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As afore-mentioned, language is an important part of an individual's life which helps to form his/ her “social identity” (Gyllgard, 2006:1) by different “linguistic habits” which reflect different “individual biographies and experiences” (Graddol and Swann, 1994:5). Coates (1993:144) also claims that “when children adopt linguistic behavior considered appropriate to their gender they perpetuate the social order which creates gender distinctions” This means that language is among the most significant factors, bedsides social roles and social positions, that make great distinctions between men and women. Actually, it is observed that men and women use language differently in a “gender-appropriate” manner (Tannen, 1993:85) since they are small.

In the following part of the paper, that different use of language by different genders will be discussed in three main aspects: (1) topic choices, (2) word choices and (3) manner of speaking .

In terms of topic choices, men are believed to talk more about sports or other physical activities when they are small (Poynton, 1989) and about current concerns, about their strength and their dominance (Coulmas, 2005) when they grow up. Meanwhile, women are believed to spend time talking more on home activities, romance and fantasy worlds. Later in their life, they are considered to choose to talk about “nonsense” and “unimportant” personal topics (Gyllgard, 2006). Consequently, men's language is often considered as serious and important while women's is seen as trivial and easy to ignore (Coates, 1993).

It is believed that women seem to be more careful about choosing words than men. And it is explained that this results from the different roles of the two genders in the society. Women are considered to have their first and foremost roles as caring the families and bringing up children. Consequently, they need to be careful with the words they use or otherwise they may set bad examples for their children. Also regarding word choices, in their works (Poyton, 1989 and Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2003), researchers find that women use more intensifies (such as so and very), words of approximation (such as about and around), or inessential qualifiers (like really or so) than men. Women are also claimed to use more adjectives (including “empty” adjectives like cute and evaluative adjectives like wonderful) and adverbs. Furthermore, hedges and tag questions are found more in women language rather than men's in order to require confirmation or signal uncertainty respectively (Lakoff, 1989).

With the same reasons of different social roles, in terms of manner of speaking, women seem to be more polite in speaking. Therefore, it seems that taboo language like slang or swear words are likely to be created and used by men rather than by women (Poyton, 1989). Lakoff (1989) also agrees with this by giving an example that women choose to use weaker expletives like oh dear or goodness instead of words like shit or damn. Meanwhile, Coates (1993) believes that the language used by women is collaboration-oriented with supportive comments to create and maintain relationship of “closeness” and “equality” while that used by men is competition-oriented in order to assert their positions of dominance.

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