Essay Plan: Theorists, Experiments and Studies

Question 1

Spender: ‘male as norm’? (The Dominance Model).

Answer 1

Introduces the idea of ‘male as norm’ - women are extensions of men. For example, men are always introduced first (Mr and Mrs).

Question 2

Zimmerman and West: men interrupt? (The Dominance Model).

Answer 2

Men interrupt women 96-100% of the time in mixed-sex conversations.

Question 3

Beattie: Zimmerman and West study? (The Dominance Model).

Answer 3

Zimmerman and West’s study wasn’t accurate because their sample was far too small. Beattie’s study uses 10 times as many participants and states that men and women interrupt with equal frequency.

Question 4

Greif: parents interrupt? (The Dominance Model).

Answer 4

Parents interrupt daughters more than sons and male parents interrupt more overall.

Question 5

Coates: men control? (The Dominance Model).

Answer 5

Men control the topic of conversation and usually keep the topics to usually male-orientated subjects.

Question 6

Lakoff: different features? (The deficit Model).

Answer 6

Lakoff believes that women’s language contains many different features which make it weak. Here are just a few:
* Intensifiers - ‘very’, ‘so’, ‘really’.
* Hedging - expressing weak opinion - ‘sort of’.
* Avoiding swearing.
* Weak adjectives - adjectives which contain a small value, for example, ‘nice’.
* Back-channeling - passively agreeing and supporting, for example, ‘yeah’, ‘umhumm’.

Question 7

O’Barr and Atkins: deficit language features? (The deficit Model).

Answer 7

Men use deficit language features in the courtroom. This suggests that it’s more about powerless language than it is about gendered language.

Question 8

Jesperson: non-fluency features? (The deficit Model).

Answer 8

Women’s language is littered with non-fluency features because they speak before thinking. BUT, this is not a linguistic report - it’s based on public perception.

Question 9

ESRC: ‘fuck’? (The deficit Model).

Answer 9

Women use ‘fuck’ 50 times more often than before 1990.

Question 10

Tannen: six different ways? (From Book: you just don’t understand) (The Difference Model).

Answer 10

There are six different ways that men and women communicate differently:

1. Advice vs understanding - men will often try to fix a problem rather than understand emotional needs.
2. Conflict vs compromise - women dislike being confrontational, whereas men do not mind this.
3. Independence vs intimacy- men prefer to be independent, whereas women prefer intimacy.
4. Information vs feelings - men will often only provide factual information, but many women take an emotional stance.
5. Orders vs proposals - men will often make commands where women will suggest.
6. Status vs support - men will try to be competitive to improve their status, but women will seek reassurance and support.

Question 11

Coates: conversations? (The Difference Model).

Answer 11

All-male conversations are competitive whereas all-female conversations are co-operative.

Question 12

Cameron: ‘bitching’ (The Difference Model).

Answer 12

Bitching is a part of female talk, but not male, because covertly dominant behaviour is more acceptable.

Question 13

Hyde: The Gender Similarities Hypothesis? (The Difference Model).

Answer 13

There are more similarities between the genders than there is difference.

Question 14

Tannen: talk? (The Difference Model).

Answer 14

Male talk is report-orientated - they want to report the facts. Female talk is rapport-orientated - they do it to maintain friendships.

Question 15

Judith Butley: gender performativity and performance utterances? (The Difference Model).

Answer 15

Coined term ‘gender performativity’ in her 1990 book ‘Gender Trouble’ - gender is not something we are born with but something we continuously do and perform through our behaviours, actions and expressions. Stereotypes (women talk naturally cooperative and men talk naturally competitive) oversimplify the complexities of gender and language - speech patterns are not determined by biological sex but socially constructed and performed. Performance utterances challenges these stereotypes e.g. ‘I am a man’, not just state but also affirm and declare an identity, socially constructed emphasises these behaviours aren’t inherent to gender.

Question 16

Giles: matched guise experiment?

Answer 16

Matched guise experiment found that speakers of RP were judged as:
• Intelligent
• Trustworthy
• Unfriendly
• Unsociable

Question 17

Kerswill: dialect levelling?

