THE PECULIARITIES OF WOMEN’S COLLOQUIAL SPEECH

Abstract

One of the factors of linguistic variability in spoken language is gender, which is defined as a set of ideas about the job qualities of men and women, a system of cultural patterns that regulate the social behavior of men and women. There are many different theories and assumptions explaining the existence of gender differences in a language. However, modern gender studies in linguistics testify to the ambiguous interpretation of the results obtained by scientists. Some scientists claim that the language characteristics of men and women have no fundamental differences, others believe that the language of women and men has certain specificities. We share the opinion of those scientists who see fundamental differences in the spoken speech of both sexes. Therefore, in this paper we are aimed at researching the peculiarities of women’s colloquial speech, which are manifested in women's use of lexical fillers, tag questions, rising intonation in declaratives, an excessive number of connotative adjectives, various speech intensifiers, impeccably correct grammar, super polite forms, emphatic stress and avoidance of swearing as such. The article also outlines the distinguishing features of female language from directly male language. Women can often discuss the same topic for a long time while men, on the contrary, jump from topic to topic. Women take turns in conversation, apologizing for talking too much, while men interrupt each other in an attempt to dominate. A woman's linguistic abilities are much deeper, more meaningful, because women react faster to what is said, they perceive what is said and respond. Men are more reserved in conversation, react to what is said more slowly, often hesitate and doubt. Women's speech is characterized by greater sophistication, because in conversation a woman tries to avoid harsh expressions, uses softer gentler and more aesthetic verbal forms. If men in dialogues usually strive for more generalizing statements, women prefer first-person forms.