Features of Women's Language

By a close analysis of women's language, Lakoff has found that there are certain features that characterize the speech of women and are not found in the speech of men. The suggested features could be gathered under 'hedging devices' and 'boasting devices'. As the name suggests, the 'hedging devices' are used to show confusion and uncertainty. The 'boasting devices' are used to strengthen the meaning. To exemplify this, it was a bad day can express certainty by saying it was really a bad day. It can also show uncertainty by saying: it was a kind of a bad day. Lakoff argued that both kinds show the unconfidence of the females. They only use the 'boasting devices' to convince their addressee with their utterance (Holmes 310).

a.     Lexical Choice

     Lakoff noticed that there are certain words uttered only by women. These words may be related to color such as 'mauve' and 'chartreuse'. She says that women also use adjectives which are out of meaning and power as 'divine' and 'cute'. This is contrasted to the adjectives used by men such as 'great' and 'terrific'. However, we should pay attention to the fact that this study is based on introspection and not on introspection and not on empirical methods (Wolfson 176).

b.     Question intonation in statements

     That feature can be categorized under the 'hedging devices'. Lakoff argues that women show their uncertainty by intonating questions in declarative sentences. In other words, they make questions and suggestions when they are asked about something by their addressee (Wolfson 176). For example, when they are asked about the time when the dinner would be ready, they are going to say "oh, about eight O'clock?"(Lakoff qtd in Wolfson 176). In that case, they have changed their answer into a question because they wanted to escape authority, or that they wanted only to make it that way.

c.     Hedging

      In addition to intonating questions in declarative statements, women would hedge their speech acts to avoid being direct and to the point. They often do this by adding certain fillers such as; you know, sort of, you see. They might also do this by adding a tag question to their locutionary acts. For example, they might say: the window is open, isn't it? What they meant by this is to get the window closed by the hearer, but they tagged their question to avoid a direct request. In that respect, they use certain modifiers that show uncertainty such as kind of and you know what I mean. This is because they want to get an approval from the other participant. However, tag questions may be used to express anger or threat. For example, if a woman says "so you think you can get away with that, do you?" she does not mean avoiding being direct, but rather expressing her anger or threat (Wolfson 177).

d.     Emphatic Modifiers and Intonational Emphasis

     "[W]omen use the modifiers so, such, and very to emphasize their utterances much more frequently than men do and that  they combine this usage with an intensity of intonation out of proportion with the topic of the phrase" (Wolfson 177). As said before, they tend to emphasize their utterances because they feel from their inside that the addressee is not believing them. Thus, they use such 'boasting devices' which in reality show their uncertainty. As an exemplification of this, if you asked a woman about the performance of an actor, she would say "it was a BRILLIANT performance" (Holmes 310).

e.     Hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation

     That is a consistent use of standard verb forms. Women use more prestigious words than men do in the same situations. This is applicable also to the pronunciation and meaning. Labov and Trudgill discovered that women of the 'lower-middle class' are more likely to use words nearer to the 'prestige norm', because women (in the period of these experiments) were isolated. Hence, they are nearer to hypercorrection (Wolfson 177).

f. Redundancy

     The speech of women is full of redundancy. They tend to repeat what they have just said. On the other side, men are more likely to omit 'non-essential' utterances more than women. For example:

A: Male:" I'm employed with…. Aah been there over nine months".

B: Female: "My name is Sophia…. I've been employed…"

In those two examples, it is clear that the male prefers to omit what would be understood by his hearer. On the contrary, Sophia repeats every single detail in her utterances. She uses the complete form of "I've been" (Holmes 319). The funniest thing is that it may be said, as a result of the existence of this feature in the utterance of women, that women are more talkative than men. However, recent surveys have proved that men are more talkative than women.

g.     Interactions and Interruptions

     Although it is known that women are more talkative than men, most of the recent researches show that this is not true (Holmes 320). Men are more likely to interrupt others while they are speaking with them. Most studies prove the fact that while interacting with females, males are more likely to interrupt them:

  Wanda: Did you see here that sociologists have just proved that men interrupt

women all the time? They____

  Ralph: Who says?

  Wanda: … They think it's a dominance trick men aren't even aware of. But ____

  Ralph: These people have nothing better to do than eavesdrop on interruptions?

  Wanda: -but women make 'retrievals' about one third of the time…they pick up where

they left off after the man___

   Ralph: Surely not all men are like that Wanda?

   Wanda: … Doesn't that___

   Ralph: speaking as… (Holmes 321).