Answer 17

Through a process called dialect levelling, accent and dialects are becoming more and more similar.

Question 18

Muggleston: RP speakers?

Answer 18

The number of RP speakers is decreasing.

Question 19

Harrington: the Queen’s speeches?

Answer 19

Over a period of 50 years, the Queen’s speeches have been diverging from RP.

Question 20

Trudgill: archaic pronouns?

Answer 20

The archaic forms of the second person pronouns, thee and thou, are still used in Yorkshire.

Question 21

Dent: birthmarks?

Answer 21

Accents are like spoken birthmarks.

Question 22

Eckert: Reading study (1989)?

Answer 22

Looked at children’s (30 boys and 12 girls) use of nine different non-standard forms, including multiple negation and ‘ain’t’. She linked this to whether they thought criminal activity was acceptable.

Found that:

• Boys were more likely to approve of criminal activity.
• Those children, who approved of non-standard forms were most likely to use non-standard forms.
• There is a link between the covert prestige of using non-standard forms and standard forms.

Question 23

Labov: Martha’s Vineyard Study?

Answer 23

Labov looked at inhabitants of the island of Martha’s Vineyard. He noted that the younger members (who worked or studied there for some of the year) converged to the vowel pronunciation of the older members of the island when tourists arrived to distance themselves.

Question 24

Petyt: Bradford Study?

Answer 24

People who are socially aspirational tried to pronounce words with the /ʌ/ and /℧/ sounds in differently, like cushion. This led to them using the wrong vowel sound through hypercorrection. He also found that the lower the class a person was, the more likely they were to drop the word-initial /h/ in words like ‘house’.

Question 25

Multicultural London English (MLE)?

Answer 25

There is a variety of English which started in London called MLE. This variety is popular amongst young black teenagers. This contains the following features as examples:

• Lexical - ‘peng’ (base adjective meaning ‘good’) and ‘creps’ (concrete noun meaning ‘shoes’).
• Grammatical - sentences may be constructed by starting ‘why’ and ending ‘for’ like, for example, ‘why you eating that for?’. In addition, ‘man’ replaces the first-person singular pronoun (I).
• Phonological - th-stopping - where the ‘th’ at the start of words become ‘t’. For example, ‘thing’ becomes ‘ting’.

There is no standard set of features of MLE - it varies depending on the location. The media often labels it ‘Jafaican’ due to its Jamaican roots.

Question 26

Kerswill: replace?

Answer 26

MLE will replace Cockney Rhyming Slang (CRS).

Question 27

Rampton: spread?

Answer 27

MLE is spread through friendship groups.

Question 28

Drummond: Multicultural Urban British English (MUBE)?

Answer 28

MLE is a key part of the sociolect of young people in Manchester. Drummond has retitled MLE as ‘Multicultural Urban British English’ (MUBE) which reflects it spread.

Question 29

Swales: discourse communities?

Answer 29

Coined the term ‘discourse communities’ to describe groups of people with a common goal/purpose who need language (as a form of communication). To align with one another and showcase authority such as through the use of specialist legalese like the Norman French-origin noun phrase ‘voir dire’.

Question 30

Crystal: jargon/identity?

Answer 30

Use of jargon is part of an identity at work.

Question 31

Drew and Heritage: jargon?

Answer 31

Jargon makes the workplace more efficient. For example, kitchens are quick-paced environments and so using jargon will help to ensure the job doesn’t fall behind.

Question 32

Drew and Heritage: jargon?

Answer 32

Jargon makes the workplace more efficient. For example, kitchens are quick-paced environments and so using jargon will help to ensure the job doesn’t fall behind.

Question 33

Spolsky: jargon/discourse community?

Answer 33

Using jargon shows you are a part of the discourse community - however, not knowing it can make you feel like you do not belong.

Question 34

Drew and Heritage: inferential frameworks?

Answer 34

Occupational language has an inferential framework which is about how members have a shared way of communicating, thinking and behaving. In terms of language, this includes:

• Enforced turn taking
• Conversation which is goal-orientated
• Asymmetry
• Jargon

Question 35

Haugen’s Four Stages of Standardisation?

