The Feminine Style: Theory and Fact Author(s): Mary P. Hiatt Source: College Composition and Communication, Vol.

29, No. 3 (Oct., 1978), pp. 222-226 Published by: National Council of Teachers of English Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/356931 Accessed: 22/03/2010 06:57
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Jhe Yeminine Style:Jeory and ?Fact

MARY P. HIATT
CRITICS often have trouble dealing with style, probably for two reasons. In the first place, stylistic theory itself ranges widely. Some stylisticians hold that style is totally a matter of one individual's writing-that, in effect, there is no such thing as a group or mass style. Others take an opposing view and maintain that it is possible to describe the characteristics of a group of writers or of writers of a certain era. Stylisticians further differ on whether style is the sum total of the characteristics of the writing or whether it describes in what way the writing departs from a norm, roughly defined as a standard or commonplace manner of writing. Some theorists also hold that any style can only be adequately described in the context of another style, whether individual or group. The state of the theory itself is therefore conflicting and confusing. In the second place, the metalanguage of style often relies on inadequate descriptors. Thus, in considering an individual's writing style, impressionistic adjectives abound: "muscular," "manly," "clear," "hothouse," "lush," "lean," etc. And in considering group style-or types of style-we are confronted with the traditional adjectives such as "plain," "high," and "grand," as well as "Baroque," "Ciceronian," "Attic," "Augustan," and so on. Few of these descriptors, whether of individual or group styles, have been objectively assayed, for upon close evaluation, they might vanish, leaving the critic at an unendurable loss for words. Castigation of the manifold efforts at stylistic description serves little purpose.

Nonetheless, an awareness of some of the pitfalls and complexities involved in the task of such description is essential to any adequate consideration of written style. To some degree, the critic of style is faced with choosing or developing a theory. As mentioned above, a theory has persisted over the years that common characteristics in the writing of certain groups, perhaps during certain eras, do exist, despite the abjurations of those theorists who claim that style can only be an individual matter. This group-style theory is reflected in the descriptors, "masculine" style and "feminine" style. Men and women, it is commonly believed, write differently. The conviction has run strong. Notably absent are any data to support the conviction. But whereas data are missing, we generally find, once again, a plethora of adjectives being flung about. The "masculine" style is held to be terse, strong, rational, convincing, formidable, and logical. The "feminine" style is thought to be emotional, illogical, hysterical, shrill, sentimental, silly, and vapid. The "masculine" style seems to be described in terms of a male view of men-not necessarily of men's style. And the "feminine" style is described in terms, often pejorative, of a male view of womennot of women's style. Whether or not the difference exists at all is important to establish, but most certainly the stereotyped descriptors are impressionistic, biased, and consequently less than useful. Opting for the theory, however, that style need not always be an individual
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FEMININE STYLE matter and that there do exist types of style consisting of linguistic features shared by groups of writers at particular times, I have studied a large sample of contemporary American prose to see, first, whether there are discernible differences between the way men write and the way women write, and, second, if there are differences, what these differences are.' One hundred books, 50 by women and 50 by men, were objectively selected for the study. Objectivity was maintained by not choosing books on the basis of literary "merit," for merit is a subjective matter. To have selected books because anyone in particular-I, my friends, critics in generalliked them would have seriously prejudiced the study. In the study, therefore, the books include non-fiction by Albert Ellis, Telford Taylor, Marjorie Holmes, and Frances Fitzgerald, and fiction by Charles Simmons, Bernard Malamud, Andrea Newman, and Joyce Carol Oates. The two categories (women's books and men's books) were subdivided equally into fiction and non-fiction. From each of the 100 books, four 500word selections of running text were randomly chosen. Each book, therefore, contributes a 2000-word sample to the study, which finally consists of 200,000 words of contemporary prose. If one is attempting to discern stylistic differences between two sets of 100,000 words each, one can, of course, try to read all these words and note the occurrence of such stylistic matters as sentence-length and complexity, inserts, types of modification, and so on. One can try to do this, but no one should. The human mind is often an inaccurate perceiver, and errors inevitably occur.
'See Mary P. Hiatt, The Way Women Write: Sex and Style in Contemporary Prose (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1977) for the complete report, including the list of the 100 authors forming the basis of the study.

