Language % Communicaoon. Vol. IO. No. 3. pp. 185-205. 1990. OYI-5309190 53.00 + .

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Printed in Great Britain. Pergamon Press plc

HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN WOMEN’S AND MEN’S SPEECH

JANET HOLMES

1. Introduction
Though Robin Lakoff’s (1973, 1975) claims about the linguistic forms she considered
characteristic of ‘women’s language’ have been attacked, misrepresented, qualified, refuted
and constantly criticised over the last 15 years, no one can say they have been
uninfluential.’ As a result of her hypotheses about the way women speak and why, we
now know a great deal more about the speech behaviour of women compared to men than
we did in 1973.
My own research on epistemic modality led very naturally to the collection of data which
could appropriately be used to examine Lakoff’s claims. Many of the features she identified
as characteristic of women’s language, including hesitations, rising intonation, tag questions,
hedges and intensifiers, are linguistic devices which may be used to express epistemic
modality or degrees or certainty about a proposition (see Holmes, 1982a, 1983). Indeed
Lakoff selected them quite explicitly, if somewhat arbitrarily, as ways in which speakers
express uncertainty or tentativeness about a statement. She pointed out (Lakoff, 1975,
pp. 53-54) that speakers might use these devices when genuinely uncertain about the facts,
or alternatively to mitigate the force of an utterance ‘for the sake of politeness’; these uses,
she implied, were quite ‘legitimate’. But, she claimed, women tend to use such devices
for a third reason, namely, to express themselves tentatively without warrant or
justification when ‘the speaker is perfectly certain of the truth of the assertion, and there’s
no danger of offense, but the tag appears anyway as an apology for making an assertion
at all’ (1975, p. 54).
With a rich data base of speech collected to explore the ways in which native speakers
of English express epistemic modality, I was well placed to examine Lakoff’s claims about
‘women’s language’ in at least some contexts. 2 I therefore decided to explore in some
detail the distribution of a number of linguistic forms in women’s and men’s speech. In
order to avoid at this stage the semantic assumptions encoded in labels such as ‘hedge’
and ‘intensifier’ I will refer to these forms initially as pragmatic particles. In this paper
I intend to summarise the findings on each of the following:
(1) the tag question;
(2) three pragmatic particles usually regarded as hedges: sort of, you know and I think;
(3) a pragmatic particle usually regarded as an intensifier: of course.
The first step in the analysis of the distribution of these forms in women’s and men’s
speech involved rectifying two weaknesses in much of the research which has attempted
to investigate Lakoff’s claims. Firstly it was necessary to indentify carefully the relevant
linguistic forms and their functions; secondly it was important to devise a methodology
to protect against avoidable bias in the data collection and analysis.

Correspondencerelatingto this paper should be addressed to Janet Holmes, Department of Linguistics, Victoria
University of Wellington, P.O. Box 600, Wellington, New Zealand.

185
186 JANET HOLMES

2. Forms and functions

2.1. Identifying the relevant forms

In an earlier article (Holmes, 1984a) I discussed in some detail the misleading effect
obtained by simply counting linguistic forms without taking account of their function in
context. Since then I have examined a number of linguistic forms widely recognised as
potential ‘hedges’ in Lakoff’s sense (i.e. attenuators or mitigators of the strength of a speech
act) and the results have been consistent: linguistic forms are complex and the functions
they express cannot be identified in a social and textual vacuum.
Let me illustrate with two of the forms on which I am focusing in this paper.

2.1.1. Tag questions. There is a rich literature on the complex syntax and phonology
of tag questions (e.g. Arbini, 1969; Armagost, 1972; Huddleston, 1970; Holmes, 1982b;
Cattell, 1973; Hudson, 1975; Oleksy, 1977; Millar and Brown, 1979; Postman, 1982; Nasslin,
1984). This research demonstrates that tags differ in polarity, in intonation, in syntactic
derivation and in lexical form. Yet many of the researchers investigating Lakoff’s claims
ignore this variation and treat tags as invariant forms, assuming that the relative frequency
of use by women and men, regardless of variation in form and function, is itself significant.
Two examples will illustrate the point. Firstly, when one is concerned to identify tags
functioning as hedges (i.e. as ways of attenuating the strength of a speech act), then it
is clear that the range of forms must include not only what might be described as canonical
tags, such as are you, isn’t she and can’t they. The list must also include forms such as
eh, with falling or rising intonation, as well as non-standard forms such as in I and in ‘t
(Cheshire, 1981, 1982, p. 165), since these forms may serve exactly the same function as
canonical tags in some dialects, as (1) and (2) illustrate. (I have supplied with each example
a very brief indication of the context of the utterance in order to facilitate interpretation
of the illocutionary point and approximate strength of the speech act. The slashes / and
// indicate two lengths of pause. Intonation is also marked, where relevant, by left- and
right-sloping slashes above words.)
(1) Context: older child to younger child.
that was pretty silly \eh//
(2) Context: young man to his friend.
time to go e/h//
Secondly, researchers may need to differentiate between superficially similar forms on
the basis of features such as intonation and function in context. In my 60,000 word corpus
almost all the examples of canonical tags which occurred functioned as hedges, mitigating
the strength of a wide range of speech acts. However, Jenny Thomas (1988, p. 27) provides
from her ‘unequal encounter’ data examples of tag questions used as confrontational rather
than mitigating strategies. The context is crucial in interpreting these accurately, but
intonation is also relevant. Example (3) illustrates a tag used for this non-hedging function.
It is inconceivable that okay used in this way could be pronounced with falling
intonation, and conversely it is most unlikely that don’t you could achieve its effect with
rising intonation.
(3) Context: superintendent to detective constable during interview criticising the
constable’s performance.
 HEDGES A?.-DBOOSTERSIN WOSIEN'S AND MEN'S SPEECH 187

A . . you’11 probably find yourself urn before the Chief Constable, 6kay?
B Yes, Sir, yes, understood.
A Now you er fufly understand that, ho112 you?
B Yes, Sir, indeed, yeah (example from Thomas, 1988, p. 28).
Neither o/car nor don't you function as hedges in this exchange. They are certainly not
ways of signalling uncertainty or tentativeness, nor are they politeness devices (Brown and
Levinson, 1978, 1987). They serve, as Thomas points out (Thomas, 1988, p. 27), to ‘force
feedback when it is not forthcoming’, and as such they strengthen the negative illocutionary
force of a ‘face attack act’ (see Austin, 1987, 1988).
Cheshire (1982) documents the use of non-standard tag forms such as in I and in’t in
this challenging aggressive function in the speech of working-class adolescents. The speakers
assume a psychological advantage over the addressees, using the tag to intensify the force
of a negative speech act.
‘Jenny: Are you staying here?
Cotin: No, he’s going camping.
Roger: No I’m going, mate. in I? . . .
The effect of Roger’s tag question . . . was (intentionaiiy) to make me feel that I had asked a foolish
question, and the general impression was one of aggression. I did not know the answer to his question:
in fact I had been trying to obtain the answer from him’ (Cheshire, 1982. p. 165; see also Cheshire, 1981,
pp. 375-376).
Tags which serve this coercive or challenging function are properly analysed as intensifiers
or boosters, not hedges. They are often, as Cameron et al. (1988) state, ‘highly assertive
strategies for coercing agreement’ rather than attenuators of illocutionary force. Hence
they should be excluded from any analysis which is concerned to compare the number of
hedges used by women and men.