Answer 35

established 4 main stages of standardisation - indicate how the process has occurred over time - less diverse -
‘selection stage’ established the standardisation of lang through invention of printing press (1476)-Caxton.
- standardised form needed to be used in printing so it could be understood nationally by people and ensure they would use it - Caxton used dialect of East
Midlands.
- third stage of ‘elaboration’ = borrowing lexis from other cultures and countries during renaissance period (e.g. ‘Cargo’ borrowed from Spain to describe trade).

Question 36

Gile’s Accommodation Theory?

Answer 36

Howard Giles proposed that when speakers seek approval in a social situation they are likely to change their speech so that it is similar to the listener. This is called convergent accommodation. However, if the speaker wants to disassociate him/herself from the speaker, they may change their speech to show they are different. This is called divergent accommodation.

Question 37

Disparate nature of Old and Middle English before emergence of SE?

Answer 37

E.g. dialectical diversity in spelling of ‘knight’ : ‘knygt’, ‘knyht’, ‘cniht’.

Question 38

Watt’s Dialect Levelling Study, Newcastle (2005)?

Answer 38

Stated that motivation for linguistic changes came from young speakers who wanted to dispel the “cloth, cap and clogs” image, and sound like “modern northerners”. They avoided certain variants or marked features of the Geordie dialect (non-rhotic pronunciation, r dropped at the end of syllables, “car” becomes “caah”) whilst adopting some features not linked to their dialect (“bare” meaning “a lot” or “lit”). They didn’t, however, wish to show disloyalty to their geographical area by showing massive variation; others accommodate towards these new accent forms due to their “social attractiveness”.

Question 39

Bio factors?

Answer 39

Questioning assumption (gender socially constructed) - biological factors such as brain structure and hormonal levels contribute to differences in language processing.

Question 40

Varieties lexical, phonological and grammatical example.

Answer 40

• phonology (accent) (th-fronting In the Cockney accent of London English, pronunciation of the “th” sound. speakers often replace the “th” sound with a “f” or “v” sound. E.g. “this” might be pronounced as “vis” and “that” as “vat.”)
• lexis (jargon) (E.g. in the medical field, terms like “diagnosis,” “prognosis,” or “symptomatology” are part of the specialised vocabulary used by healthcare professionals.)
• grammar (non-standard morphology) (E.g. the use of irregular verb forms in certain dialects. E.g. in AAVE “I seen” instead of “I saw” or “I done it” instead of “I did it.” These variations in verb forms deviate from the standard rules of verb conjugation in English)

Question 41

Polari and examples.

Answer 41

A secret code used by gay men to communicate when homosexuality was illegal (Mid 20th century, 1930s to the 1960s). It incorporates elements from Italian, Romani, Yiddish and Cockney Rhyming Slang. E.g. “Zhoosh up your riah, dearie! (Translation: Style your hair, darling!) and “Naff off! (Translation: Go away!).

Question 42

Norman Fairclough: switching language.

Answer 42

Switching to and from exclusive language could be considered a crucial workplace skill creating the impression of instrumental and/or influential power.

Question 43

Emergence of World English Varieties - particularly in Kachru’s outer (norm developing) circle and examples?

Answer 43

English is present in this place because of colonisation, e.g. lexis, ‘Bushmeat’, (Nigerian English) (‘Gamemeat”), e.g. grammar, ‘She is knowing her science.’ (Indian English). (“She knows about science”/ “she is learning about science”).

Question 44

Kandiah: English’s spread and colonisation?

Answer 44

English’s spread is a direct result of colonisation.

Question 45

Crystal: Colonisation and spread?

Answer 45

Colonisation isn’t the only reason for spread - the power associated with the countries who speak English further its spread.

Question 46

George Osborne - Politician?

Answer 46

-accused of toning down his RP accent
-to broaden his popular appeal
-‘British’ (/‘brItIS/) to ‘Briddish’ (‘brIdIs)
-‘want to’ (/wþnt/) to ‘wanna’ (/‘wþne(_))

Question 47

Howe: different roles in conversations?

Answer 47

Men and women play different roles in conversation:

• Men are active participants, keen to respond and provide their opinion.
• Women are active listeners, responding through backchanneling.