en are linguistically, as well as socially, at a disadvantage. Researchers have shown consistently that women speak less than men in public for a and that men interrupt women more than the other way round.
The problem is whether it is possible or desirable for women to alter their speech patterns so that they may be judged more direct and convincing; Deborah Cameron refers to such a process as «verbal hygiene for women» [Cameron D., 1994]. <file:///D:Диск%20DРабочий%20столРабигадипломные%202010Gender%20and%20Linguistic%20Stereotyping%20-%20M_Conrick-.htm>This kind of linguistic training seems like a modern equivalent for women of the old elocution lesson from the days when a particular class accent was a marker for upward social mobility. In the context of the Glass Ceiling, upward mobility for women is a far more complex affair.
Changing women «s linguistic strategies is not terribly difficult in certain areas: one can, for example, (possibly with a modicum of training), adopt lower pitch, reduce the range of intonation patterns and avoid disclaimers like:» I « ; m not sure if this will work but ... » Some women may have philosophical objections to being expected, yet again, to change their behaviour to fit in with a male norm. They may favour a `celebrating difference 'approach, though this seems particularly unlikely to succeed in a hierarchical workplace.
Whatever one «s position on the» if you can «t beat them, join them» debate, at least the time has come when doing research in language and gender and mediating it to the public is considered worthwhile, in contrast to twenty years ago when it would have been considered an unworthy, if not frivolous, subject of academic debate. More and more women appear to have cultivated elements of what some refer to as «powerful» language, related to level of attainment rather than gender determined. One hopes that the more women participate in public life the more they will develop individual styles that no longer surprise because of their rarity. That will be progress.
1.2 Gender Language and its subdivisions
a) Women s language) men s language
Possible gender differences in language usage have recently attracted a lot of attention., we need to sort out whether women really do speak differently from men. People «s impressions are not necessarily correct: it is often assumed, for example, that women talk more than men, whereas almost all research on the topic has demonstrated the opposite, that men talk more than women. Similarly, it is sometimes claimed that women use »empty« adjectives, such as divine, charming, cute, yet this type of description is possibly more usually used by (presumably male) writers in popular newspapers to describe women. [Aitchison J., 1992], some characteristics which have been attributed to women turn out to be far more widespread. For example, women have been claimed to use tentative phrases such as kind of, sort of in place of straight statements: »Bill is kind of short«, instead of »Bill is short«. They have also been accused of using question intonation in response to queries: »About eight o« clock? » as a reply to: «What time» s dinner? « Yet this insecure style of conversation seems to be typical of »powerl...