2.1.2. I think. rth~nk is another of the linguistic forms identified as a hedge by Lakoff
which has been blindly counted by most researchers comparing women’s and men’s
usage.3 Yet the function of f think varies demonstrably with the intonation contour it
carries as well as its syntactic position in an utterance (Holmes, 1985). Again a couple of
examples must suffice. In (4) I think is pronounced with the fall-rise intonation characteristic
of English epistemic modal expressions which express uncertainty and tentativeness (Coates,
1983). The child is examining a rather unclear photograph and expressing a tentative opinion
about what it represents.
(4) Context: child in classroom discussion.
it’s got some writing on it I t&k///
In (5), by contrast, the speaker is in no doubt at all about the proposition she is asserting;
she uses ~th~nk to add weight to the statement rather than to hedge its iilocutionary force.
I think is in initial position and think gets level stress, both means of expressing emphasis
and confidence.
(5) Context: statusful interviewee on TV.
I think that’s absolutely right//
Analyses of linguistic forms which ignore formal variation of this kind will inevitably
provide inaccurate information. A form’s lexical shape alone does not provide sufficient
information to identify its function. Hence analyses which treat all tags or instances of
i think as hedges are misleading. And, of course, the same point applies to other pragmatic
particles.
188 JANET HOLMES

2.2. Identifying the relevant functions

The function of a pragmatic particle within the discourse and context of situation in
which it occurs is thus a crucial factor in identifying and analysing it accurately. Several
of the particles I have analysed have at least two functions which contrast rather dramatically
with each other in some way. I will illustrate with three which are usually assumed to be
hedges: tag questions, I think and you know, and a form which is generally treated simply
as an intensifier, of course.

2.2.1. Tags and I think. In general, and in the vast majority of examples in my data,
tag questions serve an attenuating function (Holmes, 1984b). However, as illustrated in
(3) above, the effect of a tag at the end of an uncontentious statement in an ‘unequal
encounter’ is very different from its function in a casual chat between friends. Indeed it
is theoreticalty possible that (disregarding tone of voice and paralinguistic cues) the ‘same’
tag form could serve totally different functions in different contexts:
(6) Constructed example.
so you dropped her at the station did >cw
As part of an interrogation the tag could express a disbelieving chalienge to the addressee’s
truthfulness. As part of a ‘phatic exchange’ it could serve a facilitative function, providing
a topic and an easy speaking turn to the addressee (Holmes, 1984b).
The challenge in examples like (3) and (6) is addressee-oriented, used as an attack by
the speaker, who is often in a more powerful role, and aimed at eliciting an admission
or acknowledgement from the less powerful addressee. Challenges can occur in ‘equal
encounters’ too, of course, as (7) illustrates:
(7) Context: a heated argument between flat-mates; the addressee has been criticising
a singer the speaker admires who is currently singing a song on the tape-recorder which
is playing.
you couldn’t sing this could >ou
Form alone, then, though it is an important first stage in analysis, is rarely a sufficient
basis for categorisation. It is important, as a second stage, to identify a range of functions
of pragmatic particles, which must be distinguished if any comparison of women’s and
men’s forms is to be meaningful. An analysis which conflated coercive and facilitative tags,
for instance, would scarceIy provide any useful insights on women’s use of language
compared to men’s. J think in final position with falling intonation may serve as a softener
following a directive as exemplified in (8) or it may express genuine uncertainty, as in (9).
(8) Context: teacher to pupil.
you’ve got that wrong It )1‘mk
(9) Context: eIderly man recounting past experience to friends.
it’d be about two o’clock It x. Ink
In (9) the speaker signals his uncertainty about the precise time by his use of I think.
His memory may not be perfect on this point, he indicates. In (8), by contrast, the teacher
is in no doubt that the pupil’s answer is wrong. 1 think acts as a softener or negative
politeness marker (Brown and Levinson, 1978), expressing primarily affective meaning.
And both these functions, which I have labelled TENTATIVE, contrast with the function
 HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN WOMEN’S AND MEN’S SPEECH ls9

of I think in (5) where it is used in its DELIBERATIVE function (Holmes, 1985). Analyses
which conflate these meanings miss important information and present a misleading picture
of women’s usage.
The same point can be made for each of the pragmatic particles being examined. Their
functions are complex and analyses based on simpie counts of these forms wiI1 provide
a misleading account of women’s and men’s linguistic behaviour.

2.2.2. You know. You know was also included in Lakoff’s list of hedges and it too has
been mindlessly counted by researchers bent on comparing women’s and men’s usage of
such forms. An analysis of the form and functions of you know in a range of contexts
reveals that you know is, like tags and I think, a complex and sophisticated pragmatic
particle (Holmes, 1986). It may act as a turn-yielding device, as a Iinguistic imprecision
signal, as an appeal to the listener for reassuring feedback, or as a signal that the speaker
attributes understanding to the listener.’
In analysing over 200 instances of you know in context it seemed to me that the various
functions identified could be categorized into two broad groups: one category of functions
in which you know expressed the speaker’s confidence or certainty, the other reflecting
uncertainty of various kinds (Holmes, 1986). In the first category there were instances where
you know expresses the speaker’s confidence concerning the addressee’s relevant background
knowledge and experience, attitudes and anticipated response. In this category, too, belong
instances of you know where it serves an emphatic function to reassure the addressee of
the validity of the proposition. Examples (IO) and (1 I) can serve as illustrations.
(10) Context: radio interviewee describing past experience.
and that way we’d get rid of exploitation of man by man all that stuff/
you &tow/ you’ve heard it before//
(II) Context: young woman joking to neighbour in presence of flat-mates.
I’m the boss around here you +&now

In the second category there are instances of you know expressing both addressee-oriented
uncertainty and message-oriented uncertainty. The former relates to the speaker’s
uncertainty concerning the addressee’s attitudes or likely response in the interaction; the
latter reflects uncertainty regarding the linguistic encoding of the message. Examples (12)
and (13) ihustrate these functions.
(12) Context: young woman to close friend.
and it was quite //well it was it was all very embarrassing you inow
(13) Context: young man requesting clarification of previous speaker, his flat-mate.
better/ entertainment product or better/ you ,&zow/ music musicians
Hence, like I think and the tag question, you know may be used either as a hedge or
as an intensifier (or booster). An analysis of women’s and men’s usage which treated al1
instances as hedges would clearly be unheIpfu1.

