Gender

Question 1

Robin Lakoff

Answer 1

Women’s Language. Women are deferential in speech which shows their lower status. For example, tag questions “That’s ok, isn’t it?” and superpoliteness “Would you please be so kind to…”

Question 2

Criticism of Lakoff

Answer 2

Dubois and Crouch found that men use more tags than women.

Question 3

Zimmermann and West

Answer 3

Men dominate women through speech. Men interrupt women, not near the Transition Relevance Point (TRP). Men give delayed minimal responses to women to show a lack of interest in the conversation.

Question 4

Pamela Fishman

Answer 4

Women use the tag question ‘y’know’ 5 times more than men because men are uncooperative in conversation and women seek to be cooperative.

Question 5

Janet Holmes

Answer 5

There are 2 types of tags. Speaker-oriented - for the benefit of the speaker, used by men more. Addressee-Oriented - for the benefit of the addressee, used by women more. Overall, men and women use tags about the same number of times.

Question 6

Victoria DeFrancisco

Answer 6

Women talk more and introduce more topics than men but men shoot down these suggestions and men’s topics are virtually always accepted.

Question 7

Helena Leet-Pelligrini

Answer 7

Mixture of gender and expertise influences how much you dominant conversation. Male experts talk the most and female non-experts talk the least.

Question 8

Deborah Tannen

Answer 8

Men try to ‘win’ in conversation whereas women just give support. Women talk to maintain relationships (rapport talk) whereas men talk to just give information (report talk.)

Question 9

Anne Bodine

Answer 9

Language is androcentric. It is based around men and is built to support men’s power and dominance.

Question 10

Deborah Jones

Answer 10

Women’s talk falls into: House Talk, Scandal, Bitching, Chatting.

Question 11

Jane Pilkington

Answer 11

Bakery study. Women talk to affirm social relationships and support each other. Men disagree and compete to the point of verbal abuse.

Question 12

Carmen Fought

Answer 12

Language features used by women such as the vocal fry and uptalk are seen as stupid but women use them as power tools to build relationships, and they become popular in regular speech over time.

Question 13

Koenraad Kuiper

Answer 13

In a rugby team, men use insults to create solidarity and those who can’t handle the insults are alienated from the group.

Question 14

Janet Hyde

Answer 14

There are far more similarities than differences in men and women’s speech.

Question 15

O’Barr and Atkins

Answer 15

Courtroom study. ‘Women’s Language’ should be renamed ‘Powerless Language’. Women’s Language features are used by low status speakers irrespective of their gender.

Question 16

Deborah Cameron

Answer 16

Language is a performance and we use it to present our identity. Male and female differences in language are not biological they are caused by society’s expectations.

Question 17

Butler

Answer 17

Gender is constructed through language and we present our gender by fulfilling stereotypical gender roles and language is one way to do this.

Question 18

Judith Baxter

Answer 18

Women are equally capable of being dominant as men. How we use language influences how other people see us.