Gabrielle Sharp: Intensifiers as characteristics of female speech 14
That is so Feminine! An investigation of intensifiers as characteristics of female speech through the use of so and really in modern television programming GABRIELLE SHARP* Abstract This paper investigates the use of intensifiers by males and females in recent episodes of the television show Gossip Girl. Data was collected from ten recent episodes of the show, aired from February to May 2012. The use of the intensifiers so and really was recorded with the gender of both the speaker and the listener noted. The results showed that the female characters used significantly more intensifiers in total than did the males. They also showed that one male in particular used almost as many intensifiers as the female who used the most overall. The results of the data collection support the early findings given by authors such as Lakoff, Jespersen and Key, as well as the findings of the 1998 study by Aries on language features and their use by male and females. This study proves that the intensifiers so and really are more commonly used by females than males and therefore that they are quite possibly a characteristic of female speech in modern television programming, although a larger data sample may be helpful in confirming this finding. 1. Introduction There are many conflicting views on what does and does not characterise female language. This paper focuses on the frequency of the use of intensifiers by males and females and investigates whether it is a language feature specific to females or whether gender makes no significant difference to intensifier use. To avoid confusion it is important to first clarify the definition of ‘intensifier’ used in this paper. An intensifier is a grammatical tool (usually an adverb) used to indicate and often increase the emphasis given to the word it is modifying (Dictionary.reference.com 2012). Oxforddictionaries.com (2012) has the following entry for intensifier: “an adverb that is used to modify an adjective. Intensifiers show how much of a quality something has; Intensifiers can also modify other adverbs”, for example: That is really pretty; thank‐you so much. The aim of this paper is to look at intensifier use as a language feature and to investigate the frequency of intensifier use in relation to gender. It does this with language data collected from the television program, Gossip Girl, in which the use of the intensifiers so and really, plus the gender of the character uttering these items, were recorded to identify differences and/or similarities. Initial research into female speech and its common characteristics has produced varied results. There is of course Lakoff’s frequently cited claim in Language and Woman’s Place (2004) that the intensifier so occurrs much more frequently in women’s speech than in men’s. Prior to Lakoff’s work there was Otto Jespersen’s statement in Language: its Nature, Development and Origin (1922) that the intensive adverb was a favourite among women and was commonly used in such expressions as “He is so charming!” and “It is so lovely”. Key’s study, published in 1975, also supports the view that intensifiers are more likely to be found in female speech than in the male equivalent. She writes that “Females make much more use of intensifiers, the often‐emphasized words such as: ‘so, such, quite, vastly’” (Key 1975: 75). Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication 5, 1 (2012), 14‐20 Gabrielle Sharp: Intensifiers as characteristics of female speech 15
There are two main issues with all of the above‐mentioned works. The first is that they are now quite out‐dated and may not reflect modern trends. The second issue is that none of the above works give any data to support their claims. The authors simply state their opinions and observations based on their own experiences with female language. The problem with this approach is that everyone is exposed to different language communities and everyone has their own subjective opinions. For accurate results, data collection is required as evidence for the language patterns. Fortunately there are more recent publications that do contain data collection to support their claims, e.g. Aries 1998, as well as Leaper and Robnett 2011. Both of these provide solid data to back up their findings. Aries collected data on the use of different language features among both men and women and studied the differences between each gender according to different features (Aries 1998). From the results it was concluded that intensive adverbs were in fact one of the language features generally used more by females than males (Aries 1998). Leaper and Robnett investigated the use of tentative language by men and women and