2.23. Of course. Like other pragmatic particles, ofcourse is formally varied. It may
occur in a range of syntactic positions and it may be pronounced in a variety of ways,
190 JANET HOLMES

with some correlation between intonation and function (Holmes, I988a). Unlike the
pragmatic particles discussed above, however, of course is never used to express uncertainty
or imprecision. Its EPISTEMIC MODAL meaning is unambiguously to express certainty and
to assert a proposition with confidence. It is not a hedge, then, in the sense in which Robin
Lakoff uses the term, but rather a ‘booster’ (Hotmes, 1983, f984c) or intensifier. As far
as I am aware my analysis of of course in New Zealand speech is the only detailed
investigation of the distribution of this particle for gender, though Preisler (1986) includes
it in the global count of particles in his analysis. Since Lakoff claims that women ‘speak
in italics’ (Lakoff, 1975, p. 56) and use emphatic particles to achieve this effect, ofcourse
is, in principle, as deserving of attention as other pragmatic particles she identifies. The
fact that it has not been included in analyses investigating her claims about women’s
language underlines the arbitrary nature of the features selected for attention by
researchers-a point I will return to below.
Though of course is consistently emphatic in effect, it appears to signal different types
of meaning depending on its context. Firstly, its function may be primarily and
predominantly simply to emphasise the proposition being asserted (BOOSTER). Example
(14) illustrates this usage. The ! is used to indicate the step up in pitch and falling tone
on course which typically mark this function.
(14) Context: Interviewee A to interviewer B in A’s office.
A. no I I I don’t believe (laugh) that / / competition was essential / of !course it’s essential/
I wouldn’t go out and play tennis if I didn’t want to win the game
Alternatively, the primary function of of course may be affective and in this case it may
be used to express a socially distancing IMPERSONAL meaning or a socially solidary
CONFIDENTIAL meaning (Holmes, 1988af.j
IMPERSONAL of course is a marker of meta-knowledge about accepted ‘consensual
truths’ or undisputed ‘generally shared knowledge’, attitudes or beliefs (see Schiffrin, 1987,
pp. 278-279 on you know). It could be glossed ‘as is common knowledge’ or ‘as everyone
knows’, and tends to occur medially or finally, pronounced with fafling intonation as (IS)
illustrates.
(15) Context: male radio interviewee discussing Watergate.
they were all telling lies of c\our.se// which meant the issue was even more confused
The speaker signals with the use of of course that he assumes the facts associated with
Watergate are common knowledge.
CONFIDENTIAL of couae also signals the status of knowIedge, or beliefs as shared
by the speaker and hearer, but the assumed knowledge or beliefs are personal and specific
to a particular social network. The assumptions are based on previous contact, shared
information and membership of an in-group. The information or attitudes referred to are
often introduced as an ‘aside’ in a narrative, with ofcourse functioning to signal the status
of the proposition as mutual pre-existing knowledge.
CONFIDENTIAL of course may be glossed ‘as you know on the basis of information
or experience we have shared’ or ‘as you might deduce, given our shared attitudes’. In
this meaning it generally precedes and is part of the same tone unit as the proposition.
Example (16) illustrates its use to refer to previously imparted personal information.
 HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN WOMEN’S AND MEN’S SPEECH 191

(16) Context: woman recounting past experience to daughter in the home.

he said well now I c/ I can’t do it before Christmas// but ofcourse this was about a fortnight
before Christmas anyway/ and he said. . . .
The interpersonal effects of IMPERSONAL and CONFIDENTIAL ofcourse are quite
different. The former, expressing negative politeness, is socially distancing, while the latter
expresses positive politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1978) and solidarity. An analysis which
conflated the two effects would risk overlooking a potentially important contrast.
I have illustrated in this section that the precise meaning of a pragmatic particie may
differ quite markedIy according to the discourse and social context in which it occurs. It
is essential to examine every form in context before assigning it to a category such as hedge
or booster. The ‘same’ form may function as either in different contexts. In its confidence-
expressing functions you know is positively polite; in its attenuating functions it is a negative
politeness device. IMPERSONAL of cowsc expresses negative politeness,
CONFIDENTIAL of course expresses positive politeness.
Nor is it possible to assume that boosters will generally express positive poiiteness and
hedges negative politeness (as Brown notes 1980, p. 120). The positive or negative politeness
effect of a pragmatic particle will depend on the illocutionary force of the speech act it
modifies: attenuating a directive will have a different effect from mitigating praise; and
boosting an offensive comment will never be perceived as in any way polite.

3. Methodology
Turning now to the second problem with post-Lakoff language and gender research,
there are a number of major weaknesses in the methodology used to compare women’s
and men’s usage. I have discussed the problem of identifying the forms to be counted.
Another probIem involves selecting an appropriate universe of discourse for analysis and
ensuring that the language samples from each sex are carefully matched

3.1. Contextual factors and discourse type

3.1.1. Medium and formality. In her discussion of women’s language forms, Lakoff
(1973, 1975) suggested that they were far more likely to occur in spoken than in written
contexts ‘or at least in highly informal style’ (Lakoff, 197.5,p. 59). Subsequent investigations
have confirmed this claim for many of the particular pragmatic particles she identified,
though with some qualifications: e.g. you know is very decidedly most frequent in relaxed
casual spoken interaction (Hotmes, 1986, p. 121, as are sort of and kind of(HoImes, 19885);
of course, on the other hand, is more frequent in writing than most particIes, but even
of course occurs more than three times as often in speech as in writing, and, like
DELIBERATIVE I think, it is most frequent in semi-formal speech contexts such as
interviews (Holmes, 1985, 1988a).

