Anthropological Linguistics and Sociolinguistics Commons^™

You Talk Like A Girl: Stereotypes About Women’S Language, Allison Fisher

Honors College Theses

In her 1973 essay “Language and Woman’s Place,” linguist Robin Lakoff claimed that clear differences exist between the speech of women and men, and that these differences both reflect and perpetuate women’s powerlessness in society. Lakoff’s work became the basis for a substantial number of studies on gendered language since. Outside of academia, assumptions about the existence of “women’s language” are prevalent in popular advice books and manuals directed at women, who are advised to use or avoid certain linguistic features, including those identified by Lakoff nearly fifty years ago. These include the use of empty adjectives, tag questions, hedges, …