What evokes these responses is generally learned, and varies across cultures. Expressive repertoires are used to mark social roles and power. These are also marked by using the body as a 'prop' for various adornments, such as tattooing or clothing. The use of body mutilation is related to the permanence of status assignment of individuals in a society, being generally absent from complex, mobile societies, where temporary adornments such as jewellery or clothing take on a larger burden for marking social roles. The marking of social roles is also reflected in language forms.
Many societies have different forms of male and female speech.
Female forms of speech tend to be more conservative than male forms, and reflective of 'prestigious' styles used by high status groups. Status, or social power, is widely marked by particular speech-forms in socially stratified societies. Speakers also shift their speech-forms in predictable ways across different social situations, thus marking a society's construction of social contexts. A number of indices of a society's complexity or 'differentiation' have been put forward. This is not a simple relationship, but one involving factors such as an individual's ability to use the resources provided by more complex social organizations to assay novel activities, and to promote the formation of subcultures.