3.1.2. Sex of addressee. In addition to the medium of interaction and the formaIity
of the context the sex of the addressee appears to be a relevant factor in accounting for
the frequency of pragmatic particles in women’s and men’s speech (e.g. Crosby and Nyquist,
1977; Brouwer et al., 1979; McMillan et al., 1977; Brown, 1980; Bell, 1984; Preisler, 1986;
Holmes, 1986, 1988b). The effects of addressee sex are far from clear, however (see BeII,
1984).
192 JANET HOLMES

Brouwer er al. (1979) found that speakers were more polite to male addressees when
buying a railway ticket, while in a similarly ‘transactional’ interaction Crosby and Nyquist
(1977) reported a tendency for women to use more hedges to women, while male-male
transactions elicited fewest. Preisler (1986) found tags occurred more often in same-sex
groups; Brown (1980), examining politeness devices in a different language and culture,
found that both men and women used more hedges or ‘weakeners’ to women; and McMillan
et al. (1977) noted that women used more hedges when men were present in their discussion
groups. What can one make of such contradictory findings?
One of the factors which may be concealing an underlying pattern is the tendency to
lump all pragmatic particles together and label them hedges, regardless of their function
in the context of utterance. Some may be serving as negative politeness devices, others
as epistemic signals of uncertainty, and others still as solidarity signals or positive politeness
devices. An analysis which took account of function in context might well elucidate these
apparently conflicting results.
Another potentially relevant factor which may distinguish between the results from these
different studies is the type of interaction involved. It is possible to illustrate this point
more fully. There is some evidence, for instance, that people use more of those particles
which are particularly associated with casual speech (such as you know, sort of, and tag
questions) in relaxed interaction with addressees of the same sex (Hiller, 1985; Holmes,
1986; Coates, 1988). In more formal contexts, on the other hand (i.e. carefully matched
private interviews), it was found that sort OJ at least, was addressed more frequently to
women interviewers than to men (Holmes, 1988b). This suggests that the formality of the
interaction and the relative sex of the participants may interact in determining the frequency
of particular pragmatic particles. In casual contexts, same-sex interaction yields higher
frequencies. In more formal interactions between people who do not know each other well,
women listeners appear to elicit more such forms from their fellow participants.
It is likely that the unifying underlying factor is the extent to which participants relax
in a situation. Thus the success of a skilled interviewer in encouraging the interviewee to
relax is likely to be more important in accounting for the frequency of forms such as you
know and sort ofthan the sex of the interviewer in relation to the interviewee. A relaxed
interview, whether conducted by a male of female interviewer, will be characterised by
a high proportion of such forms. As what James (1983, p. 202) calls ‘overt appeals to social
like-ness between participants’, particles such as sort of are ideal for expressing the speaker’s
wish to reduce social distance in response to an encouraging and interested conversational
partner. Nevertheless the fact that more such forms occurred with women interviewers is
suggestive. It may reflect the fact that, in general, women are more likely than men to
make good interviewers-an interpretation which would be consistent with a range of
research which shows that women are more sympathetic and responsive listeners than men.
Women are described as good listeners (Fishman, 1983), as interactively facilitative and
positive politeness-oriented participants (Edelsky, 1981; Holmes, 1984a, 1986, 1988b;
Thorne et al., 1983), and as ‘affiliative’ and co-operative conversational partners (Cameron,
1985; Coates, 1987, 1988; Smith, 1985). The tendency to use a high proportion of instances
of sort of in addressing them, is consistent with this earlier evidence. It is possible that
it represents the speaker’s response to the more relaxed context women create as listeners.
This discussion illustrates the complexities involved in analysing the distribution of
pragmatic particles, and, in particular, the fact that an adequate explanation for a particular
 HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN WOMEN’S AND &MEN’S SPEECH 193

distribution will involve consideration of a range of interacting variables, including the

function the particles are serving in the context of utterance. It also makes clear that the
sex of the addressee needs to be taken into account in planning research in this area.

3.1.3. Conversational role. The discussion of the sex of the addressee has introduced
already the relevance of the relative roles of participants in accounting for variation in
the use of pragmatic particles. There is a little research looking at the influence of this
factor on the use of tag questions where it appears to be a significant contributor to the
proportion used.
A number of studies have noted that tag questions tend to occur more frequently in
the speech of those who have some kind of responsibility for the success of an interaction
(Johnson, 1980, p. 72; Holmes, 1984b; Cameron et al., 1988). In the professional meetings
which Johnson (1980) analysed, the leader used 70% of all the facilitative questions. In
a corpus of formal and informal speech (Holmes, 1984b), I found that two-thirds of all
the tag questions used by men and three-quarters of those used by women were produced
by those in such a role-teachers in the classroom, interviewers in TV interviews, or the
hosts at a dinner party. Cameron et al. (1988), using broadcast data, examined the number
of different types of tag questions used by those in the ‘powerful’ as opposed to the
‘powerless’ roles in unequal encounters. They found that the distribution of types of tag
very clearly reflected the roles of the participants, so that, regardless of sex, ‘powerful’
participants used more of the facilitative tags, while ‘powerless’ participants used twice
as many ‘modal (i.e. epistemic modal) tags’ as ‘powerful’ contributors.6 Finally, Preisler
(1986, p. 165) found that in some of the small discussion groups the analysed tags tended
to be used by those who adopted a facilitative (‘socio-emotional’) role.
There is an obvious explanation for the correlation between the leadership of facilitator
role and a high proportion of tag questions. Tag questions are ways of encouraging
contributions to the discourse from other participants, and that is the aim of a good
interviewer or teacher or host. It is not so obvious, however, that the frequency of other
pragmatic particles, such as you know, you see, and sort ofwill correlate with the speaker’s
role in an interaction. This is another area, then, where further research is needed, with
conversational role a factor to be carefully examined.

3.1.4. Discourse type. A number of researchers have commented that within informal
contexts certain ‘types of talk’ tend to correlate with higher frequencies of particular
pragmatic particles. Aijmer (1984, p. 123), for instance, notes that sort of is common in
‘personal narrative in which a person wants to convey an experience, feelings or an attitude’.
In a study of you know, I found that it seemed
to occur most frequently in sections of relatively sustained narrative or accounts of the speaker’s personal
experiences intended to amuse, amaze, or, at least, retain the interest of the addressee. You know occurs
much less often in sections of discussion, argument, planning or ‘phatic’ talk (Holmes, 1986, p. 15).
In general, as Coates (1987, 1988) notes in her corpuses of relaxed speech between same-
sex peers, forms which express epistemic modality (and this includes some uses of sort of
and you know) tend to rise in frequency in passages of evaluative comment during the
discussion of personal topics. Coates comments that there was a clear contrast in the
women’s talk she taped between passages of narrative, which were ‘relatively modal-free’,
compared to passages of evaluative discussion which were ‘highly modalized’ (Coates, 1987,
p. 122).
194 JANET HOLMES

A particularly dramatic demonstration of the effect of discourse or ‘activity type’

