Hillary Clinton: Runs like a man, talks like a girl

[Dennis Baron]

There's a new post on the Web of Language:

Hillary Clinton: Runs like a man, talks like a girl

Hillary Clinton talks like a girl.  That’s the conclusion of a pair  
of psycholinguistic researchers who analyzed radio and television  
interviews with Sen. Hillary Clinton and former president Bill  
Clinton recorded in 2003 and 2004, just after each had published a  
memoir.  They found that Bill speaks more than Hillary, but Hillary  
uses "you know" more than Bill.  She says "so" more often, but he  
uses more nonstandard forms of speech.  Bill addresses his  
interviewers as “you,” while Hillary calls them by their names.  Bill  
laughs at his own comments; Hillary laughs in response to what  
interviewers say.  In sum, though, she laughs more than he does, at  
least she did when they were on the air several years ago....  
Weighing these findings, the researchers conclude, “Though Hillary  
Clinton is a politician herself, she still follows, to some extent,  
the historic designation of women’s language as the language of the  
non-powerful.”

Strange to think of Hillary Clinton as non-powerful.  But stranger  
still to think she talks like a girl  -- assuming, that is, that  
anyone knows for sure what girls, or boys, actually talk like.

Everybody knows that men and women speak differently, and that these  
differences often lead to misunderstanding.  Some people think the  
differences are genetic, others argue they are socially constructed.   
Unfortunately, there’s no general agreement on what constitutes man- 
speak, or what it really means to talk like a girl.  There is some  
consensus, though, that politicos use language to win votes....

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Best,

DB



Dennis Baron
Professor of English and Linguistics
Department of English
University of Illinois
608 S. Wright St.
Urbana, IL 61801

office: 217-244-0568
fax: 217-333-4321

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