Psychological Bulletin1979, Vol. 86, No. 3, 615-626

Male and Female Spoken Language Differences:Stereotypes and Evidence

Adelaide HaasDepartment of Speech Communication

State University of New York College at New Paltz

Male speech and female speech have been observed to differ in their form,topic, content, and use. Early writers were largely introspective in their analyses;more recent work has begun to provide empirical evidence. Men may be moreloquacious and directive; they use more nonstandard forms, talk more aboutsports, money, and business, and more frequently refer to time, space, quantity,destructive action, perceptual attributes, physical movements, and objects.Women are often more supportive, polite, and expressive, talk more abouthome and family, and use more words implying feeling, evaluation, interpre-tation, and psychological state. A comprehensive theory of "genderlect" mustinclude information about linguistic features under a multiplicity of conditions.

Both casual and serious observers of thehuman condition have long recognized thatcommunication between the sexes is oftenfrustrating. A possible cause of the difficultyis that men and women may in fact notreally be speaking the same language (Jong,1977; Reik, 1954).

Aspects of form, topic, content, and use1

of spoken language have been identified assex associated. Either men or women aremore likely to produce specific utterances.Informal observations, speculations, and ster-eotypes in each category are discussed first.This presentation is followed by a report ofempirical findings 2 from a variety of com-munication situations. Although reports ofstereotypes and evidence for male and femalespoken language differences do not alwayscoincide, they both contribute to one's un-derstanding of sex roles and communication.

This review is based on a dissertation submittedto Teachers College, Columbia University in par-tial 'fulfillment of the requirements for the PhDdegree. Deep appreciation is expressed to EdwardMysak, Lois Bloom, and Mary Parlee for theiruseful suggestions, criticism, and encouragement.

Requests for reprints should be sent to AdelaideHaas, Department of Speech Communication, StateUniversity of New York, New Paltz, New York12S62.

Form

The form of utterances can be described in termsof their acoustic, phonetic shape . . . in terms ofthe units of sound, or phonology, the units ofmeaning that are words or inflections, or morph-ology, and the ways in which units of meaning arecombined with one another, or syntax. (Bloom &Lahey, 1978, ,p. IS)

Perhaps the most widespread belief aboutmen's speech as compared with women's isthat it is coarser and more direct. An earlyobserver of style in language, Jesperson(1922/1949), observed women's speech to begenerally more conservative than men's inthe following ways: Men are readier to coinand use new terms, pun, utter slang expres-sions, and employ profanity and obscenity.Women, on the other hand,

are shy of mentioning certain parts of the humanbody and certain natural functions by the direct andoften rude denominations which men and espe-cially young men prefer when among themselves.Women will therefore invent innocent and euphe-

1 The categories form, topic, content, and usewere suggested by Lois Bloom of Teachers Col-lege, Columbia University and are described inBloom and Lahey (1978).

2 Mary Parlee of Barnard College, Columbia Uni-versity suggested an evaluative review, separatingstereotypes from empirical findings.

Copyright 1979 by the American Psychological Association, Inc. 0033-2909/79/8603-0616$00.7S

616

SEX DIFFERENCES IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE 617

mistic words and paraphrases which sometimes mayin the long run come to be looked upon as theplain or blunt names and therefore in their turnhave to be avoided and replaced by more decentwords, (p. 245)

Reik (1954) affirmed that "we all knowthat there is a 'man talk' and a 'womantalk'" (p. 14). He observed that "men . . .will not hesitate to say 'Hell' or 'Damned.'. . . Women will rarely say 'It stinks' pre-ferring to state that it has a bad smell" (p.14).

More recently, Kramer (1974b) quotedthe following: "The New Seventeen on peoplewho use 'those four letter words': Boys findit especially repugnant when girls use thosewords. One boy described girls who use pro-fanity as having nothing better to say" (p.22).

Lakoff (1973) observed that men usestronger expletives such as shit and damn,whereas women use weaker or softer profan-ity such as oh dear, goodness, or judge. Farb(1974) suggested that dear me and graciousare part of the female lexicon, and Ritti(1973) stated that most teachers of the sixthgrade are well aware that young girls use farmore "expressives" such as oh and wow thando the boys in their classes.

Farb wrote, "Nowadays young women usewords that were formerly taboo for themwith as much freedom as young men usethem" (p. SO), but young men are not per-mitted the more euphemistic expressions.However, research on people's perceptionsof language as either male or female suggeststhat the earlier stereotypes of coarse, freemale language contrasted with euphemisticfemale forms still hold. Garcia-Zamor (Note1) asked four boys and four girls in anupper-middle-class nursery school to indicatewhether certain utterances were produced bya male or female doll; shit was seen by bothboys and girls as male, and drat was seen byboth as female. In a study of adults' stereo-types, Kramer (1974a) asked college stu-dents to determine whether various captionstaken from New Yorker cartoons were ut-tered by males or females. Men in the car-toons were found to swear more than womenand for more trivial reasons.

A careful review of the literature revealedno empirical studies of the comparative useof expletives. Profanity and obscenity do notreadily submit to laboratory study. Docu-mentation of this stereotype would requirerecording speech of female-only, male-only,and mixed-sex groups in various settings.The speakers should certainly not know theyare being observed.

