Page 71 - ภาษาอังกฤษสำหรับครูสอนภาษา

ลกั ษณะทั่วไปของภาษา 1-61

Occupational terms and words are often found in
men’s but not in women’s.

(2) These two qualities distinguish men’s speech from women’s by their
relative absence in women’s speech. Five other devices distinguish
women’s speech from men’s, by their common appearance in women’s
speech and their rarity in men’s. One device is syntactic, one morpho-
phonological, and three lexical.
The syntactic device many women use, but men rarely do, is the
tag question, as in “That was a terrible movie, wasn’t it?” or “It’s
raining outside, isn’t it?” Tag questions are neither true questions, for
they do not really request information (they are really asking for
confirmation), nor are they full-fledged declarative statements. They
exist somewhere in between statement and question, reluctant, hesitant,
uncommitted2, waiting to see what the reply will be (or fairly certain 2. ไมผ่ กู มดั ตัว
there will not be any reply) before they risk a firm opinion. เอง

Accompanying the tag question is the morphophonological device
of intonation: many women utter statements, “tagged” or not, with a
question pitch (rising at the end) rather than with the customary
declarative falling pitch.
Lexically, women’s dialect differs from men’s in three ways
(besides the absence, by and large, of occupational jargon and of
profanity3): women use more intensifiers4 than men, make different kinds 3. ถ้อยคำ�
of fine distinctions and use more euphemisms5 and other pleasant words หยาบคาย
than men do. 4. คำ� ท่ีท�ำให้
questions, but men
ความหมาย
Women often use do. ของคำ� ที่
Many women utter statements with a pitch. ขยายแรง
Women use more than men, make different kinds of ยิ่งขึ้น เช่น
fine and use more than men do. very
5. คำ� สภุ าพหรอื
สละสลวยท่ี
ใช้แทนค�ำซง่ึ
ไมน่ ่าฟังหรือ
หยาบคาย