The female register: an empirical study of Lakoff's hypotheses

Sociolinguists (e.g. Swacker 1975) and anthropologists (e.g. Hall 1959) are increasingly aware of the fact that sex, like social class or subcultural group, is a variable which strongly affects speech (Thorne & Henley 1975). While sexexclusive differentiation (i.e. separate male and female languages) now appears to be an almost nonexistent phenomenon, sex-preferred differentiation seems to be widespread across a number of languages and language families (Bodine 1975). In particular, recent studies indicate that syntax (Labov 1966), intonation (Brend 1972), and pronunciation(Trudgill 1972) in spoken English all vary as a function of the sex of the speaker.