Dear Rawda, 

That is actually an interesting question! The following three books might be nice reads for you. The three books clearly talk about the differences between men and women in conversation.They can be good frameworks of understanding conversations between men and women; he said/she said... One of them interestingly sheds some light on who talks more, men or women based on scientific research; and examples to stunningly demonstrate how even in the closest of relationships women and men live in different worlds made of different words. Hope you find them beneficial and interesting.

Regards, 

Karwan

Maybe the second part of Simone de Beauvoir's "The Second Sex" (link below) can help you on this.

https://smile.amazon.com/Second-Sex-Simone-Beauvoir/dp/0307265560/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1482040377&sr=1-1&keywords=simone+de+beauvoir+second+sex

Look at Lidia Tanaka, "Gender, Language and Culture: A study of Japanese television interview discourse" (John Benjamins Publishing, 2004), pages 23-25 for general discussion and page 25- 30 for Japanese. General discussion refers to dominance approach versus difference approach (with references), followed by identity creation practices (male versus female), psychoanalysis approach, muted group approach, and finally linguistic perspective. If you cannot get these references, write to me, let me know . . . but I advise looking at the book - lots of interesting stuff.

Any women I have spoken to always seemed to speak the same language as me.  Of course that didn't prevent misunderstandings. 

Can't agree more with David Barnwell, but the question is about literature on female language, so perhaps Deborah Tannen, Anna Pavlenko and Ingrid Piller's writing could be useful for you.

You can have a look at Vivian de Klerke's article How Taboo are Taboo Words for Girls. The article is available on JSTOR. It might help you.

Svitlana:  Of the three sources you cite, how many languages other than English do they deal with? SInce Chomsky started publishing I guess 60 years ago linguistics has based too many of its theories on just ONE of the five or six thousand languages of the world.  The original poster spoke of Women's Language, not Women's English.  

David: thank you for your question and remark very much :). To answer your question: Tannen has to do with English, Pavlenko - with multilinguals (at least in 'Emotions and multilingualism') and Piller with bilinguals (German-English). 

As concerns Women's Language and Women's English: as you have rather reasonably observed (and as far as i understand your observation) the question is how far one can explain the differences/similarities in language use by the differences/similarities of speakers' gender identities. The same question, however, arises as for inter/dependancy between language use and speakers' national identities: how far Women's (as well as Men's) English is different from Women's Russian, or Women's German, or Women's Japanese or Women's Greek?. I would say, there is no such inter/dependancy. Neither, I think, does a theory and its plausibility depend on the languages it is based on or the national identities of its author/s and research participants. After all, whatever my own view of 'Women's Language' is, it's up to Rawda Ibrahim to decide what theory or source is relevant for her research. Best.

Dear Rawda, 

That is actually an interesting question! The following three books might be nice reads for you. The three books clearly talk about the differences between men and women in conversation.They can be good frameworks of understanding conversations between men and women; he said/she said... One of them interestingly sheds some light on who talks more, men or women based on scientific research; and examples to stunningly demonstrate how even in the closest of relationships women and men live in different worlds made of different words. Hope you find them beneficial and interesting.

Regards, 

Karwan

Many of the above suggestions are good ones. If you are interested in the linguistic side of it, rather than books, there are some good papers on, for example, uptalk, narrative, and empathy/listening in women's speech as opposed to men.

Samuel:  Surely uptalk is only found in English?  Certainly not found in Spanish, my second language.  Or Irish, another language I speak well.  I guess I am repeating the point I made above.  A feature found in only one language is of little theoretical substance. 

Actually, the first language which comes to mind regarding this question is Japanese, and with search words 'Japanese women's language' a great many treatments in English pop up in the search machine. However, I have never studied the issue and would have to look through the hits just as anyone else could do. In Japanese the differences between men's and women's language are quite remarkable.

Feminist linguistics should be another research field in which theoretical contributions might be found.

For German I'd recommend Luise F. PUSCH Deutsche als Männersprache: Aufsätze und Glossen zur feministischen Linguistik, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 1984, ISBN 3-518-11217-1.

Hm, maybe it's not translated into English.

Push says in an interview about the German language:

http://www.dw.com/en/linguist-urges-more-gender-equality-in-german-language/a-15795388

"The masculine form is considered to be neutral, but in reality this is not the case. Feminist critics of language have been working for 30 years to change that. I always say that the German language hides women more heavily than a burkha. Even wearing a burkha, a woman is still recognizable as such. But our language makes women invisible. A choir could be made up of 99 women and just one man. Still, grammatically speaking, they would be referred to using the male form."

"It is simply subversive - and funny."

Further on Japanese, an interview with Sachiko IDE

http://escholarship.org/uc/item/71b7r2wm#page-2

A New Perspective on Women's Language in Japanese: An Interview with Sachiko Ide

Dear Rawda,

beyond Deborah Tannen's contributions, have a look at

Mulac, A. (2009). The Gender-Linked Language Effekt: Do language differences Really Make a Difference? In D. J. Canary & K. Dindia (Eds.), Sex Differences and Similarities in Communication. Critical essays and empirical investigations of sex and gender in interaction (pp. 211–231). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.

Giles, H., Scherer, K., & Taylor, D. M. (1979). Speech markers in social interaction. In K. Scherer & H. Giles (Eds.), Social markers in speech. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

If you do read German, the younger linguistic discussion can be found in:

Günthner, S., Hüpper, D., & Spieß, C. (2012). Genderlinguistik. sprachliche Konstruktionen von Geschlechtsidentität. In S. Günther, K.-P. Konerding, W.-A. Liebert, & T. Roelke (Eds.), Linguistik - Impulse & Tendenzen (p. 448). Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter.

Motschenbacher, H. (2012). Queere Linguistik: Theoretische und methodologische Überlegungen zu einer heteronormativitätskritischen Sprachwissenschaft. In: S. Günthner, D. Hüpper, & C. Spieß (Eds.), Genderlinguistik - sprachliche Konstruktion von Geschlechtsidentität (45th ed., pp. 87–128). Berlin, Boston: Walter de Gruyter

Samel, I. (2000). Einführung in die feministische Sprachwissenschaft. Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag GmbH & Co.

All the best,

Jörg

I like what I see in previous answers as ambivalent and more complex understandings of a term like 'woman's language', and all makes theorizing more challenging!

To add yet another aspect to this gender-specific linguistics, please have a look at the 'women's script' (nü shu) discussion:

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue2/endoreview.html

Endo Orie

Chūgoku no onnamoji

[Chinese Women's Script]

Tokyo: Sanichi Shobo, 1997, 175 pp.

ISBN 4-380-96240-7

reviewed by

Anne McLaren & Shibuya Iwane

Other Nüshu Websites

Anne McLaren's paper, 'Crossing Gender Boundaries in China: Nüshu Narratives,' in the Inaugural Issue of Intersections.

http://intersections.anu.edu.au/issue1/nushu2.html

Orie Endo's Nüshu website

http://www2.ttcn.ne.jp/~orie/home.htm

An excellent annotated bibliography on female literacy, reading and writing in China, as well as Nüshu, can be found on Barend J. ter Haar's website.

http://www.let.leidenuniv.nl/bth/literacy.htm#i.

What about research on similar lines from more strictly gender-segregated societies, cultures and times?