Gender Flashcards
Peter Trudgill
1974, Men use more non-standard pronunciation and language - they attach ‘covert prestige’ (more value) to non-standard forms. Women use more standard forms.
Jenny Cheshire
1982, Boys use more non-standard forms than girls. Boys tend to use non-standard language as a show of linguistic and social solidarity in all male groups (e.g. using swear words to bond)
Robin Lakoff
1975, Female language is deficient - lacks authority when compared to men. Features of female language to show this include precise colours, weak expletives, empty adjectives, tag questions, hedges and intensifiers
Janet Holmes
1992, Tag questions are not just about uncertainty, can work as a way of keeping discussion going or to be polite. Sometimes they can be powerful and dominant. Challenged idea that women’s language is insecure - showed hedges and fillers have many functions - not just to show uncertainty in women
William O’Barr and Bowman Atkinson
1980, Features of uncertain speech are more dependent on power relations than gender - found these features in low class men as well as women
Pamela Fishman
1983, Women use tag questions to start conversations with males, continue and sustain dialogue to gain conversational power. Males are reluctant to do this conversational ‘shitwork’ because of what they perceive to be their dominant role
Zimmerman and West
1975, Men interrupt much more than women in mixed-sex conversation. Reflects power balance - also found parents interrupt their children.
Deborah Tannen
1990, Identified 6 contrasting ways men and women use language:
- Status vs Support
- Independence vs Intimacy
- Advice vs Understanding
- Information vs Feelings
- Orders vs Proposals
- Conflict vs Compromise
Jennifer Coates
1989, All female talk is cooperative - speakers negotiate discussions and support each other’s rights as speakers
Jane Pilkington
1992, All female talk is more collaborative than all-male talk. Women have more positive politeness strategies when talking to other women. Men speaking to men are less complimentary and supportive
Koenraad Kuiper
1991, In all-male talk men likely to pay less attention to the need to save face and instead use insults as a way of expressing solidarity
Judith Butler
1990, Coined term gender ‘perform activity’ - the idea that we ‘perform’ playing a gendered role
Janet Hyde
2005, ‘gender similarities hypothesis’, claiming there are more similarities than there are differences between male and female language and that where there are differences, these may be due to a number of other variable such as age, class, ethnicity, education, occupation, sexuality, politics and so on
Deborah Cameron
2008, Criticised the idea that there are innate differences in male and female speech. Sees the idea that men and women use language in very different ways and for very different reasons as ‘one of the great myths of our time’