(Levinson, 1979) on the frequency of a pragmatic particle is provided by a comparative
analysis of sort of in different contexts (Holmes, 1988b). The frequency of occurrence of
sort ofin a corpus which involved a picture description task (Meyerhoff, 1986), was over
twice that in Coates’ corpus of relaxed conversation between peers, a context in which
one would have expected the highest frequencies of such a particle. The explanation for
this finding lies in an analysis of the function or meaning of sort of in different contexts
(see Holmes, 1988b). Descriptive tasks of the kind used in Meyerhoff’s study encourage
speakers to use particles signalling approximation and imprecision (see also Swacker, 1975).
Not surprisingly, then, the meaning of sort of in Meyerhoff’s data was almost entirely
EPISTEMIC (i.e. it was predominantly an imprecision signal), as opposed to AFFECTIVE
(i.e. a solidarity signal).
Hence, a referentially oriented task may elicit a very high proportion of pragmatic
particles, but they will tend to be used for a rather specific purpose. They will not be used,
as pragmatic particles frequently are, primarily to ‘regulate and facilitate the interaction
between speaker and listener by appealing to common ground, shared experiences or
previous context’ (Aijmer, 1984, p. 127); rather they will be used to convey epistemic
meanings such as degrees of certainty, approximation and imprecision.
This brief review of some of the relevant factors in analysing the distribution of pragmatic
particles makes it clear that any analysis of the use of these forms by women and men
must also take account of factors such as the formality of the context, the sex of the
addressee, the conversational roles of the participants, and the type of discourse in which
they are engaged. The function of particular forms may well vary radically in different
contexts. Hence, it is important to locate forms in their contexts of utterance if one wishes
to provide an adequate account of any patterns observed. Unless the contexts in which
data have been collected are carefully controlled and described, one can never be confident
that significant differences in women’s and men’s use of pragmatic particles are not
attributable to factors the research has overlooked.

3.2, Q~ffnti~cution
A major problem which bedevils a great deal of the research on language and gender
is the question of how to quantify the data. This involves two related issues:
(i) providing a valid data base;
(ii) operationalising the relationship between form and function.

3.2.1. Providing a valid data base. Most of the research on language and gender
compares the number of forms used by men with the number used by women in the same
contexts during a particular period of time (Dubois and Crouch, 1975; Crosby and Nyquist,
1977; McMillan et al., 1977; Baumann, 1979; Hartman, 1979; Johnson, 1980; Preisler,
1986; Cameron ef al., 1988). In providing this information most of these researchers control
for the number of female and male contributors to the talk, some control for the role and
statuses of participants (e.g. Crosby and Nyquist, 1977; Preisler, 1986; Cameron ef al.,
1988; Coates, 1988), but information on the total amount of speech contributed by each
sex is rarely supplied.’ The number of instances of a particular form produced by women
and men is being compared, therefore, without any information on how it relates to the
total amount of speech coliected from each sex. Such information is meaningless.
The information, for instance, that in the discussion following the papers at a conference
 HEDGESANDBOOSTERSIN WOMEN'SANDMEN'SSPEECH 195

men used 33 tag questions and women used none (Dubois and Crouch, 1975) may simply
reflect the fact that women contributed very little to the discussion. There is abundant
evidence that in formal mixed-sex contexts women do not speak as often or for as long
as men (e.g. Swacker, 1979; Eakins and Eakins, 1979; Edelsky, 1981) and some of it relates
quite specifically to the conference context (Swacker, 1979; HoImes, 1988c). If men dominate
the available talking time then it is scarcely surprising if they produce more of any linguistic
form than do women in the same time.
Equal opportunity to contribute to the talk is not adequate as a controlling factor when
one is making claims about which sex uses a particular form most frequently. in order
to control for this variable and present meaningful comparisons, researchers must either
compare the pragmatic particles which occur in the same amount of talk from women and
men (see Holmes, 1984a, 1985, 1986) or they must compute the forms as a proportion
of the total talk produced by each sex (see Preisler, 1986; Holmes, 1988b).

3.2.2. Measuring the expression of a speech function. As I pointed out at the beginning
of this paper, Lakoff’s claim was not, as many have interpreted it, that women used more
instances from a particular list of linguistic forms than men; nor even that women used
more hedges than men. It was that women express themselves tentatively without warrant
or justification more often than men. Where does one begin identifying the linguistic means
by which this speech function is expressed, let alone decide in which cases the usage was
‘warranted’ or ‘justified’?
The problem is by no means a trivial one and I have discussed it in detail elsewhere
(Holmes, 1984a). The nub of the issue is how to establish ‘the total universe of potential
occurrences’ of a particular linguistic variable when one is dealing with lexical and pragmatic
entities rather than phonological and grammatical ones (see Lavandera, 1978; Labov, 1978;
Shuy, 1978; Dines, 1980; Cheshire, 1987). Most analysts ignore the problem and assume
one can simply sum different forms regardless of their differences in form, meaning and
potential of occurrence. Preisler’s (1986) approach is more sophisticated:
The method of analysis, far from consisting in simple frequency counts, measures the frequency of a
tentativen~s signal as a percentage of all the speaker’s instances of the linguistic or ~haviora~ enviro~ent
in which the occurrence of rhe tentativeness signal would have been possible (p. 283).
Not surprisingly, however, there are still problems and questions to be resolved. What,
for instance, is the potential of occurrence of a linguistic tentativeness signal such as sort
of, or I mean, or really. This example from my own corpus suggests the answer is by no
means straightforward.
(17) Context: young man to friends in his home.

and literally sort of quite out of phase/ and /sort of doing things// and eventualy sort
of ends up circling two sort of skips down the page//
Since one utterance may clearly include several instances of the same form, any analysis
in terms of potential of occurrence is problematic. Not only may such items occur more
than once in the same utterance, there is also the probiem that we do not yet have adequate
information on their potential functional equivalence in different contexts. Moreover,
different pragmatic particles (or ‘tentativeness signals’ as Preisler calls them) may co-occur,
a point he recognises and on which he provides some very valuable information, but
obviously we do not yet know enough about the co-occurrence restrictions to establish
the potential of co-occurrence of particular items. These problems still await resolution.*
And the ideal of a complete taxonomy of the lingusitic devices available to express particular
1% JANET HOL!vlES

speech functions is even farther away. Yet this must be the goal of an adequate sociolinguistic
theory in this area.

4. Distribution of forms
I will turn now to a description of the distribution of a number of pragmatic particles
in women’s and men’s speech. Using a variety of speech corpuses, carefully matched in
each case for the quantity of female and male speech produced, and for the number of
women and men contributors, it was possible to examine the functions and frequencies
of a number of linguistic forms. The data cover a range of contexts, from informal speech
collected in relaxed situations in people’s homes, through semi-formal private interviews,
to formal public broadcast interview data. The people contributing are predominantly
middle-class, well-educated native speakers of English ranging in age from school-children
to people in their sixties.

