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From: kriha_p@actrix.gen.nz (Paul J. Kriha)
Subject: Re: fe/male speech in English??
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Date: Sun, 5 Mar 1995 02:48:38 GMT
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In article <3j8b8f$gmr@netnews.upenn.edu>,
   dbowie@mail1.sas.upenn.edu (David F Bowie) wrote:
>H Thygesen (edb-ht@find2.denet.dk) wrote:
>
><snip>
>
>: The f-word and similar things appear more freaquent in men's postings.
>: Maybe it's safe to say that women's language is more friendly than men's.
>: I was once subject to a psychological test (for a job interview) where
>: "masculinity" was measured on the basis of the persons tendency to answer
>: "No" to both of two mutual excluding statements (and feminine people were
>: expected to answer "Yes" to both in some cases). Is this just pop
>: psycology or is there something in it ?
>
>Regarding cursing by men and women--a couple of years ago i ran across a 
>paper by Peter Limbrick called "A study of male and female expletive use 
>in single and mixed-sex situations" in _Te_Reo_ 34 (1991) (for those of 
>you who care to look it up, it's a most entertaining article).  Anyway, 
>the article described a study that tested the folk belief that men curse 
>more than women.  (The study was carried out in New Zealand among New 
>Zealanders, FWIW.)  The conclusions were interesting--the study found 
>that men and women generally curse about the same amount in single-sex 
>situations, but in mixed-sex situations men lower their use of swear 
>words and women increase theirs.

That might be peculiar to New Zealand.  I find young Kiwi women
ruder and coarser than men.  For example, if I hold a lift door
open for women, 9 out of 10 times, they wouldn't say "thank you".
I don't think that happens so often anywhere else in the world.


Paul JK