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A mechanical mind is not inaccurate. Hence, the only objective and accurate way to deal with such a vast amount of text is to use a computer. The 200,000 words of prose were therefore keypunched onto IBM cards. Each of the 100 samples was scanned by computer for such major aspects of style as sentence-length and complexity, logical sequence of ideas, similes, -ly adverbs, parenthetical expressions, structural parallelism, and rhetorical devices. The findings indicate that contemporary male and female authors do write differently. I can report, with a fair degree of confidence, that there is a feminine style that is not the same as a masculine style. I definitely do not postulate, however, that either style is a "norm," from which the other style varies, although the way men are thought to write tends to be considered the way to write, probably because there are so many more male authors and critics than female authors and critics. The emergence of specific differences between the two groups of writers does, however, lend valid support to the theory that types of styles or styles characteristic of groups of writers do exist. Of greater interest, perhaps, is the discovery that the masculine style and the feminine style do not always differ in the commonly perceived or described ways. A consideration of some specific results bears out this conclusion. For example, close study of sentencelengths2 and average sentence-lengths of all the authors reveals that the men are not terse and that the women are not verbose. Of the non-fiction authors, the men's average sentence-length is 23 words; the women's, 21 words. The gross averages are not significantly different. All that can be said is that the women
2A sentence is defined as any word or words beginning with a capital letter and ending with end punctuation. This is not a grammatical definition but one that accommodates the vagaries of dialogue and speech patterns.

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COLLEGE COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATION complex as those of the men. Among the other women writers, the long sentences are carefully organized syntactically but cover a range of types of complexity. It is difficult to discern any one constructional characteristic for any one of these writers. The complexity of their sentences therefore is not so individually delineated as the complexity of the men's sentences. As for the fiction writers, the average sentence-length for men is 17 words; for women, 16 words per sentence-again not really a significant difference. But the men tend to write longer sentences than the women and more longer sentences than the women. Nine men produce fourteen sentences of over 80 words, whereas only five women write even one sentence of more than 80 words, none of them longer than 90 words. The range of sentence-lengths in fiction is also quite different between the two groups. Using as examples the two writers of the longest sentences in each group, we find that John O'Hara's longest sentence is 116 words, his shortest is two, and his range is 114 words; Tom Wicker's longest sentence is 104 words, his shortest is two, presenting a range of 102 words. On the other hand, Ruth Macdowell's longest sentence is 90 words, her shortest is two, and her range is 88; Daphne DuMaurier's longest sentence is 86 words, her shortest is three, and her range is 83 words. The foregoing are only examples, but the relatively narrow range of sentence-lengths is a repetitive feature of the women writers of fiction. In fiction, sentence complexity is not a particularly cogent parameter of style, because fiction is so studded with dialogue. But in sentence-length, it does not seem that the women writers vary as widely as do the men. In this respect, their writing is perhaps less daring, more conservative. Another aspect of style is the logical

do not go on and on-if anything, their thoughts are phrased in shorter units. But if the sentences of all the non-fiction authors are divided into two groups, those of twenty words or fewer ("short" sentences) and those of more than twenty words ("long" sentences), a statistical analysis indicates that the women use significantly more short sentences-58 percent, versus 48 percent of the men's sentences. Generally speaking, the longer the sentence, the more likely it is to be structurally complex. And, in the nonfiction studied, both the men's and the women's long sentences are certainly complex. But they are complex in different ways. The structure of the long sentences of each author in the men's non-fiction exhibits specific, often repeated aspects of style. Norman Mailer's long sentences, for example, are highly complicated, involving lengthy seriation, many parenthetical phrases and clauses, and many self-interrupters; Frank Mankiewicz uses many introductory and inserted adverbial phrases and clauses and many appositives; Frederick Cartwright often uses right-branching sentences; Rudolf Bing employs many complicated series, all in perfectly parallel constructions. In other words, the long sentences of each male non-fiction author usually offer readily identifiable types of complexity that are characteristic of that author. With the exception of two women non-fiction authors, the long sentences of the women do not generally display individual patterns of complexity. The exceptions are Eda LeShan and Joyce Maynard, both of whom use dashes and parentheses in their long sentences. The constructions delineated by dashes and parentheses, however, could just as well have been delineated by periods. In other words, their long sentences do not display the subordinate constructions that are the hallmark of complexity. Their long sentences thus are not so