In that conversation, it is apparent that Ralph is interrupting Wanda all the time. She cannot even utter a complete sentence without being interrupted by Ralph. Females are even more interrupted more than men whether she is doctor, wife, patient, daughter, or student (Holmes 322).

h.     Feedback

     Women tend to provide feedbacks (like mmm) to the utterance of the other participants more than men. Another study shows that females tend to develop and widen the arguments of the other speakers. It is deduced that females are more 'cooperative conversationalists' than men. On the other hand, men tend not to support but to compete with the other participant's arguments (Holmes 324).

i. Overlap

     Gender differences in a certain language do not reflect the use of completely different forms between men and women. They only overlap the similar forms. For instance, while women pronounce the –ing in a word like catching as [ing], men pronounce it as [in]. In Sydney, men utter the first sound in (thing) as [f] more than women. Men also do not pronounce 'h's as in 'ome and 'ouse. Such examples show that women use a hypercorrect language more than men do. On the contrary, men tend to use a vulgar language than woman (Holmes 176).

j. Gossips through Women's Language

     The gossip of females has certain linguistic features. It contains intensifiers that show certainty. It also contains question tags that require the interference of the other participants. When all the participants are women, they complete their sayings. In other words, it expresses the "cooperative and positive nature" of the females talk (Holmes 327).

4.     Gender- Related Directives

     Females are more likely to use more polite forms of directives than men and boys. A study of how doctors use directives can clarify this. While a male doctor may tell his patient, 'lie down', a female doctor may address her patient saying: "maybe you could stay away from …." Directives delivered to women are also more likely to be in a polite form, and even less direct than that are delivered to men (Holmes 193&194). An example of this would be:

(a)  Tom: Give me that. I need it now.

(b)  Seymour: Get off that car.

(c)   Grant: Get out of my house.

(d)  Maria: You finished with that rolling pin now.

(e)   Lisa: My turn now eh?

(f)    Meg: It's time for tea so you'll have to go home now (Holmes 193).

  

Causes

There are certain causes that make language differ between men and women. Firstly, these differences are due to the fact that women are isolated from the low-class people who speak the vulgar language. Thus, their language tends to be pure and hypercorrect. Women have a less social interaction than men. On the other side, the roles of men in most societies are marked by mobility and movement. "The amount of travel and exposure to a wide range of language varieties affects the percentage of Creolized speech within the gender groups, but not across them," (Nichols qtd in Chambers 141&142). Men are often greater than women in their breadth which makes their language more likely to be affected by others' language. Experiments have proved that; "Men from the island often work with each other on their mainland jobs, while the jobs of island women tend to be isolated from other island women and from other members of the larger black speech community," (Nichols qtd in Chambers 142). This again confirms the fact that the interaction assigned to women is less than that is assigned to men. This leaves the language of women unaffected be vulgar languages, and makes it more likely to be standard. Besides, women's language is characterized by 'inherent adaptability', which makes them more likely to speak a standard language (Chambers 142).

     Sex differences might express the social hierarchy of a certain society. That is if women are inferior to men, they could not address them by their first names, and vice versa. If men are more powerful, their spread and mobility would be greater than women, and consequently their language could be affected so long as they are put in an interaction with other groups. The same thing is not applicable to women. That is if they are superior to men and are given greater interaction with others, their language would not be vulgar as in the case of men. This is due to the 'inherent adaptability' of their language. Thus, men's language could be easily affected in comparison with the language of women (Holmes 166).

Gender Differences In Speech Acts

Men and women do not speak exactly the same. This is not due to a biological difference concerning being male or female. As a start, we can say that these differences result from their different social positions. Men are put in interaction with different kinds of people whether from their own class or from another different class or even from different speech communities. Thus, they cannot preserve the purity of their own language. On the other hand, the interaction assigned to women with different classes or speech communities is less than that of men. Thus, women are more likely to preserve the purity of their own language. The first linguist to discuss that issue was Lakoff (1973). She noticed 6 features (that would be discussed later) that are common in the utterance of women (Wolfson 176).

1.     Sex and Gender

     Before studying how differently men and women use language, it is better to account for the difference between sex and gender. That distinction would make the issue closer to the understanding of the reader. On the one hand, sex is related to biology. It cannot be helped for it is related to one's own creation. When we differentiate between male and female, it is sex that is called into question. On the other hand, gender is related to one's social acquisition. Miller and Swift make it clear when they say "At the risk of oversimplification, sex … is a biological given; gender is a social acquisition" (qtd in Chambers 117). Thus, gender comes as a result of one's own interaction with one's own surroundings. Now, it is clear that gender differences regarding the use of language is not a matter of sex or biology. These differences are mere 'social acquisition' which enhance the proposition that the way men and women use language is mainly related to their interaction with other speech communities.

