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This study investigates women's language use in same-sex conversations, examining if a group of women used typical female features in their language. The research focuses on pragmatics and the influence of biological, social, and learned behavior differences on language use. The findings show that women use more hedges, tag questions, and minimal responses than men, and they ask more questions, particularly in low-status contexts.
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Abstract The present study investigates women´s language use in same – sex conversations and the aim was to find out if the group of women that was tape recorded used typical female features in their language. This group of six women was given the topic “Men and women” and then they were free to talk about whatever they wanted. Four typical female language features were investigated; hedges, tag – questions, minimal responses and questions, and my result shows that these six women were frequent users of these language features and the results confirm previous research that has been made by, for example, Jennifer Coates.
Keywords: Women´s language, pragmatics, hedges, tag – questions, minimal responses, questions
researchers that conducted the early sociolinguistic studies were interested in gender as an explanation for linguistic difference; they were interested in social class differences (Coates 2004: 52). Men and women´s language can be researched in many different linguistic fields, and I am going to look at women´s language from a pragmatic point of view;
Pragmatics enters the picture to augment the interpretations assigned by the semantic component of the grammar, to deal with the ways in which what is conveyed – what people succeed in meaning – outstrips what is strictly said. How, for example, can you throw lika a girl be understood as an insult? What is literally said is evaluatively neutral, but the derogatory message arises from background assumptions brought into play in interpreting the point of uttering those words in a particular context ( Eckert & McConnell – Ginet 2003: 79)
In this essay, I am going to tape-record a group of women when they discuss and see if they use typically female features in their language.
The aim of this study is to see if the women in my discussion group use typical female language features when they speak. The language features that I am going to be looking for are hedges, tag – questions, minimal responses and questions.
The question that I want to answer in this essay is;
Some researchers say that the reason why men and women differ in their linguistic behaviour is because they are biologically different. Women are born with the ability to be more supportive and non-competitive, while men are not. There is no evidence to support this claim, so this can be seen as a stereotyping picture. Another explanation can be that of dominance; male dominance is reflected in language and men use all their available power to try to dominate each other and women. When women are dominated by men in this way, they usually seek support from other women instead of disagreeing with the men´s dominance. But there are some women that turn to more prestigious language forms to avoid being dominated by men (Wardhaugh 2006: 326-327). Lakoff (1975, in Wardhaugh 2006: 327) has the opinion that women are powerless, and that men are
the dominant ones in society. Other researchers agree with her, but
anthropologists have pointed out that women are never without power and effectively control some societies. Dominance clearly fails as a universal explanation of gendered language differences (Wardhaugh 2006: 327).
A third explanation can be that, from a linguistic point of view, men and women have learned to act according to their gender. Men learn to be men, and women learn to be women, because linguistic behavior is for the most part learned behavior. Men and women have different roles in society, and
we may expect that the more distinct the roles, the greater the differences, and there seems to be some evidence to support such a claim, for the greatest difference appear to exist in societies in which the roles of men and women are most clearly differentiated (Wardhaugh 2006: 330).
When women speak to other women, they often speak to each other as equals and they are cooperative in their speech strategies, the group is more important than the individual and “When women talk to each other as friends their chief goal in conversation is not the exchange the information, but the maintenance of good social relationship” (Coates 1988: 4).
Below, I present the four different language features that I am going to focus on in my essay. The reason why I chose these features was that they are considered to be typically female (Coates 2004: 87-93).
Women are said to use more hedges than men, such as I think, you know, I´m sure, sort of and perhaps. These expressions can show both uncertainty and certainty about the topic that is being discussed, and can also be used to mitigate the force of what is being said. That women´s use of hedges could have something to do with unassertiveness is something that Robin Lakoff claims, but she has no empirical evidence to support that (Lakoff 1988, in Coates 1988:4). Jennifer Coates
Women use tag questions more often than men, but the usage does not differ that much. Examples of tag questions are isn´t it and wasn´t it. Holmes (1984) divides tag questions into two categories; tag questions that express modal or affective meaning respectively. Men are said to use more modal tags and affective tags are more popular among women (Coates 1988: 9, Coates 2004: 90).
