Title:ED075886 - Women's Speech:Separate But Unequal?.
Abstract:This paper considers the existing evidence of systems of co-occurring,sex-linked,linguistic signals in the United States.In the first section,the type of research which has been done in linguistic sex contrasts and then the relevant material in "folk linguistics" are discussed.In addition,a number of studies about the differences among men and women in vocabulary and pronunciation,grammatical forms,retention and comprehension of oral messages,and compressed speech are examined.Overall,these research projects reveal conflicting results and inconsistent findings which are interpreted as indicating that the role of sex in communication has not been clearly enough defined.In the second section,the popular beliefs regarding what constitutes women's speech--what is believed to be women's speech and what people believe it should be--are examined.The fact that women as speakers have been largely ignored by communications researchers is stressed,and it is suggested that popular beliefs can be useful as bases for research hypotheses.(LG)