Abstract
The aim of this paper is to verify several assumptions concerning genderlects on the basis of an experiment carried out with a group of Polish teenagers. We enquire whether there are any significant differences in the use of diminutives, colour terms, markers of emotional language and verbosity by Polish teenage males and females. The experiment involved 40 16–17 year-old pupils of a senior secondary school, who were asked to respond in writing to the offered stimuli. It has revealed some significant differences in the language of male and female participants in all the examined categories.
Highlights
With the growing popularity of gender studies, interest in this topic has been sparked within linguistics
Our goal is to find out whether there are any significant differences in the use of diminutives, colour terms, markers of emotional language and verbosity by Polish teenage males and females
It was meant to elicit the use of diminutives, emotional language and colour terms
Summary
With the growing popularity of gender studies, interest in this topic has been sparked within linguistics. Starting with Lakoff’s (1975) famous book, a large body of research has shown that men and women exhibit some striking differences in how they use language. Among other things, to talk more than men, use more diminutives and hypocoristics, colour terms, question tags, rising phrase-final intonation, empty adjectives and adverbs (such as nice, lovely, great), as well as have richer vocabulary pertaining to housekeeping and child raising. They are supposed to often hesitate and show uncertainty and employ more emotional language (e.g. Lakoff 1975, Handke 1994, 2012). Our goal is to find out whether there are any significant differences in the use of diminutives, colour terms, markers of emotional language and verbosity by Polish teenage males and females
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