Over the decades, Coates and her peers have carefully examined the speech styles of many different all-women and all-men groups—these are called genderlects. They’ve looked at various ages, races, cultures, sexualities, and socioeconomic classes, and while there is undoubtedly variation based on these factors, not to mention the context of the conversations (speech usually varies from the brunch table to the boardroom), one observation has remained rather constant: while men’s speech style can be categorized as “competitive,” women’s is “cooperative.”
