2.2 Studies on Women’s Language

2.2.1 Studies on Women’s Language Abroad

The study of linguistic differences between genders begins at the middle of 17th century. Ethnographers first paid attention to the differences between male and female varieties of language, which was reflected in vocabulary use. The modern linguistic study on gender difference began at the beginning of 20th century. During this time, many famous linguists contributed to the research on gender differences, such as: O. Jespersen in 1922 and W. Labov (1922), P. Trudgill (1974), R. Lakoff (1975) in the 1970s and the current linguists S. Romaine (1982), D. Cameron (1985), J. Coates (1986), M. R. Key (1996), H. Davis (1997), R. Fasold (2000), K. E. Payne (2001) and J. Baxter (2004). （Cited from Stockwell, Peter. Sociolinguistics: a resource book for students. London: Routledge, 2002.） During this period, a famous Danish professor Jespersen is the first linguist who began to study gender difference in language use. In his famous linguistic book named Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin (1922), he listed some women’s language features and clearly stated gender language differences from lexical and syntactical aspects. Jespersen first pointed out that female-used vocabulary was quite different from that used by males. Thorne and Henley (1975) believed that females tend to use more euphemistic words and less swear words than males. Simultaneously, he also claimed that males were easier to accept variations of language than females. Therefore, he thought that females’ language use were more conservative than males’. Secondly, Jespersen found that in the aspect of syntax, males used more compound sentences than females; so he concluded that males were more intelligent than females. In 1929, the American linguist Edward Sapir made clear that there are obvious gender differences in the process of studying the male and female language forms in Yana (1929). Nevertheless, in Edward Sapir’s study, he just made some simple descriptions and conclusions of a certain linguistic phenomenon at that time, and it was not theoretical and systematic, though it also made contributions to the further study on this issue.来~自^751论+文.网www.751com.cn/

From 1960s to the present time is an important studying stage. The study of characteristics of women language in this period is more systematic. In 1960s, the women’s language study was greatly pushed forward through absorbing theories of subjects of sociolinguistics and discourse analysis; at the same time, many linguists published books on issues of gender difference. For example, in 1975, Robin Lakoff published an important and distinguished book named Language and Women’s Place, which is about study of gender language. Nevertheless, Lakoff’s summary in that period is just a hypothesis, which is based on her inpidual opinion. Therefore, in the following time, many scholars and researchers started to participate in this subject and made many practical researches on the characteristics of women’s language. There are scholars for example Don Zimmerman (1975), Candace West (1975), Dale Spender (1980), Pamda Fishman (1983), William O’Barr (1980) and Deborah Tannen (1990,1994). （Cited from Stockwell, Peter. Sociolinguistics: a resource book for students. London: Routledge, 2002.）Under these linguists’ hard work, the study on women’s language is largely promoted and improved and more linguists begin to pay attention to it. In current time, it is normal for people to admit that there exist differences between male and female language.