Deficit

Question 1

Deficit

Answer 1

The deficit theory essentially states that women’s language is weak or contains weak traits.

Question 2

Otto Jesperson 1922

Answer 2

• Jespersen investigated non-fluency features such as fillers and pauses.
• Jespersen’s research details that women speak without thinking and so use more non-fluency features (features which disrupt the fluency of speech). Women talk more, use a lot of false starts. They use the conjunction ‘and’ more because they’re more emotive than grammatical. They use words like “pretty” and “nice” too much. They also like to precede them with the intensifier “so”.
  Women use hyperbole a lot, indirect expressions

Question 3

Jesperson Limits

Answer 3

• Jespersen’s research relies on evidence from literature and travellers. This means it is speculative and is often dismissed as folk linguistics.
• Jespersen’s research is disputed by Onnela who found that with masters students, there was a very similar MLU ( mean length of utterance - the average time span of a piece of speech).

Question 4

Robin Lakoff in 1975. Robin Lakoff’s research details a list of features of spoken language that make women’s language ‘weak’. These include:

Answer 4

Over-apologising, Tag questions, empty adjectives, Over-use of intensifiers, Special lexicon e.g. Magenta, Less swearing, Lacking a sense of humour, * Lakoff states that women have a hypercorrect grammar. An example of this is women avoiding double negatives.

Question 5

Supporting theorist for Lakoff

Answer 5

Lakoff’s research has been built on by linguist Kira Hall, who found that phone sex workers often made use of Lakoff’s features to appear more feminine.

Question 6

Lakoff Challenge - O’Barr and Atkins

Answer 6

• Lakoff’s work has been challenged by O’Barr and Atkins, who looked at a courtroom and found that lower class men use Lakoff’s language features in court.
• O’Barr and Atkins’ research implies that it is potentially not to do with gender, but to do with power.
• This is denoted as ‘powerless language’.
• In addition, Lakoff’s research is based purely on her own observations and not any linguistically rigorous testing.

Question 7

Further challenge Lakoff

Answer 7

In 2017, research published by ‘Economic and Social Research Council’ discovered that there had been a 500% increase in the use of ‘fuck’ by women since the 1990s.

Question 8

Jesperson more limits

Answer 8

Didn’t conduct any studies
•Based his work largely on fiction – literature
•Quoted others who didn’t do any studies

Question 9

Jesperson more Info

Answer 9

novels written by ladies are much easier to read and use fewer difficult words, women had a debilitating (weakening) effect upon the language.
•women use adverbs too much and tend towards hyperbole
•women have a smaller vocabulary than men

Question 10

More Lakoff features

Answer 10

Overuse qualifiers. (I think that)hedge, super-polite forms, euphemisms, tag qs, reduplicated forms

Question 11

Criticisms of Lakoff

Answer 11

Didn’t do research – ideas are based on observations.
•Generalised (stereotyped!) both genders. Her use of personal ‘introspection’ was similarly admitted in the introduction: ‘It is my impression, though I do not have precise statistical evidence’ (1975 49), an admission which renders her work more social commentary than empirical analysis.