It seems as if women are more ready to let other speakers into the conversation or to allow another speaker to dominate the discussion. Women use more Standard English. At an early age, girls tend to have one or two girlfriends with whom they play most of the time. They are more likely to talk about feelings and the effect of events upon themselves. Women use language to make and maintain social cohesiveness and their activities are generally co-operative and non-competitive.
A study of children at play in a Philadelphia street (Goodwin: 1980; 1990) found that girls use alleviated directives, i.e. when they wanted to get the group to do something they used suggestion rather than a direct command. Furthermore, in this study it was proven that girls like to use forms like 'let's', 'we're gonna', 'we could' to get others to do things, instead of appealing to their personal power. …show more content…
They are careful to respect each other's turns in speaking and tend to apologize for talking too much. Some vocabularies are gender dependent. A word like "gorgeous", for example is three times as likely to be used by a girls and women as by a male (men use it only to talk about women, not for example about clothes, furniture, or food), while the expression "ever so nice" is used most typically by women more than 45, and hardly ever by men of any age.
In all female groups women often discuss one topic for more than a half-hour. The following features have been identified as "Women's discourse" (based on: Lakoff 1975):
a. Hedges, e.g. sort of; kind of, I guess;
b. (Super) polite forms e.g. would you please...I'd really appreciate it
A study of children at play in a Philadelphia street (Goodwin: 1980; 1990) found that girls use alleviated directives, i.e. when they wanted to get the group to do something they used suggestion rather than a direct command. Furthermore, in this study it was proven that girls like to use forms like 'let's', 'we're gonna', 'we could' to get others to do things, instead of appealing to their personal power. …show more content…
They are careful to respect each other's turns in speaking and tend to apologize for talking too much. Some vocabularies are gender dependent. A word like "gorgeous", for example is three times as likely to be used by a girls and women as by a male (men use it only to talk about women, not for example about clothes, furniture, or food), while the expression "ever so nice" is used most typically by women more than 45, and hardly ever by men of any age.
In all female groups women often discuss one topic for more than a half-hour. The following features have been identified as "Women's discourse" (based on: Lakoff 1975):
a. Hedges, e.g. sort of; kind of, I guess;
b. (Super) polite forms e.g. would you please...I'd really appreciate it