IS THERE A WOMEN'S LANGUAGE? By Jim Vandergriff (unpublished) Since as early as 1582, it has been assumed that women speak substantially differently than men do, but no systematic studies of those presumed differences were done until the 1880s (Key, "Behavior" 281). These later studies were concerned mainly with vocabulary and conversation topics, or with languages other than English. It was not until the early 1970s, in the works of such researchers as Robin Lakoff, Anne Bodine, Ruth Brend, and Nancy Conklin, that the idea of a "Women's American English" was seriously investigated (Key, "Male/Female"). The primary stimulus for these first studies seems to have been the Women's Liberation Movement, with the result that some are characterized more by politics than scholarship. Lakoff's "You Are What You Say," for instance, asserts that there is a women's language, but offers no concrete evidence to support her claims. More recent studies, though, are less polemic and more careful; for example, Francine Frank's 1978 study is a careful discussion of the myths and facts about women's speech. Since these first publications, the field has exploded. Key's 1975 bibliography lists over 200 books and articles relevant to the study of women's language. Similarly, Nancy Henley and Barrie Thorne's 1975 annotated bibliography includes over 275 separate articles and books on the subject. Considerably more has been written about the topic since then, so much, in fact, that another, or supplemental, bibliography is much needed. Yet, the question of whether there is indeed a women's language remains unresolved. Two general conclusions dominate the literature. Many writers, Lakoff and Kramer, for example, insist that there is a women's language, despite the conflicting or unavailable evidence. Others, such as Key, assume that women show preference for certain linguistic forms ("Male/Female"), or, as does O'Barr, conclude that the evidence is insufficient. The weight of the evidence seems to support the latter, more cautious positions. There do, in fact, seem to be some identifiable elements of spoken American English which are more characteristic of female speakers than of male speakers. If, then, one uses the term loosely to cover those gender-preferred features, there is a "women's language." This paper will present the main features of this "women's language" and discuss the evidence for it. The evidence itself falls into two basic categories: logical arguments and empirical study results. Logical argument, being the weaker method for language study, will be treated first. Essentially, there are two non-empirical reasons to suppose that there might be a women's English. Mary Key says that "[i]t is a safe assumption that differences in the language of male and female . . . go back to the beginning of language . . . " ("Male/Female" 11), an assumption based in the idea that sex-role <division leads to language variation and that such sex-role divisions are as old as the species. That is not an unreasonable assumption, though it doesn't constitute proof, nor does it provide any particular details about the nature of the presumed women's language. The second logical assertion says that, since there are women's languages among other peoples, it follows that there would be a Women's English. This position is characterized by such statements as, "Sex differentiation in language is universal . . ." (Bodine 148). This statement makes no overt claim for a Women's English, but Bodine's article is a criticism of how English has been studied in the past (by males with European language biases) and a suggestion that linguists have overlooked an important aspect of American language: With the exception of Haas, Flannery, and Sapir, none of the investigators . . . even considered the basis of their choice. All automatically regarded the male version as basic. Of course, even after choice of basic version has been made, by whatever criteria, there is no justification for equating this version with the [sic] language" (148). Both of these positions are reasonable in themselves, but they do not constitute proof of the existence of a Women's English. What they prove is that there is good reason to suspect that such a language variety might exist. As an apparent response to the dual impetus of the women's liberation movement and the development of sociolinguistics in general, the more recent studies of the presumed Women's English have been largely empirical. While nearly every facet of women's language has been studied, syntax, vocabulary, pronunciation and intonation have been treated most thoroughly. Mary Key cites Roger Shuy's finding that women are less likely to use syntactic features which are "indicators of lower status: multiple negation, pronominal apposition, plurals, non-standard third person singular verb inflections, and