gender difference-in speech

"Hey, What's up?"
This is how my guy friends answer when I make phone call to them. As we all know how women and men talk is different, which we call feminine speech and masculine speech. As a woman, I was told how to talk by my parents very strictly. When I was a little child, I was not sure why they told me like "you have to talk like this way because you are a girl." Now, I started to understand why because it is one of the gender norms.

According to the text book, Women's Voices Feminist Visions, the difference how to talk shows the gender differences in status and power. It also says that features of women and men in speech. Women's speech, for instance, it is more polite, less profane, and uses more standard forms. What I think women and men in speech is we can often find it on the phone call. On the phone, how women and men talk is different not only for speech, but also pitch. Women usually use higher pitch.

In Japan, for instance, having feminine speech as women is considered very important. In many occasions in Japan, women have feminine speech such as restaurant's waitress, shop clerks, banks and so on. Very extreme example of this, for instance, young clerks at clothing shops use high pitch voice and say "hi, may I help you?" Sometimes, we see this on TV. Comedians pretend like young shop clerks and make fun of them.

Yes, masculinity and femininity means not only looks, but also gender performance. Sometimes, gender performance attracts people who is opposite sex. It is always close to our life in general.