The notion of women's sensitivity to prestige norms is an explanation that arises from the intrinsic maleness of the norms.
Women tend to produce speech closer to the standard in pronunciation than that of men.
The main explanations advanced for this phenomenon are in terms of sociological factors external to language such as status consciousness or solidarity. I shall show that neither of these explanations is entirely satisfactory, but that the phenomenon can be explained in terms of pragmatic, interactional notions internal to language use. Negative face involves the desire for freedom of action and freedom from imposition, while positive face involves the desire for approval. However, because 'it was arranged that the fieldworker should be the same sex as the friendship group' being studied, there is limitation of the observations to same-sex conversations. She observed that women who use the feature more tend to attend a chapel on the end of town where the dialect is more prevalent.