Tags with modal meanings are speaker-oriented; the speaker wants his/her proposition to be confirmed by the addressee and these tags also seek information;
She´s coming around noon isn´t she? (Husband to wife concerning expected guest)
The tags with affective meaning on the other hand are addressee-oriented and the speaker uses them to express his/her attitude towards the addressee, and this can be shown either by supporting the addressee;
The hen´s brown isn´t she? (Teacher to pupil)
It can also be used to soften a speech act that is negatively affective;
That was pretty silly, wasn´t it? (Older child to younger child)
Robin Lakoff claims that tag questions are associated with tentativeness, that women use them more than men do and that “tag questions decrease the strength of assertions” (Lakoff 1975 in Coates 2004: 90-91).
Minimal responses are also called “back-channels” and examples of minimal responses are right, yeah and mhm. These words are used in conversation when the listener wants to show his/her support towards the speaker, and research shows that women use minimal responses more than men do. In mixed conversations, women use minimal responses to support the men, and women are said to do the “conversational shitwork” (Coates 2004: 87, Coates 1988: 5).
Back channels are often well placed in conversations and do not interrupt the flow of the speaker, and “female speakers also use minimal responses to mark their recognition of different stages of a
conversation, for example, to accept a new topic, or to acknowledge the end of a topic” (Coates 2004: 129). In her research, Coates finds two different ways that women, in same sex conversations, use minimal responses. When the women have a discussion, in which most of the women participate, minimal responses are used to support the speaker and they also show that they have the listerner´s attention. But when one speaker tells the others something, minimal responses are not used as often and when they do occur they are, for example, used by the listeners to show agreement with the fact that a new topic has been established. This shows that the participants in a conversation are sensitive to different types of talk and that they know how to use minimal responses depending on the situation (Coates 1988: 5 & 6).
Research has shown that women ask more questions than men, and Fishman (1980, in Coates 2004:
research findings so far suggest that women use interrogative forms more than men and that this may reflect women´s relative weakness in interactive situations: they exploit questions in order to keep conversation going (Coates 2004: 93).
In Sandra Harris´s research, she shows that questions are linked to powerful participants, because the person that asks the question controls what the other person can say because the answer has to be relevant. Other research, made by for example Barnard (2000), Barnes (1971) and West (1984) also confirms Harris´s findings that questions are mostly used by the powerful participants. The only time when men ask more questions than women is when the context has high status. In these contexts, men and women are supposed to be status-equal and examples of these contexts are the questionings after formal presentations at conferences and there have also been studies done of the academic seminars at Durham university. We also have to look at the different functions that the questions have and if the situations are symmetrical or asymmetrical (Coates 2004: 94).
2. Method I have tape-recorded a conversation between six women and I gave them “Men and women” as a starting-off subject and then they were free to talk about whatever they wanted to talk about. I decided to ask my female friends and family members if they wanted to be part of this discussion, so these six women are my friends and the only thing I told them before taping this conversation was that I was going to look for language features that are said to be typical for women to use, but I
open and outgoing than others and that may affect how much these women will speak during the conversation, if they feel comfortable enough and if they feel like they have something to contribute to the conversation.
3. Results and discussion
In total, 70 hedges were uttered during the conversation;
Like: 51 times I think: 12 times Sort of: 2 times You know: 1 time I mean: 3 times Like was the hedge that was used the most, but this word can be used in many different ways; it can be used as a pure hedge but it can also have a grammatical function in a sentence. 17 times it was used as a pure hedge, as in example (1).
(1) “H” – Do you do the whole dancing..?
“E” – No “P” – Watching each other? “E” – No! “L” – We have like a scoreboard.. “E” – Yeah, almost, I was giving a score
In this example, the word like is used as a hedge because it does not have a syntactic function in this sentence. The sentence would work just fine without like, so “L”could have said “We have a scoreboard”. Hedges can show insecurity and in this example it works as an insecurity marker, and “E”:s response confirms that, because she corrects “L” by saying that it was not really a scoreboard, but “almost”.
In this conversation there are 13 examples of when like has a grammatical function in a sentence. In example (2), the women are talking about the television program “Så ska det låta”:
(2) “H” – Who was on it? Was Kevin on it?
“E” – Yeah, and Sebastian.. “H” – From Idol? “E” – Yeah! And Anna Maria Espinosa something. And a girl that looked like a deer. “H” – Like a deer?
Like has a grammatical function in these two sentences. The word is needed to be able to express these sentences and it cannot be removed.
