Following our meeting today, here is the list of features that Lakoff proposed:
- HEDGES: (It's sort of hot, I'm kind of tired).
- (SUPER) POLITE FORMS: (Would you please open the door if you don't mind?)
- TAG QUESTIONS: (John is here, isn't he?)
- SPEAKING IN ITALICS: (Intonational emphasis equivalent to underlining written words, so, very)
- EMPTY ADJECTIVES: (cute, lovely, sweet)
- HYPER-CORRECT GRAMMAR AND PUNCTUATION
- LACK OF SENSE OF HUMOR
- DIRECT QUOTATIONS: (Using quotes instead of paraphrasing).
- SPECIALIST LEXICON: (Using mauve and magenta).
- QUESTION INTONATION IN DECLARATIVE CONTEXT: (For example in response to the question "When will dinner be ready?" giving the answer "around 6 o'clock.")
Good to see you're exploring the issue and getting familiar with existing research. I'd still like to know what you think of my discussion of this kind of thing in the textbook (see my previous comment). I don't think you'll be able to explore all the features you list, and I'd advise considering what your results will look like and how you'll use them to answer your research question. For example, suppose one speaker says 'sweet' when she tells you about a puppy she's seen, and another one says it about the cake she had with coffee and the others don't say it at all: what have you established? Why not perhaps focus on what feature, such as the use of colour terms? You could devise a stimulus, such as a picture and see whether your male/female informants use equivalent terms to describe the colours. Just a rough suggestion ...
ReplyDeleteThis seems like a more rounded approach. There's a good chance that we could be far too broad with our research, as there is so much to consider and pick from.
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