Social Status

O'Barr and Atkins (1980)

Their findings looking at courtroom cases and witness' speech challenges Lakoff's theory of women language. Analysed the 10 basic speech differences between men and women's language from Lakoff's theory and found 'powerless language', showed that language differences are based on situation-specific authority or power and not gender.

Said: “neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women", as women who used least women's lanaguage were in positions of  "unusualy high status" (according to researchers) - well educated middle class backgrounds. The researchers also found that there was a "corresponding pattern" for men who had the lowest frequency of women's language traits . O'Barr and Atkins tried to stress that a powerful position "may derive from either social standing in the larger society and/or status accorded by the court". So there were a number of power-related reasons why people used powerful/less language.