Like can also function as a reporting verb, a word to introduce a quotation, as in example (3) when the women are talking about buying clothes for their children:
(3) “P” – Of course we are doing it, of course! I saw this little jumpsuit, like a sports outfit for a little boy and it was bright baby blue and it´s got a Superman S on the tummy. If it´s a boy, I will get him that. And if it´s a girl I´m going to get that little dress that´s got strawberries on it “M” – I try to think about that when I buy clothes for my son and a few months ago we went to icehockey and it´s so loud, so we bought like, what do you call it? Öronskydd, and they only got pink and I was like “it does not matter”, so he got pink ones and everyone was like “oh, cute little girl”, and I was like “it´s a boy”, only because he had pink..
“M” uses like as a reporting verb three times in a row and 17 was the total number of times that the women used like in this way.
I think was also used many times by the women, and that is also a hedge that is said to be used more among women than men. Previous research has shown that women use hedges to mitigate the force of what is being said (Coates 1988: 8). When someone uses I think it may signal that the person is unsure about what he/she is saying, as in example (4).
(4) “M” - Next month he will be one, yeah “E” - I think I saw you in the newspaper like a really long time ago, like when he was..
The other tag question, see (7), was uttered by “E” when the group was talking about what they had done during the weekend:
(7) E – So, what did you guys do this weekend? No? L – Watching You Tube E – Yeah, what did we do? L – Watching You Tube E - We watched a movie, didn´t we?
When I look at this part of the conversation it seems as if “E” is not listening to what “L” is saying. “L” answers “E”:s question in a way that suggests that they had spent time during the weekend because when “E” asks “Yeah, what did we do?” it is “L” that answers the question again using the same answer as before. “E” does not seem to listen to “L”:s answer because she asks “We watched a movie, didn´t we ?” “E” is unsure about what they had done the past weekend, and wants her statement confirmed by the women that she knew that she had spent the past weekend with. This tag has a modal meaning, just like the previous one.
Tag questions are said to be used more by women because they are more insecure and need to have their statements confirmed (Lakoff 1975 in Coates 2004: 90-91). These women only uttered two tag questions, and their reason for doing this may be that there were only women in the group and no men, or because they know each other so well that they feel secure enough to say their opinions without doubting its relevance. The two tag questions had to do with the fact that “P” and “E” were wondering about something, and they wanted their statements confirmed because they wanted to know the answer, not because they were insecure about their own opinions. I do not know if the women would have been more insecure about their thoughts and opinions if there had been men in this discussion.
During this conversation, the women used a lot of minimal responses, and the most common word was Yeah. In total, the word Yeah was used 61 times and mostly by “E”; she used the word 18 times.
These women used Yeah many times collectively to show support to the speaker, and in example (8) we will see this:
(8) P – Yes, we want to find out, because we may want to be able to choose little outfits. But that´s not the most important thing, but quite important Yeah M – It´s nice to know who you are talking to P – And a name Yeah
“P” is talking about her pregnancy, and when she tells the group about the fact that she wants to find out whether it is a boy or a girl, the other women use Yeah to support “P”, to show that they are listening, but we do not know if the women agree with what “P” has said. “M” is the only woman that supports “P” more openly by saying “It´s nice to know who you are talking to”. It is hard to know if the women use Yeah just to support the speaker, to show that they are listening, or if it is also used to show agreement with what is being said. When the women use Yeah collectively there may be women that use that word just to show that they are listening while others may use it to show that they agree with what is being said, so the collective Yeah can mean different things depending on which one of the women you ask.
When the women use the word Yeah, it never seems to interrupt the flow of the conversation and this supports Coates´ findings that these words are well placed in the conversation and does not cause any interruption (Coates 2004: 129).
As mentioned before, “E” is the person that used the word Yeah most frequently among the women, and she uses it a lot to show that she agrees with what is being said, as we will see in example (9):
(9) P – So if you are a dragking, you are a girl dressed like a man?
E – Yeah , and the girl that wanted to be a man, was in the group as well H – No, she was in the fitcrew E – Yeah, but also in the dragking group H – She was in both of them E – Yeah
In this example, “E” uses Yeah to support and agree with “P”:s and “H”:s questions and statements.
E – So, good talking huh?
Yeah
E – So, what did you guys do this weekend? No?