Reports by individual investigators writ-ing about their own experiences (Key, 197S;Lakoff, 197S) strongly suggest that the formof expressives is sex associated. A possibleexplanation is that expressives "serve dif-ferent functions for men and women. Malesuse them when they are angry or exasperated.. . . But women's exclamations are likely toconvey enthusiasm" (Kramer, 1974a, p. 83).

The form of women's language is reputedto be more polite than the form of men's.Lakoff (197S) noted that "women are sup-posed to be particularly careful to say 'please'and 'thank you' . . . a woman who fails atthese tasks is apt to be in more troublethan a man who does so" (p. 55). She specu-lated that "the more one compounds a re-quest, the more characteristic it is of women'sspeech" (p. 19). An example of a doublycompound request is "Won't you please closethe door?" (p. 18).

Only one very limited empirical study ofpoliteness forms was found: 16 women bornin Maine around 1900 used more politenessforms than 12 male counterparts when inter-viewed by college students (Hartman, 1976).

According to Austin (1965), high, oralsounds and giggling sounds are appropriatefor females in courtship, whereas males pro-duce low and nasal sounds. Coser (1960) re-corded verbal interactions involving humorat 20 staff meetings of a mental hospital.She found that senior staff members (psychi-atrists) made more jokes than junior staffmembers (paramedics) and that men mademore witticisms than women (99 out of 103),but women often laughed harder. Coser sug-gested that this concurs with the sex roles ofmale authority and female receptivity. Haas(1978) similarly found that girls laughedmore than boys in mixed-sex dyads.

618 ADELAIDE HAAS

Women are permitted to cry, as reflectedin Key's (1975) observation that "if a femaletalks or cries into a pillow it's 'muffled sob-bing'; if a male does the same, it's 'blub-bering,' with negative connotations" (p. 109).Crying has been observed more frequently ingirls than in boys. In an analysis of 200quarrels of preschool children, Dawe (1934)found that 35.8% of the girls cried comparedwith only 20.2% of the boys.

Several writers (Labov, 1966; Levine &Crockett, 1966; Trudgill, 1972) have specu-lated that men use more slang expressionsthan women or even that slang is man's do-main. Conklin (Note 2), however, observedthat women's vernacular has not been studiedand suggested a need to especially examinethe dialect of all-female groups. Empiricalphonological studies of -in versus -ing end-ings (Fischer, 19S8), of -uh versus -er endings(Levine & Crockett, 1966; Wolfram, 1969),and of f, t, and th usage (Wolfram, 1969),show black females more likely to use stan-dard forms than black men. Similar resultswere found in studies of pronominal apposi-tion, as in "my brother he went to the park,"and- multiple negation (Shuy, Wolfram, &Riley, 1968). Garvey and Dickstein (1972)noted more nonstandard forms in the speechof six dyads of boys from four populationgroups (black, white, and low and middlesocioeconomic status) than in matched girls.

Joffe (1948) noted sex differences in thevernacular of menstruation, including thegreater use of color references by men andof personification by women. For example,men might say "she's waving the red flag,"whereas women might refer to "having myfriend." This finding was part of a largerstudy in New York City on attitudes andbeliefs about menstruation.

Jesperson (1922/1949) believed womenleave sentences unfinished or dangling moreoften than men. In an informal survey oftelevision panel discussions, Bernard (1972)noted that women are more frequently in-terrupted than men. This may help explainthe unfinished sentences. No empirical evi-dence for sex differences in sentence com-pleteness has been noted. Zimmerman andWest (197S), however, reported in a study

of 11 male-female dyads that "virtually allthe interruptions and overlaps are by themale speakers (98% and 100% respec-tively)" (p. 115). They further noted thatnot one of the women who were interruptedprotested. Similar results were reported byEakins and Eakins (1976).

Women have long had the reputation forbeing more loquacious than men: "Ou jemmeil y a, silence il n'y a" (Where there's woman,there's no silence.) "The tongue is the swordof a woman, and she never lets it becomerusty" (China). "The North Sea will soonerbe found wanting in water than a woman ata loss for a word" (Jutland; cited in Jes-person, 1922/1949, p. 253). Jesperson be-lieved that

the superior readiness of speech of women is aconcomitant of the fact that their vocabulary issmaller than that of men. But this again is con-nected with another indubitable fact, that womendo not reach the same extreme points as men, butare nearer the average in most respects, (p. 2S3)

He gave many examples of how women aresupposed to talk ahead of thinking, to talkmore than men.

Lakoff (1975) informally observed longersentence forms in women than in men, pos-sibly resulting in the impression of morespeech. For example, women are more likelyto compound a request: "Will you help mewith these groceries, please?" is more charac-teristic of women than "Help me" or even"Please help me with these groceries." Em-pirical evidence, however, suggests that atleast under certain conditions women's sen-tences are shorter than men's. For example,at professional conferences, the mean timeused by women asking a question was re-ported to be less than half that used by men(Swacker, 1975).

