Facts form the Fantasy - ANGELA GODDARD

Question 1

Sex and Gender Definitions

Answer 1

Sex - the biological features that makes you a man or a woman
Gender - the characteristics expected of people based on their sex

Question 2

Termed Representation

Answer 2

Constructing stories about what a person is like based on language (consider birthday cards, children’s toys, cosmetic products, personal ads, magazines etc.)

Question 3

Folklinguistics

Answer 3

Ideas about language that are current in the culture and emanate from historical stereotypes
e.g. women ‘chatter’ and ‘gossip’, talk like ladies,
men swear and speak in a ‘laddish’ way
Evaluation: hard to judge because cultures have changed vastly over the years

Question 4

e.g. of FOLKLINGUITICS

ROBIN LAKOFF

Answer 4

1960s-70s
Deficit models
ROBIN LAKOFF ‘Language and a Woman’s Place’ (1975): women were said to be socialised to ‘talk like ladies’ - made them sound powerless and ineffective - DEFICIT MODEL OF LANGUAGE, told that their language wasn’t good enough

Question 5

ROBIN LAKOFF cont.

e.g.

Answer 5

Margaret Thatcher was said to have had vocal coaching to make her voice lower and more ‘serious’ - caricatured as masculine

Question 6

Dominance and Interruptions

Critique of ZIMMERMAN AND WEST

Answer 6

Mid-70s onwards: development of the tape recorder
1975 - recorded 11 mixed sex conversations - 96% of interruptions were by men
LARGE GENERALISATION - only had a corpus of 11 convos - but it catered to people’s particular image of male speakers at the time - dominating and oppressive to women

Question 7

Doing gender in a diverse world

Answer 7

Idea that you talk about ‘all men’ and ‘all women’ is no longer a viable notion - good research considers context