Here it seems as if “E” is using her questions to keep the conversation going, a language feature that is said to be mostly used by women because they are weak in interactive situations (Coates 2004: 93). But is that really the case here? “E” is using questions to keep the conversation going but she knows the women that she is talking to and she does not need to keep the conversation going if she does not want to. Can it be situation based? To be taped while having a conversation with your friends is not that common, and maybe “E” feels that the conversation needs to continue just because of the taping? On the other hand, “E” may be interested in what the other women had been up to during the weekend but it may not look like that because it seems a bit forced.
If we look at the way the questions are distributed among the women, we can see that “H”, “P” and “E” asked most questions and they are also the women that in this conversation can be seen as the most “powerful”. These three women talked the most in general during the conversation, and with the help of their questions they were able to decide what the conversation was going to be about. In example (11), “E” shows this when the women were talking about what they had been up to during the weekend:
(11) E – No, was just kidding. But yeah, then? I want to know what you did, what did you do? M – Yesterday we went to a BBQ party in Hille, outside Gävle.. E – Yeah M – And we had our little son at my dad´s place, so this morning I was just waking up and I missed my son. Nine in the morning I just take the car and get him. I miss him so much E – Yeah M – And yeah, that´s pretty much it
“E” asks “M” a direct question, “E” wants to know what “M” has been doing, not anyone else, and
when “M” is telling about her weekend it is “E” that on her own confirms what is being said with the help of the word yeah. “M” had been very quiet up until this moment in the conversation so maybe “E” asked these direct questions to “M” to get her more involved in the conversation? These women are status-equal, but that does not mean that some of the women are more outgoing and talkative than others, in this case “E” is a powerful participant because she can decide over the topic with the help of her questions and can also give away questions to the other participants.
“P” is the participant that asked the most questions during this conversation, but she did not control what was being talked about in the same way as for example “E”. “P” asked many questions within the topics that were being discussed; it was not often that she with the help of her questions introduced a new topic.
4. Summary In this essay I have looked at women´s language use in same-sex conversation. The four language features that I was looking for was hedges, tag-questions, minimal responses and questions, and I wanted to see if they used these features in their interaction with other women. My results show that these six women use typical female features in their language, and my result supports what, for example, Jennifer Coates has shown in her research.
Cambridge, 2003
Precht, Kristen, Stance moods in spoken English: Attitude, emotion and evidentiality in British and American conversation. Text 23(2), 239-257 (Special Issue on Stance) (Guest editor: James Martin.) 2003
Wardhaugh, Ronald, An introduction to sociolinguistics , 5. ed., Blackwell, Oxford, 2006
Appendix
Yellow – Minimal responses Purple – Hedges Green – Tag questions Turquoise - Questions
E – You start! H – Okay, I was at her place earlier today and we were watching a documentary about lesbians that were living in a..
E – Collective.. H – Yeah, I was just thinking the other day, why do lesbians always, or not always but most of the time, want to be with other women that are butch? If you are lesbian, and attracted to females, why do you want to be with a female that looks and acts like a man?
Yeah, MmM
P – What about the male perspective, have you ever wondered, I have friends that are gay and one of them is a girl that looks like a boy, and if you are intrested in men why do you go for a man that looks like a woman? That´s the same question. H – Is it just the stuff that are down there that are repulsive, because if you want to be with a guy you want to be with a guy for the way they are? Men have certain qualities that women don´t.... P – Like speachpatterns.. H – Yeah L – I have a friend who is a lesbian, and she says that it is nothing sexual at all, only emotions, so the things down there.. M – Yeah, they fell in love with the person. L - Yes E – It´s weird, cause it´s almost like a heterosexual relationship, like.. P – Yes, yeah yeah E – Most of the time that you see in the media. L – And one girl is the girly girl.. E – And the other´s boyish L – Yeah H – Like the two girls we saw, one was very butch and was going through some sex change to become a man, and the other girl was kind of, sort of, manly but not really, and it was like okay wait, okey she´s a girl who´s lesbian, who wants to be with another girl who´s gonna be a man, why don´t she just go for a man instead of a girl that is turning in to a man? P – Just because she is in love with this person
Yeah, MmM
H – Yeah, I know, but it is just trying to wrap your mind around it, it´s confusing. P – Why do you live in a comune with other lesbians?....