Studies of sex differences in length ofutterance in children indicate that girls aresignificantly superior to boys at variousmatched age levels in mean length of utter-ance (Winitz, 1959). Maccoby (1966, p.335) reported similar results in her summaryof 19 studies. Garvey and Ben Debba (1974),however, found no sex differences in wordsper utterance among same-sex or mixed-sexdyads ranging in age from 3£ to 5f years

SEX DIFFERENCES IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE 619

and participating in free-play testing situa-tions. In considering mean length of utter-ance of children, language maturation mustbe considered a factor, since utterances nor-mally become longer as skill in language in-creases and most studies show that girls de-velop language facility earlier than boys.Limited evidence, then, suggests that al-though in early childhood female sentencesare longer than those of males, by adulthoodthe reverse may be true.

Mixed results have been reported in studiesof verbosity (Maccoby, 1966, p. 335). Ina task involving adults' responses to pic-ture stimuli, Wood (1966) concluded thatmen tend to use more words than women inresponding to a given stimulus. Like resultsin similar situations were found by Argyle,Lalljee, and Cook (1968) and Swacker(1975). Cherry's (Note 3) review of 11studies dealing with children's quantity ofspeech reported that girls tended to exceedboys in this dimension in 6 of the studies.No differences were noted in 4 studies.

The participants in a communication influ-ence quantity of verbalization. In mixed-sexgroups, men tend to talk more than women(Argyle et al., 1968; Bernard, 1972).

Among children the composition of thecommunication group also seems to affectverbosity. Mueller (1972), in a study of "themaintenance of verbal exchanges betweenyoung children" (ages 3^-5 years) foundthat "boys talked significantly more thangirls" (p. 933) in a free-play situation tosame-sex peers. Brownell and Smith (1973),however, reported more verbal productivityamong 4-year-old girls in comparison withsame-age boys in mixed-sex dyads, triads,and small groups. In preschool children, then,boys have been found to talk more to boysand girls to talk more in mixed-sex groups—the reverse of the adult pattern.

Entwisle and Garvey (1972) reported sexdifferences in verbal productivity amongBaltimore children, with girls more produc-tive than boys; note that this finding ismost marked among those of lower socialclass. Possibly no real difference exists in thequantity of talk that is produced by men and

women, but "girls are not supposed to talkas much as a man" (Kramer, 1974b, p. 17).

In sum, the stereotype clearly showswomen to be more verbose than men. Em-pirical evidence is mixed. Girls seem to talksomewhat more than boys, but adult women,especially in the company of men, have beenfound to talk less than their male com-panions.

Topic

Topic refers to the subject matter of thespoken utterance, to what the conversationis about.

Kramer (1974b) captured much of thefolklore related to topics of male and femaleconversations through her study based onNew Yorker cartoons:

Men hold forth with authority on business, poli-tics, legal matters, taxes, age, household expenses,electronic bugging, church collections, kissing, base-ball, human relations, health and—women's speech.Women discuss social life, books, food and drink,pornography, life's troubles, caring for a husband,social work, age, and life-style. Several of thestudents who rated the cartoon captions said theyconsidered all statements about economics, businessor jobs to be male. (p. 83)

The interviews by Komarovsky (1967)suggest similar stereotypes in blue-collarfamilies. One 28-year-old wife commentedthat " [men] think we [women] are silly andtalk too much. They think that women gossipa lot and they are against it" (p. 150). A36-year-old husband noted that women want"to talk about kidstuff and trivia like Mrs. Xhad her tooth pulled out" (p. 150). Womenreported that they enjoyed talking about thefamily and social problems. Both sexes ac-knowledged that men prefer to talk aboutcars, sports, work, motorcycles, and localpolitics.

Klein's (1971) observations of the workingclass in England are similar:

Just as men in the clubs talk mainly about theirwork and secondly about sport and never abouttheir homes and families, so do their wives talkfirst of all about their work, i.e.: their homes andfamilies, and secondly within the range of thingswith which they are all immediately familiar, (p. 73)

620 ADELAIDE HAAS

In mixed-sex conversations the impressionis that women initiate topics that are rarelyfollowed through by men (Bernard, 1972;Chesler, 1972).

Three studies in the 1920s of conversa-tional topics using tape-recorded fragmentsof conversations on city streets are of inter-est. Moore (1922) recorded 174 conversa-tions in New York City and reported thatman-to-man topics included money and busi-ness (48%), amusements or sports (14%),and other men (13%). Woman-to-womantopics were men (44%), clothing or decora-tion (23%), and other women (16%). Male-to-female topics were amusements or sports(25%) and money and business (22%).Women talked to men about other men(22%) and other women (13%).

M. H. Landis and Burtt (1924) conducteda similar study in Columbus, Ohio and re-corded 481 conversations. Their findings con-cur with Moore's. Men talked to men aboutbusiness and money 49% of the time, sportsor amusements 15% of the time, and othermen 13% of the time. Women talked towomen about men (22%) , clothing or dec-oration (19%), and other women (15%)-Women talked about people in 37% of theconversations. Man-to-woman topics includedamusement and sports (25%), money andbusiness (19%), and themselves (23%).Women talked to men about amusements orsports (24%), clothing or decoration (17%),and themselves (17%).