Indirect Speech Acts

Speech acts can be performed directly or indirectly, literally or nonliterally, explicitly or inexplicitly. When someone says: the window is open; the illocutionary act for the listener is a request. The speaker is requesting or ordering the hearer to close the window for him. The interlocutor is requesting the other party indirectly to close the window for him. That illocutionary act should not be taken from the direct meaning of the words. The hearer should pay attention in that case for both the intention of the speaker, and the context in which the utterance is said. The illocutionary meaning may also be nonliterary at all. This occurs when someone says, "I love the sound of your voice". The intended illocutionary meaning here is that the speaker should stop singing for the interlocutor can not bear listening to it anymore. Here the illocutionary meaning is not literal. The literal meaning may mislead the hearer, because the speaker does not mean that he really loves his voice, but the opposite. Understanding the illocutionary meaning in that case would not be easy without constructing an appropriate context of situation that is in line with both the conventions of that speech community, and the intention of the speaker. Certain illocutionary acts could also be inexplicit. When an interlocutor says: I will attend the lecture; his illocutionary act is not explicit and cannot be understood easily by the hearer. The hearer cannot understand which lecture he is planning to attend because the speaker kept in mind the intended lecture ( which might be the lecture of linguistics for example). Again, the speaker is depending on the shared knowledge between him and the other party. Thus, the hearer should create an appropriate context of situation, in addition to a full knowledge of the intention of the interlocutor since part of the illocutionary act is conveyed implicitly. To clarify this, one might say: I am ready. The proposed information does not give us more details about what the speaker is ready for. In that case, what the speaker intends is a completion of what he says, and this is known as 'impliciture' (Bach PAR.4-Direct, indirect speech acts).

Types Of Speech Acts

 Speech acts can be classified according to their function into five different categories. In fact, this classification may be attributed to the illocutionary act, but so long as the theory is based mainly on the illocutionary acts, it is not wrong to mention this category as a main branch in the theory. Those five divisions focus on the function of the utterance rather than anything else. The five divisions are the representatives, the directives, the expressives, the commissives, and the declaratives (Jaworowska: par. 4).

a.      Representatives: They are the thoughts and beliefs of the speaker which include assertions, claims and reports.

b.     Directives: The directives direct the addressee to do something for the addressor. They are like suggestions, requests, and commands.

c.     Commissives: This branch includes promises, threats, and offers. They occur when the speaker directs himself to do something.

d.     Expressives: They express the state of the speaker. Examples of this branch are apologies, complain, and thanks.

e.      Declaratives: The declaratives declare something to change a current state. Examples of those declaratives are decrees and declarations. (Huang 107)

     The class of declaratives can be further subdivided into 2 subdivisions, which only occur when the speaker is in full authority;

I.                   Effectives: They refer to words that can change an institutional state of affairs, "such as a minister baptizing a baby" (Nastri: par. 14).

II.                Verdictives: They refer to a verdict made by a person in an authority. It means producing another kind of truth by that person in authority, as in "I find him innocent", and ' strike' (Nastri: par. 14).

Levels of Speech Acts

a.      Locutionary Acts

     "A locutionary act is an act of saying something, and to perform an act of saying something …involves uttering noises … of certain types belonging to and as belonging to a certain vocabulary," (Schiffer 88). The locutionary act intended by some person is usually interpreted by the words he uses in a certain utterance. In other words, it is the performative words said by the interlocutors to direct the other party to perform an action for him. It is "the production of a meaningful linguistic expression" (Huang 102). In that case, the interlocutor should have the authority to make the listener perform that action. The illocutionary act, which would be illustrated later in that research, is seen as a reaction to the locutionary act. Yet, Austin says that the locutionary act could be an illocutionary act by including one of the performative verbs as in promising, warning or ordering. For example," I (hereby) promise to ….," has become an illocutionary act by including a performative verb which is "promise" (Schiffer 89). The locutionary act could be further classified according to their manner of production into the phonic act, the phatic act, and the rhetic act:

I.                   Phonic act; the process of producing the sounds which is used in that locutionary act. This subdivision is not adequate to the locutionary act for it might be produced by writing, or even by the body language.

II.                Phatic act; the structural and syntactic arrangement of the sounds produced by the speaker. This subdivision has to do with the intention of the interlocutor.

