Name: Marsella Ayu Cristina Dewi
NIM: 1801541024
Class: Sastra Inggris A
Gender and Politeness
Women’s language and confidence
Robin Lakoff, an American linguist, suggested almost the opposite. She also argued that women
use were using language consider about their subordinate status and colluding their own
subordination by way they spoke.
She shifted the focus of research on gender differences to syntax, semantics and style.
She suggested about reflected the language women use.
Features of women’s language
There are two language features used by women:

Hedging devices
Signal lack of confidence

Boosting devices
Signal persuade their addressee to take them seriously
Lakoff’s Linguistic Features
Lakoff suggested that women’s speech was characteristic by linguistic features such as
-
Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g you know, sort of, you see
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Tag question
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Rising intonation and declarative
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Super polite forms
-
Precise of color
In the women’s speech, there no linguistic would describe as an imperative construction form
‘confuses form and function. Another study, for instance made a distinction between fillers and
hedges.
Example:
There is an example of the interruption that men do in an interaction with a woman.
Woman : How’s your paper coming?
Man : Alright I guess. I haven’t done much in the past two weeks.
Woman : Yeah. Know how that can –
Man : - Hey ya’ got an extra cigarette?
Woman : Oh uh sure. Like my pa –
Man : - How ‘bout a match?
Woman : I was gonna tell you my –
Men : - Hey I’d really like ta’ talk but I gotta run. See ya
Interaction
The interaction between women and men that the women got interrupted more than men,
regardless of whether. Women are evidently socialized from early childhood to expect to be
interrupted.
Explanation
Women’s cooperative conversational strategies, however may be explained better by looking the
influence of content and patterns of socialization.
Gossip
Gossip describes the kind of relaxed group talk that goes on between people in informal contexts.
Women’s gossip focuses on personal experience and relationship, or problems and feeling. In
gossip section, the women’s show their emphatic or sympathy respond to any experience
recounted, what the speaker says about their feeling and relationship.
Sexist Language
Language conveys attitudes. Sexist attitudes stereotype a person according to their gender rather
than judging on individual merits. Sexist language encodes stereotyped attitudes to women and
men.
Most obviously, perhaps, in the semantic area the English metaphors available to describe women
about extraordinary high number of derogatory images compared to those used to describe men.
The categories of linguistic in this section discussed reflect to the society’s view of women in
many English-speaking communities. The example discussed in this chapter illustrate some of
ways in which language can provide insight about a community’s perception and stereotypes. The
relative status of the sexes in a society may be reflected not only in the ways in which women and
men use language, but also in the language used about women and men.
Questions.
1. Are women more polite than men?
2. Are there any differences in the way women and men interact?
3. How is language used to refer to women and men?