Ours is a society that tries to keep the world sharply divided into masculine and feminine

, not because that is the way the world is, but because that is the way we believe it should be. It takes unwavering belief and considerable effort to keep this division. It also leads us to make some fairly foolish judgments, particularly about language.

Because we think that language also should be divided into masculine and feminine we have become very skilled at ignoring anything that will not fit our preconceptions. We would rather change what we hear than change our ideas about the gender division of the world. We will call assertive girls unfeminine, and supportive boys effeminate, and try to change them while still retaining our stereotypes of masculine and feminine talk.

This is why some research on sex differences and language has been so interesting. It is an illustration of how wrong we can be. Of the many investigators who set out to find the stereotyped sex differences in language, few have had any positive results. It seems that our images of serious taciturn male speakers and gossipy garrulous female speakers are just that: images.

Many myths associated with masculine and feminine talk have had to be discarded as more research has been undertaken. If females do use more trivial words than males, stop talking in mid-sentence, or talk about the same things over and over again, they do not do it when investigators are around.

None of these characteristics-of female speech have been found. And even when sex differences have been found, the question arises as to whether the difference is in the eye or ear of the beholder, rather than in the language.

Pitch provides one example. We believe that males were meant to talk in low-pitched voices and females in high-pitched voices. We also believe that low pitch is more desirable. Well, it bas been found that this difference cannot be explained by anatomy.

If males do not speak in high-pitched voices, it is not usually because they are unable to do so. The reason is more likely to be that there are penalties. Males with high-pitched voices are often the object of ridicule. But pitch is not an absolute, for what is considered the right pitch for males varies from country to country.

The passage implies that the author's attitude towards the division of feminine talk and masculine talk is

A．assertive.

B．snobbish.

C．approving.

D．critical.