possessives" ("Behavior" 284). Except for the plurals, no independent corroboration for Shuy's findings is available. Marjorie Goodwin found that "[t]he syntactic forms utilized by boys [in certain directive-response tasks] always differentiate speaker and hearer" (166). That is, girls use inclusive plural pronouns (we, us, our), but boys use exclusives (I, you, me). One study has been done on the use of possessives. It indicated that low and middle class boys, both black and white, use possessives more frequently than do their female peers (Haas 621-22). Obviously, there is some evidence that women prefer certain syntactic forms. Another syntactic feature frequently attributed to Women's English is the question form used with a declarative function (Lakoff, "Women's Language" 143). Fishman says, for instance, that "[w]omen ask questions nearly three times as often as men" (115). Robin Lakoff asserts that women use tag-questions far more than men do ("You . . ." 65-66), but neither Bernstein's 1962 study, nor Bauman's 1976 study supports Fishman. In fact, the former showed that working class boys used them more frequently than did girls (Frank 55). Siegler and Siegler showed in a blind test that people attribute questions to females, but provided no evidence that the stereotype is accurate (167-70). Lakoff also says women use more modals. She contends that modals can be used to express hesitancy, "and hence it would not be surprising if we found them prevalent in the speech of people who were unwilling to take a strong public stand, among whom . . . women may be expected to predominate" ("Women's Language" 143-44). Furthermore, she posits that women use more "hedge words," such as I think , kind of and sort of. But Francine Frank says that "neither sex of speaker nor sex of listener appear[s] to be important" to frequency of use of tag-questions, qualifiers, or hedges (55). This conclusion is buttressed by Anne Bodine: Conspicuous by its absence is any profound difference in syntactic patterning, such as difference in word order, between the sex-based versions of any language. In general, the only thing done by the sex-differentiated affix is to mark sex, while other syntactic processes for the language are the same (137). One can only conclude, therefore, that there are no proven syntactic differences in the English used by American males and females. A similar conclusion, though based on stronger evidence, must be drawn in regard to vocabulary. Haas presents some evidence that girls use more adjectives than boys do, citing studies by Brandis and Henderson and by Entwisle and Garvey (621). Key asserts that women "tended to use reduplicated forms . . . , words which emphasized femininity . . . [and] more emphatic forms . . ." ("Male/Female" 75). Similarly, Lakoff says women use "adjectives that seem devoid of all but a vague positive emotive sense: divine, gorgeous , etc." ("Women's Language," 142) and Kramer says women not only use such words, but use them "in contexts and in frequencies that differ from men" (15). Neither Key, Lakoff, nor Kramer presents any evidence to support her contention. Key ("Male/Female" 75; "Behavior" 284) and Lakoff ("Women's Language" 142) make similar unsupported claims for intensifiers such as so , such , very and vastly . On the other hand, Gilley and Summers show that women use hostile verbs, such as stabbed and murdered only 90% as often as men do (36). Bailey provides substantial evidence that women use strong expletives only 61% as often as men (439). And Frank found that "[m]en used a significantly greater number of obscenities (64.8% as opposed to 35.2% for women). . ." (57). She concludes, though, that . . . the sex of the hearer turned out to be a stronger determinant of choice of obscenity than the sex of the speaker. People were more likely to swear in single sex groups, but this was a stronger tendency for the men than for the women. . . . [M]en seemed to switch to weaker obscenities in mixed company, while women increased their use of stronger words (57). Not only is there evidence that some differences show up in male and female use of hostile verbs and expletives, males apparently have a generally more empirical vocabulary. Swacker, for instance, found that men use more numerals (81). And Frank cites a study by Gleser, Gottschalk and Watkins which "indicated that females used significantly more words implying feeling, emotion, or motivation, and made more references to self, while men used more words implying time, space, quantity and destructive action" (56). Eakins and Eakins point out that men and women use different kinds of transitions to shift a topic. Men use more interjections; women use more conjunctions (30-31). According to Fishman, there are a number of attention-getting devices women use much more often than men do. These are the question