Robin Lakoff

Robin Tolmach Lakoff (born 1942) is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley.

Lakoff's writings have become the basis for much research on the subject of women's language. In a 1973 article (later a 1975 book), she published ten basic assumptions about what she felt constituted a special women's language. Much of what Lakoff proposed agreed with theories originally proposed in the 1920s by Otto Jespersen in Growth and Structure of the English Language (1905, revised and republished several times).

Lakoff's work Language and Woman's Place introduces to the field of sociolinguistics many ideas about women's language that are now often commonplace (although, similarly, many of her findings are now regarded as, at the very least, outdated). She proposed (Language and Woman's Place) that women's speech can be distinguished from that of men in a number of ways, including:

1. Hedges: Phrases like "sort of", "kind of", "it seems like"
2. Empty adjectives: divine", "adorable", "gorgeous"
3. Super-polite forms: "Would you mind..." "...if it’s not too much to ask" "Is it o.k if...?"
4. Apologize more: "I'm sorry, but I think that..."
5. Speak less frequently
6. Avoid coarse language or expletives
7. Tag questions: "You don't mind eating this, do you?". Subsequent research has cast some doubt on this proposition
8. Hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation: Use of prestige grammar and clear articulation
9. Indirect requests: "Wow, I'm so thirsty." – really asking for a drink
10. Speak in italics: Use tone to emphasis certain words, e.g., "so", "very", "quite"

Lakoff developed the "Politeness Principle", in which she devised three maxims that are usually followed in interaction. These are: Don't impose, give the receiver options, and make the receiver feel good. She stated that these are paramount in good interaction. By not adhering to these maxims, a speaker is said to be 'flouting the maxims'.

Selected writings by Lakoff

• 1973: The logic of politeness; or, minding your P's and Q's.
• 1975: Language and Woman's Place. ISBN 0-19-516757-0
• 1977: "What you can do with words: Politeness, pragmatics and performatives." In: Proceedings of the Texas Conference on Performatives, Presuppositions and Implicatures, ed. R. Rogers, R. Wall & J. Murphy, pp. 79–106. Arlington, Va.: Center for Applied Linguistics.
• 1985: When talk is not cheap. With Mandy Aftel. Warner ISBN 0-446-30070-5
• 1990: Talking Power. Basic Books. ISBN 0-465-08358-7
• 1993: Father knows best: the use and abuse of therapy in Freud's case of Dora. With J. Coyne. Teachers College Press. ISBN 0-8077-6266-0
• 2000: The Language War. University of California Press. ISBN 0-520-22296-2
• 2006: "Identity à la carte: you are what you eat." In: Discourse and Identity, ed. Anna DeFina, Deborah Schiffrin and Michael Bamberg. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge.

External links

• Faculty home page (UC Berkeley)
• Gender and tags
• Language Log
• Template:Worldcat id