http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?

article=1088&context=totem

Communication Studies
Jackie Pugh and Liz Ristau

Sex Stereotypes as a
Function of Genderlect
By Michelle Goldberg
Goldberg, Michelle (1994)
http://ir.lib.uwo.ca/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?
article=1088&context=totem

Literature Review:
The point of this experience was to investigate the differences in
communication styles of men and women and address the stereotypes
that people attach to communication. Many factors were taken into
account, for instance the study looked at how men and women use
descriptive words differently. The study also looked at how men
stereotypically use a more assertive tone.

Methodology: Thirty-six undergraduate students from the

University of Western Ontario participated in the study. They were all

between the ages of 18-22 with an average age of 19.7. They were all
randomly assigned into 1 of 3 groups. Each group corresponded with
stereotypically masculine, feminine, or neutral speech. Each group
consisted of twelve students, 6 male and 6 female.

Materials: Three different passages were used for the experiment.

The passages were all very short and used the vocabulary indicated as
masculine feminine or neutral. Planting certain words and phrases n the
sentences created the passages.
Questionnaires were prepared and the subjects were to rate on a sliding
scale how masculine, feminine, or natural they believed the statements to
be.

Procedure: Each subject was randomly given one of each type of

passage. They were asked to look over the statement and rate them
based on a list of different characteristics including, assertiveness,
politeness, extroversion, power, and intelligence. The subjects were not
completely told what they were doing to avoid bias, and were debriefed at
the conclusion of the study. This was done so that the subjects would
answer truthfully and not try to be socially acceptable and over think the
questions.

Results: The results show that when it comes to status, intelligence,

and extroversion, there were no differences between the 3 groups.
Though when the subjects were looking at things like impoliteness,
confidence, aggressiveness, unattractiveness, power, and gender the
female group rated lower than their male counterparts. A lower score
notes less of a characteristic, so when it comes to politeness, rating low
means the speaker is less polite. The only characteristic that showed no
significant result was aggression. The characteristic where the groups
showed the most difference was politeness. When it came to power and
confidence the groups were seen as more neutral.

Conclusion: The experiment was conducted to analyze womens

speech characteristics and how stereotypes in communication can
negatively affect women. Previous studies have proved that there are
negative stigmas attached to females and their communication styles,
however this study failed to replicate there past studies. The only results
that proved statistically sound were that women speak more femininely
and politely, compared to male speech patterns. However, ad trend
noticed that women are rated more negatively over all; Men are seen as
more confident and aggressive. The experiment did not replicate past
samples due to the sample size, previous studies were much larger and
their groups were separated by sex. Previous studies also assumed that
men and women both held negative stereotypes toward women. Though
the examiners tried to mask the true nature of the experiment until the
end women still were shown to hold prejudice against their own sex.
Subjects may have been able to discern the true nature of the
experiment, thus the subjects may have tried to give the right answer
since we live in a time where awareness of gender inequality is at an all
time high. Results were shown to hold close to the mean, this predicts
that subjects probably did not want to give a true score, and purposely
aired on the side of caution and gave a middle range score. Another
factor that contributed to a lack of repetition is that the statements were
not true speech samples; they were fabricated to be typical speech
patterns just for the study. The differences in ratings on confidence,

aggressiveness, and power, can be used to explain the differences in the

inequalities in the work force. Since the stereotypically male
characteristics are seen as favorable it is no surprise that women are
often surpassed by men in the work force. The fact that even women hold
their biased attitudes towards each other shows that we are not as far as
most people think we are in the search for equality, people dont realize in
most situations that they hold these biased opinions.