Before reading this article I already knew that men and women spoke the same form of English. Although, if I had been raised in a different time I can see how I may have been tricked into believing otherwise. In current literature women are portrayed as being intelligent and independent. Even novels I grew up with as a kid had leading characters that were intelligent and in depth women, such as Nancy Drew. But if I had been raised in a different time I would have only read novels about intelligent, ground breaking men, while the women were stuck at home to be a house wife, or stay at home mom.
Macaulay uses examples of the way authors present a woman speaking as opposed to a man. Before a quote from a woman was written, around the quotation marks it would say “asked innocently”, “said loyally”, “whispered”, or “offered humbly”. But around a man’s quotations marks it would say “said challengingly”, “demanded aggressively”, “urged”, or “exclaimed contemptuously”. I agree strongly with Macaulay when he states that “No doubt the novelists intended to be realistic in describing two very different styles of speech, but in doing so, they also reinforce the stereotypes of men and women.” Of course I would interpret women to be nurturing if everything they said was prefaced with something like “asked innocently”. I would not see a woman’s use of the English language to be harsh, or confident.
I liked the use of logos that Macaulay uses when speaking about the actual differences between men and women. I think that although pathos and ethos are effective sometimes, when trying to prove an argument such as this you need to use actual facts. For example, when speaking of the true differences between men and women in regards to the English language he said that boys are much more likely to suffer from speech disorders than girls. As well, he says that men on average have deeper