4.1. Tag questions

As outlined in Sections 2.1.1. and 2.2.1.) tag questions may take a variety of forms and
serve a range of functions: they may express uncertainty, requesting confirmation of the
proposition from the addressee (EPISTEMIC MODAL meaning); they may act as positive
politeness devices, providing an opportunity for the addressee to contribute to the
conversation (FACILITATIVE); they may act as negative politeness devices, reducing the force
of a directive or criticism (SO~ENING); or (as discussed above) they may serve as challenging
strategies, forcing a reluctant addressee to take a speaking turn or aggressively intensifying
the force of a negative speech act (CHALLENGING). The first category expresses content-
oriented modal meaning; the latter three express addressee-oriented affective meaning. It
is noteworthy that nowhere does one find the type of hedge Lakoff described-the
‘illegitimate’ tag which serves as ‘an apology for making an assertion at all’ (Lakoff, 1975,
p. 54). But then interpreting the function of tags is a subjective business and is doubtless
as vulnerable to the dangers of stereotyping and pre-conceived perceptions (or the ‘culturally
conditioned epistemological system of the researcher’, as Tannen (1986, p. 146) describes
it) as other areas of women’s behaviour (see Holmes, 1984a, pp. 168-171; Cameron, 1985,
pp. 53-56).
In any particular instance a tag may simultaneously serve more than one of these
functions, as I have pointed out and exemplified in an earlier study (Holmes, 1984b).
However, it is frequently possible, by paying attention to the situational context in which
the form is produced, and the type of speech act which it modifies, to identify a primary
function or meaning and assign each tag to one of the categories described. Table 1 illustrates
the distribution of tags according to these categories in my corpus of female and male speech.
It shows that women use significantly more FACILITATIVE or invitational tags than men
do, while men use more tags requesting reassurance or confirmation of the validity of their
propositions. A study by Cameron et al. (1988), using data from the London Survey of
English Usage (SEU), also indentified this pattern of women using more FACILITATIVE than
EPISTEMIC modal tags. And if one interprets Hiller’s category of ‘expressive’ tags as in some
respects equivalent to FACILITATIVE tags, her analysis, which also uses SEU data, reports
the same pattern.9 Indeed, all this evidence is consistent with the now well-documented
tendency for women to adopt a supportive and facilitative role in conversation (discussed
in Section 3.1.2. above).
Unlike the New Zealand men, the men in the British English corpus used more tags overall
 HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN WOMEN’S AND MEN’S SPEECH 197

Table 1. Distribution of tag questions by function and sex of speaker

Female Male
No.
Function of tag (2; (70)

EPISTEMIC MODAL 27
& (57)
AFFECTIVE
Facilitative p = 0.001
$1 d:,
Softening 3
0) G,
ChaIlenging
r:,
Total 59 47

than women, and they also used more in the FACILITATIVE function than the New Zealand
men. This may reflect a dialect difference but it may equally reflect the different contexts
of data collection. The New Zealand data come from a much wider range of contexts than
the SEU data analysed by Hiller (1985) and Cameron et al. (1988). Moreover, Cameron
et al. comment that conversational role was a likely influence on their findings, since they
suggest some of the men ‘had either consciously or unconsciously taken on the role of
conversational “facilitator” ’ (Cameron et al., 1988; p. 18) (and this presumably could
account for Hiller’s similar findings which are also based on an SEU corpus).
Overall, however, the results are reassuringly consistent. Earlier studies of the distribution
of tag questions in women’s and men’s speech had been bewilderingly contradictory. Dubois
and Crouch (1975), for instance, report that American academic men used more tags than
academic women at a conference, while McMillan et al. (1977) found that in task-oriented
discussions between students just the reverse was true. Lapadat and Seesahai (1977) collected
informal data which showed men used twice as many tags as women, while the informal
conversations analysed by Fishman (1980) revealed that women used almost three times
as many tags as men. Given the methodological naivete of much of this research, it is hardly
surprising that the resufts reported were difficult to interpret and are apparently
contradictory. Different contexts and roles were involved and there were also a number
of uncontrolled and unconsidered factors, including the amount of data being compared
from each sex and the distribution of different functions of tag questions between the sexes.
More recent studies, which take account not just of the form but also of the function of
tags, all challenge Lakoff’s claims and confirm the finding that while the relative number
of tags used by men and women may vary in different contexts and dialects, men use tags
more often than women do to express uncertainty and ask for confirmation, while women
use them more often than men in their facilitative positive politeness function.

4.2. Sort of
While the function of the pragmatic particles sort of and kind of0 has been described
in a variety of ways by different researchers, their overall attenuating or hedging effect
on the utterance in which they occur is generally accepted (see Holmes, 1998b). In a detailed
analysis of the functions of sort of, two broad functions were identified: firstly an
EPISTEMIC MODAL meaning in which sort of functions as an approximation or
imprecision signal, illustrated in (18); and secondly an AFFECTIVE or interpersonal meaning
in which it functions to reduce social distance and expresses the speaker’s desire for a relaxed
relationship with the addressee, as exemplified in (19).
198 JANET HOLMES

(18) Context: male student to male interviewer in description task.

he’s got a sorr of afskirty thing on I suppose you’d call it
(19) Context: one neighbour to another.
do you think I could sort of come and watch a programme on your TV tonight/ it’s only
short//
In the New Zealand corpus there was a tendency for sort ofin its AFFECTIVE function
to characterise casual interaction, while in its EPISTEMIC function, as mentioned above, it
was the most frequent pre-NP hedge used in a picture description task (Meyerhoff, 1986;
Holmes, 1988b). This particle illustrates well the fact that there may be significant
correlations between particular pragmatic particles and specific types of discourse or activity
types.
-4 comparison of the distribution of sort of by the sex of the speaker in different contexts
(Holmes, 1988b) suggests, as do the tag data, that Lakoff’s claims regarding women’s
linguistic usage need some modification. Especially in informal speech, she suggested,
compared to men women are likely to use more hedges, such as sort ox expressing
uncertainty. The facts appear to be rather different. Though New Zealand women used
proportionately more instances of sort ofthan New Zealand men in semi-formal interviews,
there was no significant difference in the usage of women and men in the informal speech
situations Lakoff identified as crucial (Holmes, 1988b). Moreover, in task-oriented
interviews it was the men who used the most instances of sort of conveying imprecision
or uncertainty (Meyerhoff, 1986).

