This book challenges the age-old myth that women's talk is trivial and unimportant. Drawing on a corpus of spontaneous conversation between friends, Jennifer Coates demonstrates the richness and complexity of the language used in such talk, focusing on women's use of hedges, questions and repetition.
Acknowledgements vii
Notes on the Transcription of the Conversations x
Transcription Conventions xii
1 'This is on tape you know' 1
The origins of the book
2 'She's just a very very special person to me' 16
Talk and women's friendship
3 'We never stop talking' 44
Talk and women's friendships
4 'We talk about everything and anything' 68
An overview of the conversations
5 'D'you know what my mother did recently?' 94
Telling our stories
6 'The feminine shape ... is more melding in together' 117
The organization of friendly talk
7 'You know so I mean I probably ...' 152
Hedges and hedging
8 'It was dreadful wasn't it?' 174
Women and questions
9 'I just kept drinking and drinking and drinking' 203
Repetition and textual coherence
10 'Thank god I'm a woman' 232
The construction of differing femininities
11 'Talk's absolutely fundamental' 263
Being a friend
Appendices 287
Notes 297
Bibliography 311
Index 320