FEMININE STYLE development of ideas. Examination of this feature was confined to non-fiction writers and carried out by studying the occurrence of certain words or phrases that often indicate a particular kind of logical sequence. There are, of course, many ways of indicating a particular logical process without the use of specific words. Instead of the word "because," for example, indicating that a reason is being offered, a writer may simply choose to say, "Another reason is that . . ." The existence of a logical sequence without the use of specific "signaling" words cannot be gainsaid. However, a search for what may be called "signals of logic," occurring at the beginning or within the sentence, reveals a difference in the writing of the men and the women. Logical-sequence indicators (or the particular group of words or phrases signaling a particular process of logic) may be divided into five types:3 (1) Illustratives ("for example," "that is," "for instance"); (2) Illatives ("therefore," "(and) so," "thus," "hence"); (3) Adversatives ("however," "but," "yet," "nevertheless," "on the other hand"); "for," (4) Causatives ("because," "since"); and (5) Additives ("and," "so.. .did"). The women use 190 of these logicalsequence indicators, whereas the men use 160. On the basis of the indicators, therefore, the women cannot be said to write illogically. But there is a difference in the type of logic used by the women writers. The men and the women use approximately the same number of Adversatives, but the women employ 50 percent fewer Illustratives and Illatives and 50 percent more Causatives and Additives. The logic of the feminine style would thus seem to depend on reasons and extra information rather than on
3The logical-sequence indicators were suggested by a system of eight logical relationships posited by Louis T. Milic, Stylists on Style (New York: Scribners, 1969), p. 21.

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exemplifications and conclusions. In terms of the low ratio of Illatives-those words indicating conclusions-the logic of the women is less definitive than that of the men. In terms of the high ratio of Causatives, their logic is more self-justifying. Neither the men's nor the women's style is, however, "illogical." Both are logical in different ways. The occurrence of -ly adverbs offers another measure of style. Women's speech has been reported to contain many more adverbs ending in -ly than that of men, with high use of such words as "simply," "utterly," and "awfully" as modifiers of adjectives. The unadorned adjective is presumably the province of men. Such may indeed be the case in women's speech, but in this study, it does not carry over into their writing. There is no significant difference between the men's and the women's writing in either the total number of -ly adverbs used or in the number of different adverbs, and the type-token ratio for both groups is almost exactly the same in fiction and in non-fiction. But the adverb "simply" is used more often by the men than by the women; the adverb "utterly" is rarely used by either group; and the adverb "awfully" is used only by the men. In the interest of discovering whether women writers are, as frequently claimed, "hyperemotional," adverbs of emotion (such as "amiably," "abjectly," "coldly," "angrily," etc.) were studied. That emotion is often expressed verbally or nominally is true; the expression of emotion via adverbs is only one means. Nonetheless, the two groups' use of adverbs of emotion is startlingly different in fiction and scarcely different at all in non-fiction. In fiction, the women use twice as many adverbs of emotion as do the men, a finding that probably is the basis for calling women writers "hyperemotional." But if another type of adverb is examined, the adverb of pace (such as

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COLLEGE COMPOSITIONAND COMMUNICATION characteristic of the feminine style is probably at least unconsciously and generally recognized. It actually is very consciously recognized in the words of one male character in a woman writer's novel when he says to a woman character, "'Really,' 'really,' 'really'! That's all you can say!" Its use probably re fleets women's feelings that they will not be believed, that they are not being taken seriously or "really." These feelings would quite naturally lead women to claim sincerity and validity more frequently than do men. To recapitulate, in those areas of style discussed here, the way the women write emerges as distinct from the way the men write. This distinction is consistently borne out in the study of other areas of style, such as the use of similes, certain adjectives and verbs, parallel structures, and various aspects of rhetoric. There is, in other words, clear evidence of a feminine style and sound justification for the theory of group style. But the feminine style is in fact rather different from the common assumptions about it. Solely on the basis of just those aspects discussed in this paper, it can be claimed that the feminine style is conservative, structurally sound, logical in its own way, balanced in terms of emotionality and pace. There are no excesses of length or complexity or emotion. Its only excess lies perhaps in the protesting use of really an understandable protest against being disbelieved.
Baruch College,
CUNY

"gradually," "hastily," "slowly," etc.), a reverse trend is seen. The men's fiction contains twice as many of these adverbs as the women's, and again there is no difference in the non-fiction of the two groups. The men's fiction style thus seems to be "hyperactive" as compared to the women's. If both types of adverbs are considered together, however, a more accurate evaluation of the two fiction styles is possible. In all, the women fiction writers use approximately the same number of adverbs of emotion and adverbs of pace, whereas the men fiction writers use four times as many adverbs of pace as adverbs of emotion. Thus, in fiction, where the major differences occur, there is evidence that the feminine style balances pace of action and expression of emotionality. The women writers are not hyperemotional, except in terms of the men writers. There seems to be far less basis for labeling the feminine styles as hyperemotional than for labeling the masculine style as hypo-emotional. The adverb really deserves special mention. The women writers use the word two and a half times more often than the men writers in non-fiction, and one and a half times as often in fiction. One male novelist (Anthony Burgess) accounts for the lessening of the difference in fiction by using that particular adverb more often than any woman writer. If his sample is disregarded, the same high proportion of really's exists in the women's fiction as in their nonfiction. The relatively high occurrence as