pos;women's language' has become one of the most important theories of sociolinguistics. Her observations can be summarised in nine essential points:
             1. specialized vocabulary: women are more likely to use specific colour terms such as mauve, plum and have more extensive vocabularies in areas traditionally associated with the female, such as housekeeping and child rearing.
             2. milder expletives: women replace the harder swear words with milder ones, such as sugar for shit. This can arguably be seen as repression of the female, denying her the voice to express her anger.
             3. 'empty' adjectives: these have no functional purpose other than to convey emotion; eg. divine, gorgeous, sweet, cute.
             4. tag questions: added onto the end of a statement, these demonstrate and insecurity in what the speaker is claiming. Lakoff argues that these show the invalidity of the female voice in western society.
             5. intonation: another method for speaking indecisively, women use intonation to make comments that would otherwise be statements become questions.
             7. hedges: women repeat phrases such as you know, the result being at decreased tone of seriousness.
             8. hypercorrect grammar: women avoid abbreviations that men use frequently; in English, and example would be ain't. This is because the social standing of a woman is more vital and ethically important.
             9. joke telling and humour: women are incapable of understanding or delivering humour.
             Considering Lakoff's example of 'women's language' is a good point to begin when examining the 'observed differences
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