Recordings of 210 women and 186 men in US universities tracking words uttered
Methodology
Used ’Electronically Activated Recorder’ (EAR) to collect 30s of audio every 12.5 minutes over a weeks period
Analysis
Men showed slightly more variability in speech as the man with the most words uttered was ~47,000 but the least was ~500
Analysis
Wider variation in words spoken weren’t between men and women but men and men
Conclusions
Gender is only one contributing factor to linguistic identity
Conclusions
No generalisations can be made about how men or women speak; large variation between 2 men
Criticisms
Because of the nature of the theory itself, you cannot narrow the variables, you must embrace them so it makes the conclusions unreliable due to the paradoxical situation
