Female Speech Style
Does it Change Over Time?
Abstract
Numerous examinations of gender speech styles have been conducted primarily based on real life conversations which were unprepared and spontaneous (Coates 1986; Tannen 1991; Githens 1991), but little has been done in other frameworks. This study looks at gender speech styles in the perspective of its portrayal in literary texts. It focuses on the analysis of stereotyped characteristics of female speech style as portrayed in three children’s novels, written over a period of three centuries – 19th, 20th and 21st Centuries. The analysis is based on Lakoff’s characteristics of female speech style – the use of special vocabulary, imprecise intensifiers, super polite forms, weak forms of expletives, hedges, tag questions and direct quotations, as portrayed in the novels. Since most creative writings are created based on the writers’ observations on the reality of their surroundings, to a certain extent, they do rely on the stereotyped and generalized behaviour to make their written products believable, real and acceptable to the audience. Thus, this study also examines whether the female style of speaking changes over time, based on the writers’ observations and perceptions.
Copyright (c) 2004 Kamisah Ariffin, Misyana Susanti Husin, Roselina Musahar
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
1. Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
2. Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
3. Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work.
License Terms
All articles are published under the Creative Commons Attribution–NonCommercial–ShareAlike 4.0 International License (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0). Full license: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/