In 1927, C. Landis analyzed 200 Londonconversations. The all-male topics were simi-lar to those in New York City and Columbus,but the women talked about a wider varietyof topics among themselves. Landis suggestedthat in mixed-sex conversations, "the English-man when talking to a feminine companionadapts his conversation to her interests whileAmerican women adapt their conversationsto the interests of their masculine compan-ions" (p. 357).

In a study of "the women of the telephonecompany," Langer (1970a, 1970b) reportedthat men discussed politics among them-selves, whereas women avoided religion andpolitics in their conversations.

Mulcahy (1973), using a self-disclosurequestionnaire with 97 adolescents, reportedthat female same-sex disclosure was greaterthan male same-sex disclosure. Major topicsfor girls were "tastes, interests, and person-ality" (p. 343); for boys high disclosureclustered about "tastes, and interests, work(studies), and attitudes and opinions" (p.343)- "The lowest disclosure area for maleswas Body, whereas it was Money for fe-males" (p. 354).

Sause (1976) reported that kindergartengirls made more reference to the female rolethan did kindergarten boys, and this was theonly category that girls referred to more thanboys in this study of 144 subjects. Boystalked more about family and home environ-ment, recreation, other people, and animals,but the differences were not significant. Utter-ances were all to a male examiner who en-couraged the children to talk about twostimulus objects—an irregularly shaped blockand a toy fire engine.

Knowledge of conversational topics is lim-ited. Although the evidence supports thestereotype that women talk more aboutpeople and men more about money, business,and politics, the studies date back to the1920s. Times have been changing!

Content

Content refers to the "categorization ofthe topics that are encoded in messages,"such as "object in general," "actions in gen-eral," and the "possession relation in gen-eral" (Bloom & Lahey, 1978, p. 11). Con-tent differs from topic, since topic refers toparticular objects, events, and ideas, whereascontent refers to the more general conceptof how the topic is referenced.

Women's language is more emotional andevaluative than men's according to the stereo-type (Jesperson, 1922/1949; Kramer, 1974a;Lakoff, 1975; Pei, 1969; Reik, 1954). Jes-person wrote of women's fondness for hyper-bole and their greater use of adverbs of in-tensity such as awjul, pretty, terribly nice,quite, and so. These all suggest value judg-ments- Reik believed terms such as darling,divine, sweet, adorable, I could just scream,

SEX DIFFERENCES IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE 621

/ nearly fainted, and / died laughing arefemale associated. Pei observed "extravagantadjectives" such as wonderful, heavenly, di-vine, and dreamy in women's speech. Againthe focus is on emotional value judgment.

Lakoff's (1975) list of female adjectivesincludes adorable, charming, lovely, and di-vine, Male adjectives are great, terrific andneat. Kramer (1974a) suggested that "wordsof approval" (p. 22) such as nice, pretty,darling, charming, sweet, lovely, cute, andprecious are used more frequently by women.

Hartman (1976) tested and supportedLakoff's hypothesis that women use evalua-tive adjectives more than men. In her studyof 70-year-old native Maine men and women,she found that women compared with menused many more words such as lovely, de-lightful, wonderful, nice, pretty, pathetic,pretty little, smartly uniformed, cute, dear-est, gentle, gaily, beautifully, lovelies, veryvery, devoted, meek, perfectly wonderful,and stylish. Most women used awful andpretty to mean very and so.

Wood (1966) analyzed the speech of 36college students (18 men and 18 women) asthey described photographs of a man's face.She found that males referred more directlyto what was actually in the picture. Femaleswere more interpretative and tended to bemore subjective in their descriptions. Bar-ron's '(1971) study of speech by teachersand pupils during regular classroom activitiesshowed patterns similar to those reported byWood. Through an analysis of the gram-matical cases of speaker's utterances, Barron.found that women used more participativeand purposive cases and men used more in-strumental and objective cases. Specifically,women talked more about how people feltand why they behaved in certain ways. Men'sspeech focused more on objects and actionsrelated to these objects.

Gleser, Gottschalk, and Watkins (19S9)studied the speech of 90 white adult men andwomen who were asked by a male examinerto tell about "any interesting or dramaticlife experiences you have had" (p. 183). Asdid the other studies, this investigation re-vealed that women used significantly morewords implying feeling, emotion, or motiva-

tion (whether positive, negative, or neutral);they made more self-references and used moreauxiliary words and negations. Male subjectsreferred more to time, space, quantity, anddestructive action. This can be viewed assupporting Eble's (Note 4) suggestion thatterms of hostility are more associated withmen.

Physical movement was more frequentlyreferenced by kindergarten boys than bygirls (Sause, 1976). Boys also used signifi-cantly more words classified as self, space,quantity, good, bad, and negative words.Garcia and Frosch (1976) also found thatmales talked more about spatial relationsthan females. Their subjects were 40 black,Anglo, and Spanish-speaking adults, rangingin age from 18 to 65 years, who were askedto respond to two pictures (one "femaleroom" and one "male outdoors scene") fromcurrent magazines- Females described itemsin terms of patterns and colors more thandid males. Also of interest was the observa-tion that "each [sex] group went into imme-diate detail when describing the visual whichwas stereotyped to their sex group, butpaused to 'orient themselves' to the environ-ment when approaching the other visual"(p. 68).