in doing so, focused on expressions of uncertainty, tag questions, hedges and intensifiers (Leaper & Robnett 2011). They write that “intensifiers refer to adverbs such as very, so, or really, used in a way that adds little content to a statement (e.g., “That report was so hard”) (2011: 130). The results of their study showed that while there were some slight differences, overall it could be concluded that, at least in regard to tentative speech (such as the use of intensifiers) men’s and women’s speech is more similar than different (Leaper & Robnett 2011). Research into intensifiers and their use by males and females shows that there are many cases where only the authors’ personal opinions and judgements are given, with no evidence to prove or disprove their findings (Key 1975; Lakoff 2004; Jespersen 1922). There was one example found that included actual data collection to show that intensifiers were a language feature commonly used by females (Aries 1998) but this data is over ten years old and needs to be updated. There was also another study on tentative speech (including intensifiers) which concluded that in this aspect of speech, men and women do not vary in any significant way (Leaper & Robnett 2011). Both of these studies provide supporting evidence in the form of actual data collection, but without more research it is hard to draw reliable conclusions. 2. Research Question From the above literature review it can be seen that gaps lie in the early research due to a lack of supporting data and evidence to support the personal opinions and judgements. Works that do provide data to support their hypotheses appear to be conflicting and so the research question for this paper asks, “Is the use of intensifiers a characteristic of female speech?” This paper attempts to fill the gaps in the current literature by establishing whether Aries (1998) or Leaper and Robnett’s (2011) findings were accurate. The results will also either support or disprove the early opinions of intensifiers as being characteristic of female speech, as portrayed by Key (1975), Lakoff (2004) and Jespersen (1922). 3. Methodology The first step in the data collection was to find a suitable source from which to collect data. It was decided that the most readily available source of language was television programming. A downside to collecting data from a scripted television program is that it is not Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication 5, 1 (2012), 14‐20 Gabrielle Sharp: Intensifiers as characteristics of female speech 16
spontaneous speech. However it is still a realistic imitation of spontaneous speech because it was written with the intention of being believable to the audience. It has ease of access, it is recorded and re‐windable and even though it is scripted, the writers would have been using language based on actual speech, so as to relate to the audience. It was important to choose a television show that was suitable for data collection. It needed to be a current show that had aired recently, so that the language would be as up to date as possible. It also needed to be realistic and set in the modern era, with language that reflected current trends and plausible situations. For example, a show set in the future in outer space would have language that might plausibly fit that scenario. A popular and enjoyable show was preferable because the data collector was required to watch hours of footage without being distracted from the language. To avoid variables, the characters in the show needed to be as similar as possible in class and ethnicity. The show that was selected was Gossip Girl and the ten most recent episodes were used for data collection. These were episodes 14 to 23 from Season 5. They each aired a week apart, beginning with episode 14 on 26 February 2012 and ending with episode 23 on 7 May 2012. This show fits all of the above criteria: it is recent, modern, realistic and enjoyable to many. More extensive research involving data collection from additional episodes would have been ideal, but unfortunately time restraints prevented this. Throughout the research process and literature review it was apparent that the most common intensifier was so (Jespersen 1922; Key 1975; Lakoff 2004). One of the next most common intensifiers was really (Key 1975; Aries 1998). These were the intensifiers chosen for data collection in this study, because of their apparently common usage. Perhaps, in order to broaden this study, every intensifier used could be counted, rather than just focusing on so and really. 