These sociologists think that interrupting is a way of exercising power. Research shows that this isn t really the case. People are more literal in their thinking. Other researchers found that when male generic nouns and pronouns were used to describe the job of psychologist, female students described the job as less attractive to them than when sex neutral terms were used. TRUE Both female and male members of audiences pay more attention to male speakers than female speakers.
Audience members recall more information from presentations given by males.
This appears to occur whether this information is stereotyped as appropriate for males or stereotyped associated with females. And it occurs even when male and female speakers make identical presentations. While not all studies support Lakoff s notion of women s speech, several show that women do express themselves with more diffidence and less assertion than men. Many researchers claim that tentative speech patterns do not characterize the speech of women so much as they characterize the speech of those who lack power. For example, one group of researchers analyzed communication in a police station.