format ("d'y know what?"), introductory remarks ("this is interesting."), and "you know." This last occurs ten times more frequently in women's speech than in men's. Fishman concludes that all these devices occur because women have more difficulty getting a conversation to succeed (15). In general, then, there is some evidence that the vocabularies of men and women differ to some extent. Men's words tend to be stronger and more empirical. But as Frank concludes, "the results are inconclusive and often contradictory" (56). Pronunciation provides the best evidence of gender-based language forms, but even it is not free of contradictions. Concerning post-vocalic /r/, Key cites both Shuy's (1966) and Levine and Crockett's (1967) findings that "[s]ignificant male/female differences . . . showed up in the pronunciation or absence of /r/. . ." (283). Smith says that women are more likely to pronounce post-vocalic /r/ (111), but then meliorates his statement a few pages later: "Labov (1966), for example, did not find significant differences between women and men in the pronunciation of post-vocalic /r/ in his New York City study" (115). The literature contains considerable support for an /-in/, /-ing/ difference in male and female usage. For instance, in 1958, Fischer found that "a markedly greater number of girls use /-ing/ more frequently, while more boys used more /-in/" (484). Key cites Metcalf's 1970 study of Mexican-American speakers and Shuy's 1967 Detroit study in support of Fischer (282-83). Interestingly, Trugdill's study of pronunciation of /-ing/, /-in/ in England elicited a similar pattern: women in Norwich use /-ing/; men use /-in/. Women also, according to Shuy, substitute nasalized vowels for final nasals less frequently than do men and are less likely to substitute /f/, /t/, and /0/ for /Ø/ (283). In general, women's pronunciation tends to be more "correct," more standard, than men's (Haas 623). Pitch, or intonation, is another aspect of language frequently cited as evidencing a Women's English. Robin Lakoff asserts that women use "a peculiar sentence intonation pattern . . . which changes a declarative answer into a question" ("You . . B." 66). In support of Lakoff, Frank cites a 1973 study by Sachs, Lieberman and Erickson which suggests that physiology alone can't account for all the differences in male and female pitch (51). In her 1971 study, Ruth Brend claims that there are "some very definite preferences in the general usage and avoidance of some [intonation patterns] by men versus women" (Brend 84). However, she does not describe the nature of her study, nor the statistical spread of her findings. Frank notes that, "[a]lthough intriguing, Brend's article is far from definitive, as she give no indication of the source of her data or of her methods of collection" (52). Thus, neither study supports Lakoff's assertion that a women's intonation pattern exists. Thus far, the available evidence leads only to the conclusion that men and women may speak somewhat differently, but there is no firm evidence of a Women's English. As Haas concludes, "sex differences in American English are only statistical differences. . . . . . . Sex differences in spoken language that have been identified in English are sex preferential as opposed to sex exclusive" (623-4). Bailey goes a step further, saying that "[r]esearchers . . . should probably expect to find not a women's language or dialect . . ., but rather many dialects . . . which reflect the numerous social and cultural niches women have carved out for themselves. . ." (448). Why the idea of a Women's English remains alive in the face of so much unsupportive research is perhaps explainable. First, "[l]imited evidence confirms that males are more assertive and issue more directives; females are often more tentative and supportive" (Haas 623). Secondly, "male and female listeners can . . . detect differences in the speech styles of feminist and non-feminist women" (Giles 154). That is, there is some detectable difference which has not yet been accounted for. Giles suggests that "it may be that the speech style characterizing feminist women is in actual fact that associated with females who are committed to some [sic] issue.. . . Rather than the ‘voice of feminism,’ we might have the ‘voice of committment’" (155). This analysis is supported by O'Barr and Atkins' study of male and female language use patterns in trial courtrooms. Their thirty-month study showed clearly that the Women's Language features posited by Lakoff "are simply not patterned along sex lines. Moreover, the features do not, in a strict sense, constitute a style or register [sic] since there is not perfect co-variation" (94). They conclude that the differences add up to a language of the powerless, not a Women's Language (104). 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