Summary Details
| Query: |
Sum:'I'd love to.' & 'lovely'
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| Author: | Junichi Murata | |
| Submitter Email: | click here to access email | |
| Linguistic LingField(s): |
Pragmatics
Sociolinguistics |
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| Summary: |
Several weeks ago I sent out the following questionnaire about the expressions with 'I'd love to ...' and 'lovely', specifically in terms of their gender-linked difference. - -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Please tick English variety: American English speaker [ ], British English speaker [ ], Others [ ] ( Please describe what variety you speak.( )) Sex: Male [ ], Female [ ] Age: -20[ ], 20-30[ ], 30-40[ ], 40-50 [ ], 50-60[ ] , 60+[ ] Please read the following expressions and put into each parenthesis the number 1, if you think that the expression has been and still is preferred by women. 2, if you think that it used to be preferred by women but there is no preference now (or there is less and less preference between the sexes.) 3, if you feel that there has been no preference as far as you know. Expressions: A. [ ] "I'd love to." (in response to "Would you like to come to the party? ") B. [ ] "I'd love to." (in response to "Would you like to dance? ") C. [ ] I'd love to see you act Hamlet. D. [ ] I'd love you to come with us. E. [ ] What a lovely view! F. [ ] We've had a lovely dinner/time. G. [ ] It's lovely and warm in here. H. [ ] Isn't it a lovely day? --------------------------------------------------------------------------- I've received 32 replies. Here I would like to thank those who took time to give me information including a lot of comments and intuitions, although I can't list their names because of the limited space. Here is a summary. First of all, I must admit that, as some respondents claim, this type of survey is dangerous from a methodological point of view. That is, people don't speak as they think they do. However, I also think that this kind of survey at least shows how they perceive certain expressions, which I think is very important and meaningful for the study of certain expressions. The following table shows the numbers of people, according to their responses for each expression, and the sexes. In this table, I don't include those whose variety of English is neither British nor American because I think the number of the respondens (5) is too small to make any proper judgement. The same is true of the results of British speakers (the number is also 5) but I include them just for information. Thus, in the following analysis, I will deal with only American English. 1 2 3 Am Brit Am Brit Am Brit m f m f m f m f m f m f A 1 3 2 0 4 4 0 1 6 5 1 1 B 6 6 2 1 2 2 0 0 3 4 1 1 C 3 3 2 0 2 1 0 0 6 8 1 2 D 5 6 3 2 2 3 0 0 3 3 1 0 E 6 5 1 0 2 5 1 1 3 1 1 1 F 8 8 1 1 1 2 0 1 2 2 2 1 G 9 6 2 0 0 2 0 1 2 1 1 1 H 7 6 0 0 2 1 2 0 2 4 1 1 There is a great difference among the respondents and it is quite difficult to generalize the sexual preference in a decisive way. For example, some respondents don't see any gender-linked difference at all, while some think all the expressions are preferred by women. I also admit that, from a strict statistical point of view, I may not give any strong judgement from this data. Despite these limitations, it is safe to say that this data suggests at least the following tendencies. 1) Expression A and C have not been thought to be preferred particularly by women. They may have changed in their usage. 2) Expression B and D have been thought to be preferred by women. However, as many respondents point out, the reason Expression B is preferred by women is not linguistic but pragmatic. That is, it is still customary for men to ask women to dance. 3) As for expressions E to H (with 'lovely'), most people think that they are preferred by women. 4) There is little difference between the male respondents and female respondents in the perception of most of the expressions. 5) It is noteworthy that there are a number of people who feel there is a change in sexual preference for most of the expressions. As some respondents point out, there may be a difference between American English and British English concerning these expressions, although I cannot give any judgement on that point because of the small number of British English speaking respondents as I mentioned above. In addition, some respondents suggest that there may be difference between age groups. I will pursue these points in a further survey. Thanks again for the contributions. Junichi Murata Dept. of English Kobe City Univ. of Foreign Studies - --------- Junichi Murata Kobe City University of Foreign Studies |
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| LL Issue: | 8.990 | |
| Date Posted: | 04-Jul-1997 | |
| Original Query: | Read original query | |
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