Comparative use of adjectives was studiedby Kramer (1974b), Brandis and Henderson(1970), and Entwisle and Garvey (1972).College students writing descriptions of blackand white photographs did not differ in thetype or number of prenominal adjectives usedor in the number or variety of -ly adverbs(Kramer, 1974b). However, according to thestudies by Brandis and Henderson and Ent-wisle and Garvey, girls use more adjectivesthan boys. The Brandis and Henderson studywas on spoken language by 5-year-old work-ing-class British children; the Entwisle andGarvey study was based on the written lan-guage of ninth graders when asked to writeimaginative stories after viewing four stimu-lus pictures.

Garvey and Dickstein (1972) found thatfifth-grade black and white boys of low andmiddle socioeconomic status used the posses-sive construction more frequently than fe-males of the same age, race, and socioeco-

622 ADELAIDE HAAS

nomic status during oral communication in-volving problem-solving tasks.

The stereotype of the content of spokenlanguage, then, points to positive value judg-ments as female marked and hostile judg-ments as male marked. The empirical evi-dence suggests that the content of adult fe-male speech includes more words implyingfeeling, auxiliary words, negations, evaluativeadjectives, interpretations, psychological stateverbs, and purposive cases. Adult males usemore terms referring to time, space, quantity,destructive action, and perceptual attributesand more objective cases. Boys have beenreported to use more words related to self,space, quantity, good, bad, negation, andpossession. It is likely that girls use moreadjectives. Studies of adult use of adjectivesshow mixed results.

Use

"Language use consists of the socially andcognitively determined selection of behaviorsaccording to the goals of the speaker and thecontext of the situation" (Bloom & Lahey,1978, p. 20).

Bernard (1972) suggested that "instru-mental" talk is male associated. Men arestereotyped as the conveyors of informationand fact. Women "tend to be handicappedin fact-anchored talk. . . . They are . . . lesslikely to have a hard, factual background,less in contact with the world of knowledge"(p- 153). The male instrumental style in-cludes lecturing, argument, and debate. Thishas not been empirically documented to date.

Assertiveness was observed as part of themale stereotype by Kramer (1974b) in herstudy of cartoon captions. Lakoff (1975)suggested that women's speech is nonasser-tive. This concept has been developed byother writers. Kuykendall (Note 5) wrotethat "clean, effective vigorous speech andwriting is just what women, qua women,learn not to produce so as not to appear tooassertive and so to offend" (p. 4). Further-more, "Assertion of competence and powerby a female is regarded as deviant behaviorso that she becomes the recipient of socialsanctions" (Unger, Note 6, p. 43). Wolman

and Frank (1975) observed that in a pro-fessional peer group a woman was labeledbitchy or manipulative when her behaviorwas assertive and directive. Nursery schoolchildren also believe that competitive andaggressive language is appropriate for malesonly, as demonstrated by a study in whichboys and girls were asked to ascribe variousuttered sentences to a girl or boy doll (Gar-cia-Zamor, Note 1). Dawe (1934) found thatwhen nursery school children quarreled, boyswere assertive by threatening and forbiddingmore often than girls.

Tentativeness has been stereotyped as fe-male. Lakoff (1975) suggested that tag ques-tions (e.g., "It's cold, isn't it?") are usedfar more often by women than by men. Thisform of question avoids assertion and givesthe addressee the option of agreeing or dis-agreeing. Women's speech is said to be"hedge marked."

Empirical evidence is mixed. Hartman(1976) reported that tentativeness wasclearly female associated among the 70-year-old Maine natives whose speech she studied.This was revealed in the women's greaterproduction of qualifiers such as perhaps,I suppose, I just feel, probably, and as I in-terpret it and tag questions such as "Well,most people would say marriage, wouldn'tthey?" and "It was grandmother, wasn't it?"Swacker (1975) found that female collegestudents indicated approximation when usingnumbers ("about six books"), whereas onlyone male used the tentative form in a taskrequiring the description of three pictures byAlbrecht Diirer. However, in dyadic con-versations of college students, Hirschman(Note 7) found no difference between thesexes in the overall proportion of qualifierssuch as maybe, probably, I think, and / guess.In a somewhat larger study, Hirschman(Note 8) found that males uttered / thinktwice as much as females. (/ think is usuallyconsidered a qualifier, but Hirschman sug-gested that it served primarily as a way formore assertive speakers to present theiropinions.) Loban (Note 9) reported that ex-pressions of tentativeness including supposi-tion, hypothesis, and conditionality are asso-ciated with effective users of language from

SEX DIFFERENCES IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE 623

kindergarten through sixth grade. Hass andWepman (1973) similarly found that uncer-tainty increased as a function of age in chil-dren S to 13 years old and noted that "thereare many fine points about the uncertaintyscores [with regard to the Age X Sex inter-action] that demand further investigation"(p. 305). Baumann (1976) analyzed 7|hours of tape of adults in various settingsfor confirmatory tag questions and qualify-ing prefatory statements. She found only 20examples altogether and no sex-associateduse.

