These are the uncertainty features Lakoff believes women use...
- Hedging- uncertainty and lack of authority e.g. ‘sort of’
- Super polite forms – ‘If you don’t mine please may you..’
- Hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation- e.g. women avoid ‘ain’t’ or double negatives
- Tag questions – show that women want approval from their utterances e.g. ‘I’m coming with you, all right?’
- Speaking in italics – women use exaggerated intonation or stress for emphasis, expresses uncertainty e.g. ‘I am very frustrated with you’
- Empty adjectives approval- Lakoff claims that if a man uses these terms he appears more feminine as it damages his masculine prestige e.g. ‘divine, lovely, adorable, delightful and sweetie’
- Use of implication- Lakoff claimed women use this because they do not feel the authority to give orders e.g. ‘it’s cold in here, isn’t it’ instead of ‘shut the window’
- Special lexicon- Lakoff states that such words are trivial and evidence of the fact that women have been allowed control over unimportant things e.g. purple of blue women would say ‘lilac’ or ‘violet’
- Question intonations in declarative statements- women raise the pitch of their voice at the end of statements expressing uncertainty e.g. ‘Dinner’s in half an hour?
Hypothesis- Men hold dominance in mixed sex conversations and women will use more uncertainty features.
In this video a girl is discussing with two boys the dress code at their school. The girl talks solidly for the first minute and 42 seconds. She does not use uncertainty features she just speaks her opinion clearly. When the males do join in one interrupts the other an then uses hedges whilst talking.
