The aim of this essay is to investigate the claims made by Robin Lakoff regarding women’s language, where she claims that women use hedges more than men. The aim of this essay is to investigate whether this statement is true. To put it differently, this essay aims to look at gender differences in the use of modal adverbs as hedges. As a method, a frequency analysis has been conducted, where data from the British National Corpus 2014 (BNC2014) has been used. Since hedging involves various linguistic forms, this essay focuses on the modal adverbs presented by Huddleston and Pullum. The results show that women do use more hedges than men. Regardless, there are not any major dissimilarities across genders. Although there were some findings that supported Lakoff’s claims, there were also some that contradicted her claims.

<p>The aim of this study was to find out how features that have been found to be typical of women’s language, such as hedges, tag questions and a high level of talkativeness etc., are represented in a popular TV series. Five cross-sex conversations from one episode of the sitcom <em>The New Adventures of Old Christine </em>were analyzed, and the results show that many of the features of interest, as for instance tag questions, minimal responses and indirect style, are unexpectedly used more frequently by men in this small investigation. In fact, the only feature that was used more frequently by the female main character was hedges. Several factors affect the results of the study, as for instance the fact that the conversations are fictional. The special characteristics of the speakers also affect the results, as well as the tone and the topic of the chosen conversations. Many of the features of interest were used to a very small extent, which is probably a result of the fact that the language in a sitcom is to be entertaining and rather quick, which leaves little or no room for the features studied.</p>

The aim of this study was to find out how features that have been found to be typical of women’s language, such as hedges, tag questions and a high level of talkativeness etc., are represented in a popular TV series. Five cross-sex conversations from one episode of the sitcom The New Adventures of Old Christine were analyzed, and the results show that many of the features of interest, as for instance tag questions, minimal responses and indirect style, are unexpectedly used more frequently by men in this small investigation. In fact, the only feature that was used more frequently by the female main character was hedges. Several factors affect the results of the study, as for instance the fact that the conversations are fictional. The special characteristics of the speakers also affect the results, as well as the tone and the topic of the chosen conversations. Many of the features of interest were used to a very small extent, which is probably a result of the fact that the language in a sitcom is to be entertaining and rather quick, which leaves little or no room for the features studied.

It is widely accepted that gender is actively performed and a part of identity rather than biology, and that this is where gender differences in language stem from. Researchers have attempted to define what constitutes men and women’s language, and this paper uses some of these definitions to analyse the speech of the main character in the first season of the television show Buffy the vampire slayer. This research project investigates Buffy’s use of feminine language as well as whether her language changes when her performance is otherwise more masculine in the role of the slayer. This is done by comparing conversations between Buffy and her friends with conversations between Buffy and her enemies. The results show that Buffy uses some feminine linguistic features but that her speech is not distinctly feminine in general. Her language also does not change significantly when performing the role of the slayer.

I Japan är s.k. rollspråk, dvs. stereotypt språk kopplat till en viss typ av karaktär, vanligt i material riktat till barn, såsom barnfilmer. Trots att rollspråk som forskningsområde är relativt nytt finns ett antal studier som behandlar rollspråk i litterära översättningar, undertextningar och dubbningar till japanska. Få eller inga har dock jämfört hur rollspråket påverkar karaktäriseringen dels i undertexterna, dels i dubbningen av en och samma film. Denna uppsats analyserar japansk undertextning och dubbning av den svenska barnfilmen Du är inte klok Madicken och finner att båda versionerna använder rollspråk på ett liknande sätt för att förenkla karaktäriseringen och framhäva de kvinnliga karaktärernas femininitet genom bl.a. feminina satsfinala partiklar, pronomen, verbformer och interjektioner. / In Japan so called role language, i.e. stereotypical language associated with a certain type of character, frequently occurs in material for children such as children’s films. Role language is a fairly new area of research but despite this, there are a few studies dealing with role language in literary translation, subtitling and dubbing into Japanese. However, few or none of these examine how role language influences characterisation in the subtitles and dubbing of the same film. This thesis analyses the Japanese subtitling and dubbing of the Swedish children’s film Du är inte klok, Madicken and finds that both versions use role language in a similar way to simplify characterisation and emphasize the femininity of female characters through the use of feminine sentence-final particles, pronouns, verb forms and interjections etc.