Men and women may make requests indifferent ways. Lakoff (1975) observed thatwomen state requests and men issue com-mands. Hennessee and Nicholson (1972) re-ported that in over 1,000 television commer-cials, men gave almost 90% of the directives,that is, the advice or commands to buy aparticular product. In a naturalistic study ofthe conversations of a single married couple,Soskin and John (1963) reported that thehusband gave far more directives than thewife. In one critical situation when theywere rowing and the boat capsized, mainlythe husband gave regulative statements suchas demands, suggestions, and prohibitions.

Hirschman (Note 8) tested the hypothesisthat women are more supportive than men.No overall differences were found betweenthe college men and college women studied,although females used 'mm hmm" signifi-cantly more than males and most of theseutterances occurred in female-to-female con-versations. In mock jury deliberations,Strodtbeck and Mann (1956) reported thatwomen agreed, concurred, complied, accepted,and supported other speakers almost twiceas much as men did. Similarly, women wereantagonistic or offensive half as often as men.Conversely, men were more assertive. Sup-portive behavior can be inferred from theemotional sensitivity Alvy (1973) reportedto be more characteristic of grade-schoolgirls than of boys of lower, middle and uppersocioeconomic status in an experiment oflistener-adapted communication.

In use, then, men's speech reputedly servesto lecture, argue, debate, assert, and com-mand. Women's speech is stereotyped as non-

assertive, tentative, and supportive. Limitedevidence confirms that males are more asser-tive and issue more directives; females areoften more tentative and supportive.

Conclusions and Implications

Do male and female spoken language dif-ferences exist? The stereotypes abound, andevidence has been accumulating, especiallysince the beginning of this decade.

Women's speech is said to contain moreeuphemisms, politeness forms, apology, laugh-ter, crying, and unfinished sentences. Theyare reputed to talk more about home andfamily and to be more emotional and posi-tively evaluative. Further, women's speech isstereotyped as nonassertive, tentative, andsupportive. Women are also said to talk morethan men.

Men, on the other hand, are reputed touse more slang, profanity, and obscenity andto talk more about sports, money, and busi-ness. They are reputed to make more hostilejudgments and to use language to lecture,argue, debate, assert, and command.

Empirical evidence is less clear, partly be-cause studies can only sample limited popu-lations in specific situations. Further, sexdifferences in American English are only sta-tistical differences. No feature of spokenAmerican English is used exclusively by onesex or the other- In general, however, em-pirical studies of form confirm that malesuse more nonstandard forms than femalesand that females laugh and cry more. OlderMaine women, at least, are more polite, andsixth-grade girls claim they use more ex-pressives. Contrary to the stereotype, adultmen have been found to be more loquacious,but it is unclear whether boys or girls aremore verbose. Studies from the 1920s supportthe stereotype that men talk more aboutmoney, business, and politics and that womentalk more about home and family. The em-pirical evidence supports the stereotype ofcontent differences in men's and women'sspeech. Various studies found that womenuse more emotional language and men focusmore on perceptual attributes and destruc-tive action. The males studied were generally

624 ADELAIDE HAAS

more assertive and directive than the women.One study found that women are more sup-portive than men, and the results of researchon tentativeness are mixed.

Are these isolated, unrelated variations inspeech, or is there a logical clustering thatpoints to "systems of co-occurring, sex-linkedsignals," or "genderlects," as Kramer (1974b,p. 14) proposed?

If, in fact, one can say that there is amale speech style and a female speech style,then rules and restrictions can be written foreach much in the way that grammaticalstructures are described. This task is com-plicated by two major observations: (a)Sex differences in spoken language that havebeen identified in English are sex preferen-tial as opposed to sex exclusive (Bodine,197S); that is, there is no evidence that anylinguistic feature is used exclusively by onesex in our society; variations have beenfound only in frequency of production, (b)Sex is not the only variable to influencespeech style. There is a complex interactionof personal characteristics such as sex, age,education, occupation, geographical region,ethnic background, and socioeconomic statusand contextual factors such as communica-tion, situation, environment, and participants.

Despite these complications, a start hasbeen made at constructing a grammar ofstyle for men's and women's language (Lak-off, Note 10). Lakoff focused on women'sstyle and suggested that it is basically oneof deference. She suggested that the variousphonological and lexical forms and the syn-tactic-pragmatic features identified as occur-ring more often in women's speech add up toa pattern of deference. However, deferencealone does not make a woman's style. Othercharacteristics of the individual and the con-text combine to form the complete style.Lakoff pointed to a need to learn which stylescan coexist and which cannot. Even moreimportant is the need to know which sex-associated spoken language features are realand to document conditions under whichthey occur.

Communication can be viewed as a micro-cosm of social behavior. Much of human in-

teraction occurs at the linguistic level. AsGumperz and Hymes (1972) pointed out,

If sociolinguistic research often begins as an ex-tension of linguistics, it must end as an intensionof the social sciences—but in the idiom of disciplinesthat is only to say that it changes from a way ofstudying language to a way of studying man as asocial being, (p. 466)

The stereotypes and evidence discussed inthis article have significant implications forthe power structure between the sexes andindeed the psyche of both men and women.Future researchers need to be sensitive tosituations in which they observe sex-associ-ated speech and to be cautious of making pre-mature judgments. In any event, there islittle doubt that recent interest in gender andlanguage will continue to generate worthwhileexploration into this topic. Clinicians andtheoreticians alike will thereby increase theirunderstanding of this important dimensionof human communication.