Table 2. Distribution of sort of by function and sex of speaker

Female Male
NO.
Function of sort of ml
EPISTEMIC MODAL meaning

AFFECTIVE meaning
(353, c3:44)
Ambiguous
(2b!8, (15.2)
Total 53 46

Table 2 presents an analysis of the distribution of sort of in its EPISTEMIC vs

AFFECTIVE meaning in my New Zealand corpus. Both women and men appear to use
sort ofmost often to express EPISTEMIC rather than AFFECTIVE meaning, but the little
evidence there is of favoured meanings between the sexes suggests that, as in other research
comparing female and male interaction, women tend to emphasize the interpersonal use
of particles such as sort of more than men do.
Finally, as discussed in Section 3.1.2., there is a clear pattern in semi-formal private
interview contexts that sort ofis addressed more often to women than to men, supporting
earlier research that identified the addressee as an important variable accounting for
linguistic usage. As listeners it is possible that women create a more relaxed atmosphere
than men and that this is reflected in their interlocuters’ speech style. Occurrences of sort
ofcan certainly be treated as evidence of a more relaxed situation. It occurred three times
as frequently in informal as opposed to formal interactions (Holmes, 1987).
 HEDGES AND BOOSTERS IN WOMEN’S AND tMEN’S SPEECH 199

4.3. You know

You know is also a pragmatic particle which occurs considerably more frequently in
informal interaction than in formal contexts. Only 8% of the occurrences in my data were
collected from formal speech contexts.
In Section 2.2.2. two basic contrasting functions of you krrow were described and
illustrated: one in which you know expresses the speaker’s confidence or certainty in the
proposition being asserted, the other reflecting uncertainty of.various kinds.” Using these
two broad categories, Table 3 summarizes the distribution of different functions of you
know in New Zealand women’s and men’s speech.

TabIc 3. Distribution of JQU know by function and sex of speaker

Male
No.
Function of you knmv (%f

Expressing confidence 38
WI (36)
E~p~ssing uncertainty 32 68
(46) (641
Totaf 69 106

Once again the distribution of this pragmatic particle challenges Lakoff’s claims about
hedges. Overall, in a corpus of speech matched in quantity and discourse type, the men
used 20% more instances of _YOL( know than the women did (106 YS69). Moreover, the
different functions of_~otr know are differently distributed in women’s and men’s speech,
and once again the distribution contradicts rather than confirms Lakoff’s predictions.
Overal the men use you ~~~~ sig~i~cantl~ more often to convey uncertai~ty~ expressing
a mit~gati~g negative politeness function, than they do to express confidence (64 tts 36%),
while there is no significant difference in the proportion of the two functions in women’s
usage. The between-sex contrast also challenges Lakoff’s hypothesis concerning women’s
usage. Table 3 shows quite clearly that proportionately women use you know to express
confidence more often than men do (54 vs 36%), while men use it more often than women
to express uncertainty (64 v.s 46olo).
As with the tag question, and sort oA a careful analysis of the form and functions of
the presumed hedge, you know, as we11as an examination of its distribution in women’s
and men’s speech reveals that it is considerably more complex in its use than was at first
apparent.

4.4. I think
The form f ~%tipr!~
is included in Lakoff’s fist of hedges alongside soft of5 you know,
and tag questions, and like them it proves on further analysis to be compiex in form,
function, and distribution (Holmes, 1985).
As described in Section 2.2.1, I think may express two distinct and contrasting functions:
TENTATIVE I think may be used to express uncertainty (epistemic modal meaning), or
as a softener expressing politeness (affective meaning], while DELIBERATIVE I think expresses
certainty (epistemic modal meaning) and reassurance {affective meaning). While there are
prosodic and syntactic features (see Section 2. I.2 and Holmes, lQg5) which correlate to
some extent with these contrasting functions, there are also cases where formal features
200 JANET HOLlMES

alone are insufficient for a definitive classification. As with other particles, these cases
require careful consideration of the context of utterance, including such features as the
relationship between the participants, the topic, and the formality of the interaction.

Table 4 shows that while the overall frequency of I think in women’s and men’s speech
is not very different, there is a clear contrast in the functional distribution between the
sexes. Women use DELIBERATIVE I think more frequently than they use TENTATIVE I
think (62 vs 31% respectively), while the reverse is true for the men. Men use TENTATIVE
I think more frequently than DELIBERATIVE I think (59 vs 36% respectively).
Moreover, Table 4 also makes clear that women use I think significantly more frequently
in its DELIBERATIVE function than men do, thus refuting Lakoff’s claim that women use
I think as an uncertainty marker more often than men do. So when one compares the
distribution of I think in a corpus of women’s and men’s speech which is matched for
quantity and context, there is no support for Lakoff’s claims about women’s language.
Indeed the evidence directly refutes her preditions, suggesting that, at least in my corpus,
women use language considerably more assertively and confidently than Lakoff allows for.

Table 4. Distribution of I fhink by function and sex of speaker

Female Male

Function of I think

DELIBERATIVE
(6YI) (3%)
p = 0.031
TENTATIVE (18) (33)
(31) (58.9)
p = 0.034
Unclassifiable
(6Y9) (5?4)
Total 58 56

4.5. Of course
Of course is a very different pragmatic particle from the others I have examined. It is
least frequent, most formal and its pragmatic effect is different too. With only 50 instances
in a 60,000 corpus, of course is not a frequently occurring particle and, unlike those
previously discussed, it tends to occur in more formal contexts (Holmes, 1988a).
Functionally, too, it contrasts with the pragmatic particles examined above in that ofcourse
consistently functions to express certainty and to intensify the strength of the speech act
in which it occurs.
Examining its distribution in women’s and men’s speech, Table 5 shows that the number
of instances of this particle used by New Zealand women and men is almost exactly the
same, a pattern which once again challenges Lakoff’s suggestions which predicted that
women would use more intensifiers than men.
The three types of meaning which of course expresses in my corpus (BOOSTER,
IMPERSONAL and CONFIDENTIAL) are described and exemplified in Section 2.2.3.,
and I have discussed elsewhere in more detail the sophisticated and manipulative ways in
which speakers use this pragmatic particle (Holmes, 1988a). It is clear from Table 5 that
an analysis by function reduces the numbers to a level where generalisations cannot be
 HEDGESANDBOOSTERSIN WOMEN'SANDMEN'SSPEECH 201

Table 5. Distribution of of courseby function and sex of speaker

Female k!ale
No. No.
Function of of course (Q) WI

BOOSTER -
G,
IMPERSONAL
(59, c:;t,
CONFIDENTIAL
(263, (14-0
Total 26 24

regarded as more than suggestive. Nevertheless it is interesting to note that, contrary to

Lakoff’s predictions, the only examples of of course used as a booster were produced by
men, and that women tend to use it most often in its impersonal meaning, as a signal of
formality and social distance.
In New Zealand usage, then, of course contrasts with less formal particles in a variety
of ways. In British usage, by comparison, ofcourse, especiaily in its confidential function,
was more frequent in informal speech among older or less well-educated speakers, and
this meaning, with its solidarity-marking function, may be extending its domains of use
(Holmes, 1988a). It is possible that of course, like sort oJ I think and you know, will
develop into a less forma1 pragmatic particle over time and become equally frequent as
an alternative verbal filler in casual interaction.
In concluding this discussion it is worth drawing attention to the fact that there are many
other particles which, like ofcourse, may be used to increase the strength of a speech act,
yet few of them have received any attention from researchers in this area. It would be useful
for those interested in the ways women and men express communicative strategies such
as confidence and politeness to examine the distribution of a range of intensifiers in women’s
and men’s speech. Though they occur less frequently than of course, modal words and
phrases such as actually, certainty, clearly, evidently, in fact, natttrafly, needless to say,
obviously, sureb, as you (will) (no doubt) know, etc. express similar meanings and may
well be found on analysis to be as complex and interesting as the particles examined in
this paper.

