Stereotypes about the way women talk grow out of knowledge of nonlinguistic, societally assigned sex role traits and of linguistic correlates of those traits. Among the findings of research on male/female speech differences are that, contrary to the stereotype, men talk more than women; men's conversation is task-oriented, while that of women is ego enhancing to others; in most speech communities women use more standard phonology and syntax than men; and women use certain female-typed words in some circumstances. Such differences are learned as linguistic aspects of a sex role and are neither genetic nor universal. Not all studies have found sex-linked language differences, and the findings of many studies reflect a comparison of women with men of presumably the same, though in reality lower, class status, due to a methodological bias. In addition to differences in language usage, conversations between the sexes often involve interruptions of women's speech, and a lack of attention to women's conversation by men. But even if a woman exactly duplicates men's language use, she will not be evaluated in the same way, since subjective appraisals of women and men as speakers are based on an interaction between a speaker's activities and the language and sex role stereotypes known to the listener. (GT)