Abstract:
Male and female languages can easily show the gender difference. This paper explores changes and tendency of contemporary male and female languages from structural perspective based on R Lakoff's assumptions about features of women's language by analyzing men's and women's words in an American TV serial called Gossip Girl. In phonetic aspect, the use of question intonation with statement syntax appears often in women's speech, but also in men's. In lexical aspect, going close to men's language, women tend to use simple and general color terms, begin to use strong expletives, and keep using exaggerated and neutral adjectives. In the syntactic aspect, the frequency of using tag questions in men's and women's speeches is almost the same, and women prefer to use directive speech act forms to present a request. All in all, differences between male and female languages still exist, however, they have the tendency to share the same features.