Reference Notes

1. Garcia-Zamor, M. A. Child awareness of sex-role distinctions in language use. Paper presentedat the meeting of the Linguistic Society ofAmerica, San Diego, Calif., December 1973.

2. Conklin, N. F. Perspectives on the dialects ofwomen. Paper presented at the meeting of theAmerican Dialect Society, 1973.

3. Cherry, L. J. Sex differences in child speech:McCarthy revisited. Princeon, N.J.: EducationalTesting Service, February 1975.

4. Eble, C. C. How the speech of some is moreequal than others. Paper presented at the meet-ing of the Southeastern Conference on Lin-guistics, University of North Carolina at ChapelHill, 1972.

5. Kuykendall, E. Sexism in language. Unpublishedmanuscript, State University of New York Col-lege at New Paltz, Department of Philosophy,1976.

6. Unger, R. K. Status, power and gender: Anexamination of parallelisms. Paper presented at

the Conference on New Directions for Researchon Women, Madison, Wis., May-June 1975.

7. Hirschman, L. Female-male differences in con-versational interaction. Paper presented at themeeting of the Linguistic Society of America,San Diego, Calif., December 1973.

8. Hirschman, L. Analysis of supportive and as-sertive behavior in conversations. Paper pre-sented at the meeting of the Linguistic Societyof America, July 1974.

SEX DIFFERENCES IN SPOKEN LANGUAGE 625

9. Loban, W. D. The language of elementary schoolchildren (Report No. 1). Champaign, 111.: Na-tional Council of Teachers of English, 1963.

10. Lakoff, R. Women's styles of speaking: Theirpsychological significance. Paper presented atthe Conference on Women's Language, GraduateSchool and University Center of the City Uni-versity of New York, April 1977.

References

Alvy, K. T. The development of listener adaptedcommunications in grade-school children fromdifferent social-class backgrounds. Genetic Psy-chology Monographs, 1973, 87, 33-104.

Argyle, M., Lalljee, M., & Cook, M. The effects ofvisibility on interaction in a dyad. Human Rela-tions, 1968, 21, 3-17.

Austin, W. M. Some social aspects of paralanguage.Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 1965, 11, 31-39.

Barren, N. Sex-typed language: The production ofgrammatical cases. Ada Sociologica, 1971, 14, 24-72.

Baumann, M. Two features of "women's speech?"In B. L. Dubois & I. Crouch (Eds.), The sociol-ogy of the languages of American women. SanAntonio, Tex.: Trinity University Press, 1976.

Bernard, J. The sex game. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.:Prentice-Hall, 1972.

Bloom, L., & Lahey, M. Language development andlanguage disorders. New York: Wiley, 1978.

Bodine, A. Sex differentiation in language. In B.Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.), Language and sex:Difference and dominance. Rowley, Mass.: New-bury House, 1975.

Brandis, W., & Henderson, D. Social class, languageand communication. London: Routledge & KeganPaul, 1970.

Brownell, W., & Smith, D. R. Communication pat-terns, sex and length of verbalizations in thespeech of four-year old children. Speech Mono-graphs, 1973, 40, 310-316.

Chesler, P. Women and madness. Garden City,N.Y.: Doubleday, 1972.

Coser, R. L. Laughter among colleagues. Psychiatry,1960, 23, 81-95.

Dawe, H. C. An analysis of 200 quarrels of pre-school children. Child Development, 1934, 5, 139-157.

Eakins, B., & Eakins, G. Verbal turn-taking andexchanges in faculty dialogue. In B. L. Dubois& I. Crouch (Eds.), The sociology of the lan-guages of American women. San Antonio, Tex.:Trinity University Press, 1976.

Entwisle, D. R., & Garvey, C. Verbal productivityand adjective usage. Language and Speech, 1972,IS, 288-298.

Farb, P. Word play: What happens when peopletalk. New York: Knopf, 1974.

Fischer, J. L. Social influences on the choice of alinguistic variant. Word, 1958, 14, 47-56.

Garcia, G. N., & Frosch, S. F. Sex, color and money:Who's perceiving what? Or men and women:Where did all the differences go (to?)? In B. L.Dubois & I. Crouch (Eds.), The sociology of thelanguages of American women. San Antonio, Tex.:Trinity University Press, 1976.

Garvey, C., & Ben Debba M. Effects of age, sex,and partner on children's dyadic speech. ChildDevelopment, 1974, 45, 1,159-1161.

Garvey, C., & Dickstein, Ev Levels of analysis andsocial class differences in language. Language andSpeech, 1972,15, 375-384.

Gleser, G. C., Gottschalk, L. A., & Watkins, J. Therelationship of sex and intelligence to choice ofwords: A normative study of verbal behavior.Journal of Clinical Psychology, 1959, IS, 182-191.

Gumperz, J. J., & Hymes, D. H. Directions in socio-linguistics: The ethnography of communication.New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1972.

Haas, A. Production of sex-associated features ofspoken language by four-, eight-, and twelve-year old boys and girls (Doctoral dissertation,Columbia University, Teachers College, 1977).Dissertation Abstracts International, 1978, 39, 23A.

