This paper discusses symbolic violence in sociolinguistic research on multilingualism. It revisits an archived recording of a group discussion between four boys about their chances of having sex with a female researcher. The data is rife with symbolic violence. Most obviously, the conversation enacted a heterosexist form of symbolic violence. This…

Reports on some experimental evidence in which politeness is not seen as part of the female register but instead as a social marker, indicating the status of the speaker and addressee in a given situation. (EKN)

In order to help explain language variation and promote an understanding of spatial networks and diffusion patterns, data from the records of the Survey of English Dialects (SED) are analyzed with respect to geolinguistics. The data include all recorded instances of words with morpheme-final consonant clusters for all 75 interviews with older…

Philosophical works and sociological writings from the seventeenth through the twentieth century are analyzed in this paper to learn the degree to which their use of generics (linguistic terms such as "mankind" that are used to refer to all humans) can be said to have actual reference to all adults without consideration of sex. The paper notes…

A study examined sex differences in the usage and perceptions of profanity. Subjects, 135 undergraduate students (61 females and 74 males), completed a questionnaire requesting information about demographics, attitudes, and use of profanity. The initial series of questions sought to obtain a self-reported estimate of the frequency with which…

As Labov points out (1971), language is a social phenomenon, and therefore must be studied in its social context; sex based language differences, being part of language, must be studied in the same way. Specifically, sex based language differences can be studied by modifying the sociolinguists' notion of speech community and speech continuum, and…

Three stereotypes of male-female behavior as manifested in language were investigated. The stereotypes are: women are more verbose than men, women use more modifiers than men, and women are submissive to men. Eighty students were randomly assigned to one of two conflict resolution conditions--a business situation and an interpersonal…

Documented sex differences in speech and their significance are considered. The research literature on sex-differentiated speech reveals the influence of sex-role stereotypes and assumptions about the relation of speech to sex-differentiated socialization. The more substantiated differences form three clusters: (1) the production of esteemed…

Paradoxically, linguists' speculations about sex differences in language use are highly plausible and yet have received little empirical support from well controlled studies. An experiment was designed to correct a flaw in earlier methodologies by sampling precisely the kinds of situations in which predicted differences (e.g., swearing,…

Reviews research on female and male interaction patterns. Examines classroom interaction in higher education and pedagogical alternatives developed in women's studies programs. Argues that the norm of classroom interaction is more closely aligned with typical male patterns of interaction. (PD)

This paper is an overview of the introduction of "Ms." into language usage as part of the process of changing sexist language. Included are: (1) history of the term, (2) a discussion of the rationale for its introduction, (3) a report on the other suggested forms of address that do or do not specify sex and marital status, (4) a discussion of the…

An experiment was conducted to test the hypothesis that the use of swear words by women elicits more negative perceptions of the speaker than the use of the same words by men. Subjects (undergraduates) read vignettes describing fictitious clients' initial interviews at a mental health center. One described a forty-year old teacher troubled by…

This paper discusses the issue of whether and how data from dialect surveys provide insights into women's language. The Linguistic Atlas projects of the United States and Canada, the Dictionary of American English project, the Arkansas Language Survey and smaller projects are considered; and it is stated that in order to get at conversational…

It is possible to think of women's language in terms of the model implied by the following statement. Insofar as native speakers of English are concerned, the language of women in America has four sets of components: those shared with the language of men in America; those shared, in varying proportions, with other women living in patriarchies;…

Cultural stereotypes that interpret girls as less forceful or less assertive than boys in pursuing their own agendas, particularly during conflict episodes, are questioned. A theory of double-voice discourse is proposed to characterize a type of conflict talk that has a dual orientation, and examples for three- and four-year-old girls' talk are…