Female Speech in Latin Comedy

Abstract

Evidence has been accumulating from many languages for the existence of distinctive forms of female speech. A consistently observed characteristic of women is that they are more likely than men of the same social class and age to favour usages which belong to an accepted standard or are of high prestige. Women seem to be more conservative than men. They are also widely believed to be more given to polite linguistic forms. It has, for example, been suggested that men use plain imperatives more often than women; women favour modifiers to soften the impact of an order. Numerous other female traits have been found in different languages. In English certain intonation patterns are said to be typical of women. Other pronunciation differences have been noted in various languages, such as the omission or substitution by one sex of a sound used by the other sex. Women have also been shown to differ from men in their use of such words as particles, personal pronouns, titles and kinship terms.