4. Data Collection and Results Tally sheets were created for ease of data collection (see below). They included options to record the gender of both the speaker of and listener(s) to the intensifier and the main characters were noted by name as well, in case patterns emerged among characters. Each episode was tallied in a separate colour to facilitate the double‐checking of results and each intensifier was recorded on a separate spreadsheet. Each episode was watched at least twice so that numbers could be confirmed and to ensure that the data was correct. The final results could then be calculated in order to determine how many of each intensifier was used by each gender and main character. Table 1 (tally sheet) gives first the gender and then the name of the character speaking, on the left‐hand side, and the gender and name of the character listening along the top. The main characters in the series are referred to by their first name in the tally sheets and whenever a minor character or extra used an intensifier it was recorded as an ‘other’ in the corresponding gender. The main male characters in the television show are Nate Archibald, Dan Humphrey, Chuck Bass and Rufus Humphrey. The main female characters are Serena van der Woodsen, Blair Waldorf, Ivy Dickens1, Lily van der Woodsen‐Bass‐Humphrey and Gossip Girl2. Tables 2 and 3 below show the intensifier use by each gender and character, as well as totals, for all ten episodes combined. Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication 5, 1 (2012), 14‐20 Gabrielle Sharp: Intensifiers as characteristics of female speech 17
Speech Characteristic: INTENSIFIERS ‐ "REALLY"
Character Listening
Character Speaking
Male
Nate
Dan
Chuck
Female
Rufus
Other
Group
Nate
Serena
Blair
Ivy
Lily
Gossip Girl
1
Dan
1
Chuck
2
1
1
2
Other
Group
Mixed Group
5
4
1
1
1
Male
Rufus
1
Other
1
1
1
TOTAL
Female
8
Serena
1
1
Blair
6
2
Ivy
1
16
1
1
2
1
2
1
2
1
Gossip Girl
Other
0
2
Lily
1
4
1
1
1
TOTAL
3
1
1
19
1
18
1
Speech Characteristic: INTENSIFIERS ‐ "SO"
Character Listening
Character Speaking
Male
Nate
Dan
Nate
Dan
Chuck
Female
Rufus
Other
Group
Serena
Blair
Ivy
Lily
1
2
Chuck
1
Rufus
2
Gossip Girl
Other
Mixed Group
Group
3
1
2
2
5
3
1
1
Male
Other
1
2
TOTAL
Serena
12
Blair
2
Ivy
Female
Lily
3
Gossip Girl
Other
4
4
21
4
4
1
1
1
1
3
1
0
6
1
3
4
2
2
1
1
1
2
3
3
1
1
2
4
4
4
2
3
3
Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication 5, 1 (2012), 14‐20 39
32
TOTAL
2
7
Gabrielle Sharp: Intensifiers as characteristics of female speech 18
Speaker Listener so really Total Male Male 12 8 20 Male Female 21 16 37 Male Mixed 0 0 0 Female Male 32 19 51 Female Female 39 18 57 Female Mixed 7 1 8 Table 2: Frequency of intensifier use by Gender Character Speaking Nate so really Total 4 6 10 Dan 15 10 25 Chuck 3 4 7 Rufus 4 2 6 Serena 17 6 23 Blair 15 11 26 Ivy 5 3 8 Lily 6 4 10 Gossip Girl 7 2 9 Table 3: Frequency of intensifier use by Character When calculating the final results it was possible to see how many intensifiers were used in total by each gender and also how many were directed towards the opposite gender; how many were used to the same gender; and how many were used to a mixed group (Table 2). It was also possible to calculate how many intensifiers were used by each main character in the series and to whom (Table 3). Tables 2 and 3 were created to show the results more clearly and to display the intensifier use by gender and character separately. 5. Discussion It can be seen from Table 2 that the female characters used more intensifiers than the males overall and that the highest usage was between females, while the lowest usage was between males. Males also used significantly more intensifiers when talking to females than when talking to males, while female intensifier use remained quite consistent regardless of the gender of the listener. Table 3 shows that Blair was recorded as using the most intensifiers overall but Dan, who had the highest intensifier use among the males, was only one intensifier behind Blair. All of the other male characters had considerably low frequencies of intensifier use but this may be due to either screen time or the characters’ personalities. Further investigation would be required to comprehensively prove the reason for Dan’s high intensifier use and determine whether it was an anomaly. Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication 5, 1 (2012), 14‐20 Gabrielle Sharp: Intensifiers as characteristics of female speech 19