III.             Rhetic act; the sorting of the utterance by the speaker to deliver a certain message to the hearer. The rheme of the locutionary act lies behind that rhetic act. (Hallion par. 70&72&76)

b.     Illocutionary acts

     The illocutionary act "is a conventional act: an act done as confirming to a convention" (Ibid qtd in Schiffer 90). It is a reaction to the locutionary act which does not include "joking, showing off, and insinuating" (Schiffer 89). In other words, it is what is meant by the interlocutors to be performed by the other party. Understanding the intention of the interlocutor, the listener would start reacting to his utterance, and this is what is known as the illocutionary act. It can be seen also as "the type of function the speaker intends to fulfill" (Huang 102).  However, the intention of the speaker is not the only thing on which the illocutionary act depends. It depends also on the convention and the force of the interlocutor. An "illocutionary act will not be successful brought off unless the speaker brings about in his audience the understanding of the meaning and of the force of the locution" (Ibid qtd in Schiffer 89). Searle agrees with Austin on the fact that illocutionary acts are controlled by meaningfulness. He says:

 The speaker intends to produce a certain illocutionary effect by means of getting the hearer to recognize his intention to produce that effect, and he also intends the recognition to be achieved in virtue of the fact that the meaning of the item he utters conventionally associates it with producing that effect (Searle qtd in Lyons 735).

Here, Searle emphasizes the fact that the illocutionary act should be determined by both the intention of the interlocutor and the conventions of their own community. Those illocutionary acts are like accusing, apologizing, blaming, congratulating, giving permission, joking, nagging…etc (Huang 102).

     The illocutionary acts are countless in English, but they can be further classified into 3 groups:

I. Utterances with performative verbs: This category would include a list of performative verbs such as 'promise', 'swear', and 'threaten'.

             II. Utterances without performative verbs: This occurs when the intention of the speaker is performing an action without including a performative verb in his utterance. When a speaker says I will pay the bill, this is considered a promise from that speaker to pay the bill, and so the other party expects him to take that action.

            III. Through a relationship between warning and advising, or promising and threatening: This occurs when the speaker, for example, warns his hearer saying: do not try to cross that gate. In fact, this warning includes an illocutionary act which is that the hearer should not approach the said gate. (Lyons 736&737)

          On the other side, Austin classifies those speech acts in English into five types:

I. Verdictives: These" consist in the delivering of a finding, official or unofficial, upon evidence or reasons as to value a fact" (Austin qtd in Parkinson 178). They are used to produce a certain verdict upon a certain fact, be it official or non-official. Grading or ranking an utterance under the category of verdictives of the illocutionary acts would be unclear without a full illustration (Parkinson 178).

 

II.    Exercitives: They are" the giving of a decision in favor of a decision of or against a certain course of action, or advocacy of it. It is a decision that is to be so, as distinct from a judgement that it is so," (Austin qtd in Parkinson 180). They are like 'appointing', 'degrading', 'demanding', 'demoting', 'dismissing',….etc. It comes from exercising powers, or rights. Unlike the verdictives, exercitives can be identified without any illustration (Parkinson 180).

III.  Commissives: They "are typically actions that commit one to a course of action" (Parkinson 180). In other words, they are certain utterances that direct the addressee to take the responsibility of performing an action. This is like 'promising', 'contracting' and 'undertaking'. Like the exercitives, commissives can be fully identified also without an illustration (Parkinson 180).

 

IV.Expositives: They "are used in acts of exposition involving the expounding of views, the concluding of arguments, and the clarifying of usage and reference," (Austin qtd in Parkinson 178). This is like 'stating', 'affirming', 'denying', 'answering', and 'illustration'. Expositives can not be graded or ranked without a full illustration (Parkinson 178).

V.   Behabitives: Those "Behabitives include the notion of reaction to other people's behaviour and fortunes and of attitudes and expressions of attitudes to someone else's past conduct or imminent conduct," (Austin qtd in Parkinson 179). This includes 'apologizing', 'thanking', 'deploring', 'congratulating', and 'welcoming'. Behabitives like congratulating may be used without a full illustration. Other behabitives need more elaboration to be ranked (Parkinson 179).