5. Conciusiou
I have examined the form, function and distribution of a range of pragmatic particles
which have been suggested as features of women’s language. It is clear from the analysis
that they are complex forms with sophisticated functions. All function at the discourse-
planning level as verbal fillers (Brown, 1977), devices which facilitate the smooth flow of
the discourse by providing the speaker with planning time, or as conversational lubricants
in interaction, encouraging easy turn-taking between participants. At a more specific level
they consistently express epistemic modal meaning (or the extent of the speaker’s certainty
about a proposition), and affective meaning, or the speaker’s attitude to the addressee
in the interaction (Holmes, 1982a, 1983). It is these meanings in particular which distinguish
between different particles.
It is clear from the distributional analysis in this paper that at least in my data women
simply do not, as Lakoff claimed, use significantly more of the particles examined than
the men do. Moreover, an analysis which takes account of the function of these particles
 202 JANET HOLMES

shows that (again, contrary to Lakoff’s claims) they are frequently used by women to assert
their views with confidence, or as positive politeness devices signalting solidarity with the
addressee, rather than as devices for expressing uncertainty. Hence tags, for instance, are
used more often by men than women to express uncertainty, while women use them more
often than men in their facilitative positive politeness function. Men use both sort of and
you know to express uncertainty more often than women do while women use I rhink in
its deliberative, weight-adding function more often than men do. Finally men use of course
primarily as an intensifier or booster more often than women do. The evidence against
Lakoff’s hypotheses is overwhelming.
As interesting, however, as the distributional patterns, is the complexity that the
investigation of these forms has revealed and the future directions that it has suggested.
Future research in the area of language and gender must consistently take account of
contextual and quantitative factors if the results are to be useful. And there is good reason
to extend the scope of analyses well beyond the particIes which have preoccupied researchers
to date. While hedges, for example, have received a considerable amount of attention from
those investigating women’s interactive strategies, intensifiers or boosters have received
relatively little. Challenging tags await detailed distributional analysis, as do other forms
of what Austin (1987) has called ‘face attack acts’ in interaction between the sexes. Finally
if language and gender research is to develop satisfactorily, researchers will need to move
on from the examination of a random list of features assumed to characterize women’s
language, to the establishment of a coherent framework for identifying the linguistic devices
which together function to express particular communicative strategies (see Preisler, 1986).
The distribution of pragmatic particles described in this paper suggests that women’s
usage is remarkably consistent across a range of contexts and different pragmatic devices.
While relative power, status, role, context and type of activity must be taken into account
if we wish to be able to distinguish the influence of these factors from gender per se, the
results when these factors are considered seem remarkably consistent. And the picture of
women’s speech which emerges is far more encouraging than one which regards them as
anxiety-ridden participants in interaction, afraid to assert their views. The data analysed
in this paper reveal a pattern which is consistent with that provided by studies of other
features of conversational interaction, such as feedback and interrupting behaviour. It shows
women as confident, facilitative and supportive conversationalists. It remains to be seen
if this pattern is sustained across as yet unexplored communicative strategies.

Acknowledgemenrs--I would like to express my thanks to Allan Bell who commented helpfully on an earlier
draft of this paper. I would also like to express my appreciation to Ross Renner without whose help 1 could
not have supplied the statistical information. Finally I would like to acknowledge the hospitality of the Department
of Linguistics and Modern English Language at the University of Lancaster where I was comfortably accommodated
while I wrote this paper.

NOTES

‘See,for example,Dubois and Crouch (1975) O’Barr and Atkins (1980), Holmes (1984a, 1985, 1986). Cameron
(198% Smith (1985, ch. 7), Coates (1986). and many of the references in Section IVB of the annotated bibliography
of Thorne et al. (1983).
‘1 would like to express appreciation to Margaret Franken, Sally Garden, Gong Hua-ji, Debbie Jones and Maria
Stubbe for contribu&ing some of the tapes and transcripts used to make up the 60,000 word New Zealand corpus
used in the analysis, and to Maria Verivaki and IMargaret Walker for assistance in transcribing some of the tapes.
 HEDGES AND BOOSTERSIN WOktEN’S AND MEN’S SPEECH 203

‘As for tags, Preisler (1986) is an exception providing an analysis of I fhink which identifies functional categories
correlating with formal features which confirm those described in Holmes (1985).
“Cistman (1981). Schourup (1985) and Schiffrin (1987) also provide detailed discussions of the functions of you
know. Information on the syntactic and prosodic features ofyorr know in British English is provided by Crystal
and Davy (1975, pp. 92-93) and compared to New Zealand usage in Holmes (1986).
‘Though I have treated these as two distinct categories for the purpose of this anafysis, they may be regarded
as end-points on a continuum of mutual knowledge, distinguished by the extent to which the knowledge can
be regarded as publicly available. See Holmes (1988) for further discussion.
‘%ameron et al. (1988) categorise the tags in their data using the terms ‘modal’ and ‘facilitative’ which I
introduced in the earlier study of tag questions referred to above (Holmes, 1984b). However, they include in
their account of facilitative tags instances which they describe as assertive and challenging in function rather
than facilitative and softening. As mentioned in the section above on form and function it seems to me that
these two functions should be kept distinct. It should also be noted that i have since accepted a suggestion from
Jennifer Coates that the label ‘epistemic modal’ is more informative than simply ‘modal’.
‘Preisler’s (1986) study is again an exception. The total quantity of speech analysed from each sex is carefully
matched.
*Cheshire (1987, p. 279) argues, however, that they should not paralyse researchers and prevent progress with
thorough descriptions of ‘the syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic variation that is almost inevitably involved in
communication’.
‘Hiller’s analysis is based on the formal description provided by Quirk ef al. (1972, p. 3911, which distinguishes
two functions of tags, which she labels ‘expressive’ and ‘inexpressive’ (or ‘neutral‘), on the basis of intonation
and polarity. While I do not like the labels, there appears to be considerable overlap between Hiller’s ‘expressive’
category and what 1 have labelled as facilitative and softening tags.
‘@fhough it is possible there are dialectal preferences (Crystal and Davy, 1975, p. 99; Quirk et al., 1985, p. 598),
the two phrases appear to function as synonyms and will be treated as such here.
“Holmes (1986) provides a more detailed analysis. It shoutd aiso be noted that the New Zealand corpus used
for the analysis in Table 3 has been doubled from that used in Holmes (1987).

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