There's a discussion here of a study into gender differences in the use of tentative communication styles, employment of various forms of hedging and disclaimers. The stereotype is that women are more prone to this sort of thing, but the study apparently found the situation to be more complex than that. I think I've noticed a tendency for women philosophers to write more tentatively than men, though of course I've noticed exceptions (nothing tentative about Susan Haack's writing, for instance, while on the other hand this very sentence by a male philosopher is rather tentative). But, of course, one tends to pay more attention to confirming data for theories one had in advance. For all I know an objective study of academic writing in philosophy would reveal that it fits the pattern described in the Palomares study, of equal tentativeness when the subject isn't inherently gendered. I hope somebody eventually does such a study.
Deborah Cameron has also written about issues like this - the reference escapes me now, although I'm sure a quick google would throw it up - where the stereotype is that men use one sort of conversational move, and women use another. But in fact, the evidence is more complex.
Posted by: Monkey | September 23, 2009 at 12:32 PM