th language used to describe women and language typically used by woman [cited in Fasold 1990], created an initial theoretical framework which would be critiqued and expanded by future researchers. Lakoff provides a list of ten linguistic features which characterize women s speech, as follows:
. Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see.
2. Tag questions, e.g. she s very nice, isn t she?
3. Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it s really good?
4. Empty adjectives, e.g. divine, charming, cute.
5. Precise color terms, e.g. magenta, aquamarine.
6. Intensifiers such as just and so, e.g. I like him so much.
7. Hypercorrect grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms.
8. Superpolite forms, e.g. indirect requests, euphemisms.
9. Avoidance of strong swear words, e.g. fudge, my goodness.
10. Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance. [Cited in Holmes 2001].
As in English, the Kyrgyz employ many wordless sounds to express meanings: ... as they listen to somebody else they make sounds like un hun, aah or mmm. ... To indicate No, they may utter uh uh and shake their heads ... oy is used like oops in English to indicate a mistake ... ahyee or oy voy yuy is used to express surprise or amazement - equivalent to really or wow in English ... erah is used to show disappointment, ... hunh indicates pain, ... oof suggests that they are tired, and ... erf that something is terrible or disgusting.
Consistent in Lakoff s list of linguistic features is their function in expressing lack of confidence. Holmes [2001] divides this list into two groups. Firstly, those linguistic devices which may be used for hedging or reducing the force of an utterance, such as fillers, tag questions, and rising intonation on declaratives, and secondly, features which may boost or intensify a proposition s force [Holmes, J. , 2001], such as emphatic stress and intensifiers. According to Lakoff, both hedging and boosting modifiers show a women s lack of power in a mixed-sex interaction. While the hedges lack of assertiveness is apparent, boosters, she claims, intensify the force of a statement with the assumption that a women would not be taken seriously otherwise.The use of compliments and apologies by women showed that women are more personal-oriented and show greater concern for the other, while men are more task oriented and assert more power than the other. Many researchers also agree that polite and collaborative styles of communication are powerless when they are not reciprocated such as how women could not easily compliment men as men could do to them. Women also use apologies more than men, showing their intention to restore the balance between speaker and hearer, whereas men prefer formal strategy or some ambiguous explanation type of apology to maintain their one-up position.
Herbert [1992] found that women s compliments were more personal in focus, whereas men s compliments were more impersonal, especially when speaking to men. He also suggested that subjective compliments such as I really like your shirt, have less force than the objective form such as That sa...