Overall the female characters used so and really substantially more than the male characters, which supports all of the early claims that females use more intensifiers than males (Lakoff 2004; Jespersen 1922; Key 1975). It also supports Aries’s 1998 findings that intensifier use is generally a more common language feature among females than males, but disproves Leaper and Robnett’s 2011 findings which say that intensifier use is not a distinguishing difference between the respective languages of each gender. Attempts were made to avoid possible cultural influences by choosing a television program where the main characters all had the same class, ethnicity and lifestyle. However the data was collected from the scripted language used by actors portraying their characters and the natural intensifier use of the writers may differ. More research with a larger amount of data would be useful to further this study and remove any anomalies, thus ensuring more reliable data. 6. Conclusion The early papers that discussed intensifiers as a common feature of female speech failed to provide any data or evidence to support their findings. The works examined in this paper (Lakoff 2004; Key 1975; Jespersen 1922) gave the authors’ personal opinions on the frequency of intensifier use, but without data to substantiate their claims these works hold little weight. More recent works by Aries (1998) and Leaper and Robnett (2011) both provide in‐depth data analysis to support their statements but the results were conflicting. This paper aimed to find whether there was any truth to the early findings and either prove or disprove them by collecting and analysing data from ten episodes of the modern television show, Gossip Girl. It attempted to analyse the results of the conflicting papers in order to uncover the current language trends in regards to intensifiers. The use of so and really as intensifiers in Gossip Girl was recorded with the gender of both the speaker and listener noted. The results show that, in this data selection, females did use intensifiers more frequently than males, thus supporting the early findings and Aries’s 1998 work. One of the male characters used intensifiers just as frequently as the female characters but the other males had significantly low intensifier use. This result could have been affected by the characters’ personalities or possibly by their screen time. (It may be interesting to explore more possible reasons through further research). A larger data sample, perhaps with more episodes or different television shows, would also be ideal for conclusively proving or disproving the existence of this language pattern and removing and/or explaining anomalies. However from this study of the language use in Gossip Girl it can be concluded that the female characters used the intensifiers so and really more frequently than the male characters and that the use of intensifiers appears to be a characteristic of female speech. Author Note* Gabrielle Sharp is an 18‐year‐old Australian university student currently enrolled at Griffith University, Brisbane. She is in her second year of a Bachelor of Arts in Languages and Applied Linguistics program, majoring in Italian and Linguistics. Notes 1 Ivy Dickens went by the name Charlotte (‘Charlie’) Rhodes for several episodes until the real Charlotte (‘Lola’) Rhodes arrived on the show. Even when Ivy was acting as Charlie, her intensifier use was recorded against her real name. When Lola used intensifiers it was recorded in the ‘other’ female section of the tally sheet. Griffith Working Papers in Pragmatics and Intercultural Communication 5, 1 (2012), 14‐20 Gabrielle Sharp: Intensifiers as characteristics of female speech 20
In the focus episodes the character in control of the Gossip Girl blog varies. When Gossip Girl’s identity is Serena, the intensifier use is marked under Serena’s name. When she is known as Georgina Sparks, it is marked under ‘Other’ in the female section. The ‘Gossip Girl’ box on the tally sheet refers to the real Gossip Girl whose identity is unknown and intensifier use by the Gossip Girl voice‐over is marked there. References Aries, E. 1998. Gender Differences in Interaction: a Reexamination. In Sex Differences and Similarities in Communication, ed. by D. Canary and K. Dindia. Mahwah, N.J.: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates. Dictionary.reference.com. 2012. Viewed 28 April 2012 at http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/intensifier Jespersen, O. 1922. The Woman. In Language: its Nature, Development and Origin. Viewed 2 May 2012 at http://www.archive.org/ http://archive.org/details/languageitsnatur00jespuoft Key, M.R. 1975. Male/Female Language. Metuchen, N.J.: The Scarecrow Press, Inc. Lakoff, R.T. 2004. Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Leaper, C. and Robnett, R. 2011. Women Are More Likely Than Men To Use Tentative Language, Aren’t They? A Meta‐Analysis Testing For Gender Differences and Moderators. Psychology of Women Quarterly 35:129‐142. Oxforddictionaries.com. 2012. Viewed 28 April 2012 at http://oxforddictionaries.com/definition/intensifier?region=us 2
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