Language Style and Gender Stereotypes in Person Perception

Twelve sentence pairs representing Lakoff's “women's language” and corresponding “masculine” styles were developed in order to examine gender stereotyping as a function of linguistic pattern usage. College students (77 women and 74 men) read the sentences as transcribed from an interview with a hypothetical male, female, or sex-unknown client, and evaluated the speaker on 31 bipolar adjective scales. Ratings on the masculinity-femininity dimension confirmed Lakoff's “feminine” speech style as a gender stereotype. Factor analysis and subsequent multivariate analyses of variance on factor scores revealed that participants rated the nonfeminine linguistic style significantly higher in competence, but lower in social warmth, than the feminine style. Author gender did not contribute significantly to speaker evaluations. Implications of this importance of style over gender in person perception are discussed.

[1]  Calyampudi R. Rao,et al.  Advanced Statistical Methods in Biometric Research. , 1953 .

[2]  David Lindley,et al.  Advanced Statistical Methods in Biometric Research. , 1953 .

[3]  R. Jennrich,et al.  Rotation for simple loadings , 1966, Psychometrika.

[4]  Robert D. Meade,et al.  Sex of the communicator as a variable in source credibility. , 1967, The Journal of social psychology.

[5]  Philip Goldberg,et al.  Are women prejudiced against women? , 1968 .

[6]  H. Bee,et al.  Sex-role stereotypes and self-concepts in college students. , 1968, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[7]  Joseph R. Sligo,et al.  EMPIRICAL COMPARISON OF UNIVARIATE AND MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE PROCEDURES , 1971 .

[8]  D. Broverman,et al.  Sex‐Role Stereotypes: A Current Appraisal , 1972 .

[9]  Janet Taynor,et al.  Evaluation of Male and Female Ability: Bias Works Two Ways , 1973 .

[10]  S. Bem.  The measurement of psychological androgyny. , 1974, Journal of consulting and clinical psychology.

[11]  B. Thorne,et al.  Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance , 1975 .

[12]  Susan M. Bennett,et al.  The definition of sex stereotypes via the adjective check list , 1975 .

[13]  A. Chase.  The great pellagra cover-up: eugenics v. poor white trash. , 1975, Psychology today.

[14]  R. Lakoff.  Language and woman's place , 1973, Language in Society.

[15]  Robert S. Siegler,et al.  Stereotypes of Males' and Females' Speech , 1976 .

[16]  H. T. Fillmer,et al.  Sex-role stereotyping in English usage , 1977 .

[17]  Linda Nyquist,et al.  The female register: an empirical study of Lakoff's hypotheses , 1977, Language in Society.

[18]  Sally McConnell-Ginet,et al.  Intonation in a Man's World , 1978, Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society.

[19]  William M. O'Barr,et al.  Speech style and impression formation in a court setting: The effects of “powerful” and “powerless” speech , 1978 .

[20]  Cheris Kramer.  Women's and men's ratings of their own and ideal speech , 1978 .

[21]  N. Newcombe,et al.  Effects of speech style and sex of speaker on person perception. , 1979 .

[22]  D. Spender.  Man Made Language , 1980 .

[23]  F. Denmark.  Psyche: From Rocking the Cradle to Rocking the Boat. , 1980 .

[24]  J. R. Wilcox,et al.  Attitudes toward Male and Female Speech: Experiments on the Effects of Sex-Typical Language. , 1980 .

[25]  Gender, Role, and Power: A Content Analysis of Speech , 1985 .

[26]  D. Bartle,et al.  Women and men. , 1989, New Zealand health & hospital.