Robin Lakoff
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Robin Tolmach Lakoff is a feminist and professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her most famous work, Language and Woman's Place (1975), introduced to the field of sociolinguistics many ideas about women's language that are now commonplace, such as women's greater use of tag questions as compared to men's speech. Further research on tag questions has cast some doubt on this proposition though.
Lakoff's article "Women's Language" and her book Language and Woman's Place have become the basis for much research on the subject of women's language. In the 1975 article she published 10 basic assumptions about what she felt constituted a special women's language. Much of what Lakoff proposed agreed with Otto Jespersen's theories[citation needed].
Robin Lakoff said that women have a set of “marks” that distinguish their language from men, they are;
• Hedges: Phrases like “sort of,” “kind of,” “it seems like,”
• Empty adjectives: divine, adorable, gorgeous e.t.c.
• (Super) Polite forms: “Would you mind…” “Is it o.k if…?” “…if it’s not too much to ask”
• Apologise more: “I’m sorry, but I think that…”
• Speak less frequently
• Avoid coarse language or expletives (swearwords)
• Tag questions: “You don’t mind eating this do you?”
• Hyper correct grammar and pronunciation: Use of prestige grammar and clear Articulation
• Use more indirect Requests: “Wow I’m so thirsty.” – really asking for a drink
• Lack a sense of humour: don’t get punch lines or tell jokes.
• Speak in italics: Use tone to emphasis certain words, e.g., so, very, quite
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