c.     Perlocutionary Acts

     Those perlocutionary acts are the "effects upon the feelings, thoughts, or actions of the audience, or of the speaker, or of other persons," (Ibid qtd in Schiffer 90). The perlocutionary act is related to the reflection of the locutionary act on the hearer. When a husband, for example, says to his wife:" I promise you a diamond ring", the perlocutionary act is to bring happiness and satisfaction on the wife. However, this does not occur in all cases. Out of here, we can deduce a relation between the perlocutionary act, the locutionary act, and the illocutionary act. The perlocutionary effect, on the one side, is a mix between the locutionary act and the 'non-conventional' act (Halion: par. 83). Halion says also that the locutionary act might result in perlocutionary or illocutionary effect, or both of them (par. 91). Unlike the illocutionary act, the perlocutionary act is not decided by the convention of a certain community, but by the intention of the speaker. Convention cannot decide how the effect on the hearer would be. This could be decided only by the intention of the interlocutor and how the listener would receive the message (Schiffer 91). This was the last division of Austin's levels of speech acts. For Searle, this was not the end of the levels of speech acts, as he adds another category which is the propositional acts.

d.     Propositional Acts

     As said before, Searle was not completely against the theory of Austin. He accepts the dichotomy of Austin as it is. However, he adds to that dichotomy another class which is the propositional acts. A propositional act is a speech act that a speaker performs when referring or predicating something in an utterance. As the definition proposes, this branch can be divided into a reference act and a prediction act (Halion: par. 106).

I. Reference act: Searle says that the reference act is

Any expression which serves to identify any thing, process, event, action, or any other kind of ‘individual’ or ‘particular’ I shall call a referring expression. ...It is by their function, not always by their surface grammatical form or their manner of performing their function, that referring expressions are to be known (Halion: par. 125).

The reference act is complete as we may mean something without uttering a word about it. For example, the word 'doctor' in 'a doctor came', refers to some thing. However, when it comes as a predicate in ' George is a doctor', it does not refer to anything rather than describing George (Halion: par. 126)

I.                                           Predicate Act: it is the act of prediction. As the above mentioned, it does not refer to anything but rather, predicting the quality of something or someone. The act of prediction is incomplete as it depends on another reference act. It “is not a separate speech act at all” (Halion: par. 126).

Performatives vs. Constatives

Performatives vs. Constatives

     In its very beginning, speech acts were classified into performatives and constatives. Those 2 divisions began to disappear as the theory was in its way to become complete and fulfilled. In fact, Austin approves this classification as a branch of his speech act theory. He also disapproves this classification as the distinction between them is unclear (Huang 96-101).

a.      Performatives

     As Austin defines it, Performatives are those sentences that denote an action. When the interlocutor wants his listener or reader to perform an action, he just uses certain words in a certain context that direct the other party to perform that intended action (Huang 95). In that case, Austin uses the expression "felicity conditions". These are the set of rules under which an utterance would be governed as performative. These conditions are:

* Those performatives should be based upon convention.

* The speaker should have the authority to perform that action.

* The intention should be understood by the hearer.

* "The procedure must be executed (i) correctly and (ii) completely."

*The utterance should reveal clearly its consequences.

He says also that if any of those conditions is not applied, then the performatives would be infelicitous (Huang 99).

I. Explicit performatives

     Performatives could be further classified into explicit and implicit. Explicit performatives usually contain a performative verb which is apparent to the other party. It bears a clear cut meaning. In the utterance; "I promise to study," there is a clear performative verb which is "promise".  The utterance in that case should be declarative. Its subject should be in the first person pronoun with an active, present simple verb. Yet, this rule has some exceptions as in "Passengers are requested to cross the railway line…." Here the subject of the utterance is plural, and the verb is in the passive mode, in spite of the fact that this is a performative utterance. In addition, these rules may be applied to constatives, as in "I promise to be there". Here, the speaker is just addressing himself (Lyons 728&729).

II. Implicit performatives

     Unlike the explicit performatives, implicit performativs do not contain a performative verb. The only way to understand that this is a performative utterance is by realizing the real intention behind that utterance. Here the context plays an important role in determining the intention of the interlocutor because the utterance does not bear a cut clear meaning as in the explicit performatives (Lyons 728&729).

b.Constatives

     These are certain utterances which do not denote an action. The do not contain a performative verb that would direct the other party to perform an action. As Austin says, these constatives are used only in descriptions and assertions (HUANG 95). It is supposed that the proposed felicity conditions could not be applied to constatives. However, Austin realized that constatives might be performatives. For example, somebody may say that "the window is open". The utterance here might be directive as the interlocutor wants the window to get closed. In that case, the constative utterance is classified as implicit performative for the performative verb is not clear. From those examples, it is found that the distinction between constatives and performatives is not that clear. They might be overlapped. Thus, Austin shifts to another classification, as he differentiates between locutionary, illocutionary, and perlocutionary actions (Lyons 730).