Hartman, M. A descriptive study of the languageof men and women born in Maine around 1900as it reflects the Lakoff hypotheses in "Languageand woman's place." In B. L. Dubois & I. Crouch(Eds.), The sociology of the languages of Ameri-can women. San Antonio, Tex.: Trinity Univer-sity Press, 1976.

Hass, W. A., Si Wepman, J. M. Constructional vari-ety in the spoken language of school children.Journal of Genetic Psychology, 1973, 122, 297-308.

Hennessee, J., & Nicholson, J. NOW says: TV com-mercials insult women. New York Times Maga-zine, May 28, 1972, pp. 12-13; 48-51.

Jesperson, O. Language. New York: Macmillan,1949. (Originally published, 1922.)

Joffe, N. F. The vernacular of menstruation. Word,1948, 4, 181-186.

Jong, E. How to save your own life. New York:Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1977.

Key, M. R. Male/female language. Metuohen, N.J.:Scarecrow Press, 1975.

Klein, J. The family in "traditional" working-classEngland. In M. Anderson (Ed.), Sociology of thefamily. Baltimore, Md.: Penguin Books, 1971.

Komarovsky, M. Blue-collar marriage. New York:Vintage Books, 1967.

Kramer, C. Folklinguistics. Psychology Today, June1974, pp. 82-85. (a)

Kramer, C. Women's speech: Separate but unequal?Quarterly Journal of Speech, 1974, 60, 14-24. (b)

Labov, W. The social stratification of English inNew York City. Washington, D.C.: Center forApplied Linguistics, 1966.

Lakoff, R. Language and woman's place. Languagein Society, 1973, 2, 45-80.

626 ADELAIDE HAAS

Lakoff, R. Language and woman's place. New York:Colophon/Harper & Row, 1975.

Landis, C. National differences in conversations.Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology, 1927,21, 3S4-3S7.

Landis, M. H., & Burtt, H. E. A study of con-versations. Journal of Comparative Psychology,1924, 4, 81-89.

Langer, E. The women of the telephone com-pany: Part 1. New York Review of Books, March12, 1970, pp. 16; 18; 20-24. (a)

Langer, E. The women of the telephone company:Part 2. New York Review of Books, March 26,1970, pp. 14; 16-22. (b)

Levine, L., & Crockett, H. J. Speech variation ina Piedmont community: Post-vocalic r. In S.Lieberson (Ed.), Explorations in sociolinguistics.The Hague, Netherlands: Mouton, 1966.

Maccoby, E. E. (Ed.). The development of sex dif-ferences. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford UniversityPress, 1966.

Moore, H. T. Further data concerning sex differ-ences. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychol-ogy, 1922, 4, 81-89.

Mueller, E. The maintenance of verbal exchangesbetween young children. Child Development, 1972,43, 930-938.

Mulcahy, G. A. Sex differences in patterns of self-disclosure among adolescents: A developmentalperspective. Journal of Youth and Adolescence,1973, 4, 343-356.

Pei, M. Words in sheep's clothing. New York: Haw-thorn Books, 1969.

Reik, T. Men and women speak different languages.Psychoanalysis, 1954, 2, 3-15.

Ritti, A. Social junctions of children's speech (Doc-toral dissertation, Columbia University, TeachersCollege, 1972. Dissertation Abstracts International,1973, 34, 2289B.

Sause, E. F. Computer content analysis of sex dif-ferences in the language of children. Journal ofPsycholinguistic Research, 1976, 5, 311-324.

Shuy, R. W., Wolfram, W. A., & Riley, W. K. Fieldtechniques in an urban language study. Washing-ton, D.C.: Center for Applied Linguistics, 1968.

Soskin, W. F., & John, V. P. The study of spon-taneous talk. In R. Barker (Ed.), The stream ofbehavior. New York: Appleton-Century-Crofts,1963.

Strodtbeck, F. L., & Mann, R. D. Sex role differ-entiation in jury deliberations. Sociometry, 1956,19, 3-11.

Swacker, M. The sex of the speaker as a socio-linguistic variable. In B. Thome & N. Henley(Eds.), Language and sex: Difference and domi-nance. Rowley, Mass.: Newbury House, 1975.

Trudgill, P. Sex, covert prestige and linguistic changein the urban British English of Norwich. Lan-guage in Society, 1972,1, 179-195.

Winitz, H. Language skills of male and femalekindergarten children. Journal of Speech andHearing Research, 1959, 2, 377-391.

Wolfram, W. A sociolinguistic description of De-troit Negro speech. Washington, D.C.: Center forApplied Linguistics, 1969.

Wolman, C., & Frank, H. The solo woman in aprofessional peer group. American Journal ofOrthopsychiatry, 1975, 45, 164-171.

Wood, M. The influence of sex and knowledge ofcommunication effectiveness on spontaneousspeech. Word, 1966, 22, 112-137.

Zimmerman, D. H., & West, C. Sex roles, inter-ruptions and silences in conversation. In B. Thome& N. Henley (Eds.), Language and sex: Differ-ence and dominance. Rowley, Mass.: NewburyHouse, 1975.

Received February 3, 1978 •