Dr. Louise Mullany, Associate Professor of Sociolinguistics, talks to Women’s Hour on BBC Radio 4 about dispelling the linguistic stereotype that women apologise more than men. She also discusses the linguistic tools that are needed for an apology to be successfully delivered.
Is there any evidence that there is more assertion that women are more apologetic than men?
Comedian, Viv Groskop who will be doing a show at the Edinburgh Fringe this year will be basing it on the fact that British people apologise 1.9 million times over a lifetime, with the assertion that women are more apologetic than men. But what evidence is there for this? Dr Louise Mullany found that investigations in the Centre for Research in Applied Linguistics show that there are a lot of similarities between the way women and men speak depending on the context, role and who it is that you’re talking to. The difference, however, lies in the way that women are evaluated and judged which is differently in comparison to their male counterparts.
Dr Louise Mullany explains that the issue lies in gender stereotyping, where despite the similarities in language and speech features in both men and women, research has revealed that where ‘verbal hedging’ may be deemed acceptable in men, particularly in a business context, he would in fact be perceived as a strong, efficient communicator. Woman on the other hand, would be seen as “weak and unassertive” as Dr Mullany stated.
Male or female, how do you really know if someone is sorry?
When presenter Jenni Murray asked this with reference to Viv’s view that if apologising makes men appear as appeasers and collaborators, the opposite is happening with women where simply “apologising isn’t working for us” Viv commented. Dr Mullany explained that you need to know that they are sincere and can hold responsibility to take the blame for the apology that they are giving, as an indication of their sincerity.
Posted on Friday 3rd July 2015