Jespersen’s work, Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin
(1922) has attracted our attention as one of the rare works which looked at
women’s language in earlier times. In the chapter entitled ‘The Woman’,
Jespersen confidently asserts that, for example: Women speak more
politely than men, and have smaller and less varied vocabularies.
Women differ from men in their use of certain adjectives such as ‘pretty’
and ‘nice’, and adverbs such as ‘vastly’ and ‘so’. His claim could be
interpreted as meaning that women use a different language than men.
Note that his work is a typical example which treats one group (men) as
the norm and the other group (women) as deviant.