SEX PREFERIANTAL DIFFERENTIATION

This phenomenon in reflected in this relative with which, men and women use the same lexical items or other linguistic features. If, as is often asserted, female English speakers use words such as lovely and nice more often than do male speakers, we can claim that English speakers exhibit sex-preferential differentiation. Women have also been shown to possess a greater variety of specific color terms than men in the North American society. If this is true, it is probably due to the task traditionally performed by women. There is no evidence to show that women have more acute color perception than do men. Men are reputed to possess large lexicons in areas associated with traditional male activities (such as particular occupations and sport). These examples may appear stereotypical, but they do reflect the sometime subtle, sometimes blatant, differences between the activities of members of the two sexes. It is not the language that is exist but the attitudes of its speakers.

Other differences between men’s and women’s language in North American society are seen in women’s more frequent use of politeness formulas. There are a number of ways in which request (or commands) can be mitigated in English. Instead of simple saying to someone open the window! We might say please open the window! Would you please open the window! Could you open the window! Would you mind opening the window? Do you fid it stuffy in here! And so on. These are all less direct ways of requesting than the straightforward command and, it is claimed, would like more likely be employed by women. Since we are discussing sex-preferential usage here, we must emphasis that all of the above ways of phrasing a request are available to all speakers but, it is asserted, are not equally selected by male and female speakers.

In other areas, studies have shown that women accompany speech by smiling more often do men. Smiling is an example of paralanguage as it may accompany speech but is not a part of the stream of speech. Other investigations have demonstrated that men in north American society apparently interrupt the speech of women more than do women that of men. Apparently, women more often than men use a conversational device termed the ingressive affirmative, the somewhat inhaled yeah heard from speakers of British and Canadian English.