as infancy. Being at the centre, gender manifests itself in any subtle and trivial aspect of our social life. From the time we are very small, it is ever present in any aspect of our life, in conversation, humor, conflict and so on. The overwhelming studies on the differences between men/women speech style represents the significance of the issue. The present study is an attempt to investigate whether the speaker's gender (being a male/female) contributes to the lexical density of their discourse. In other words, whether the lexical density of discourse is sensitive to the gender of the speaker? It is a data-driven, empirical study based on the transcribed recorded talk-in interactions between men and women. Text Content Analysis Tool (TCAT) was used to measure the lexical density of male/female speaker's discourse and to count the total number of words used by male/female speakers. The results of Chi-square test show that there is not a statistically significance difference between the lexical density of men and women discourse (p >0.157). However, there is a negative relationship between the lexical density of discourse and discourse length. In other words, the more word counts (689 words) the lower lexical density (0.33.67%) and vice versa the less word used by the speaker (31) the higher lexical density of the discourse (90.32%).