Gender Flashcards
Julia Stanley 1973
Male as the norm→ the theory that society is intrinsically geared towards men.
Women occupy negative semantic space as they are rendered invisible
LINGUISTIC DETERMINISM is the notion that the language you speak predominantly determines your thoughts and feelings, and so if the language inherently favours men over women, perhaps this created an accepted norm in the minds of both sexes.
Goldberg 1974
PERCEPTIONS OF GENDER
As children learn to speak, they absorb the values, assumptions and expectations of the adults who surround them through the words they are given to learn.
Language shapes our view of society: there is no such thing as a culture-free view of the world
It follows that if the language children learn in our society is biased towards men and women, even girls will grow up and take for granted the supposed superiority of the male over the female sex (see Male as the Norm Syndrome)
Sex Discrimination Act 1975
It became illegal to write a job advertisement in a way that implied people of only one sex could apply.
However, some exceptions remained: where a job required a particular type of recruitment because of the under-representation of a group, Or other special circumstance.
Goddard 1983
TERMS OF ENDEARMENT
Many women feel patronised by terms like ‘pet’, ’love’ and ‘dear’
These terms are perhaps patronising when used by a man to a woman - she does not know that they simply imply that
- It is his right as a man to speak to them like this
- Any right minded female will welcome it
Context is important though:
Eg. In Manchester, it’s not uncommon for males to refer to females as ‘love’ & in Newcastle, the term ‘pet’ is applied to all genders
Sue Lees 1986
LANGUAGE AND CONTROLLING SEXUAL BEHAVIOUR
Men control female sexual behaviour by the use of derogatory terms –> the word ‘slag’
Since the male equivalent of a ‘slag’ is a ‘stud’, and ‘stud’ is a term that confers prestige, the language men use to discuss sexuality seems biased heavily in their favour.
Dale Spender
PRIMARY SCHOOL ARTICLE
Talks about the 1960s, when most primary school teachers were female, articles referring to them as habitually following the gender-free noun primary school teacher with the feminine pronoun she.
Tautologous→make redundant with needless repetition
He coined the term “marking”, an undertone attributed to pre modifiers indicating social bias and hidden norms
‘Mother’ has multiple pre-modifying adjectives that indicate judgement towards mothers in different situations (i.e., unmarried mothers being mothers who are intolerable to men or incapable of keeping a husband)
Dominance Theory
the idea that men are more likely to control the conversation & topic of conversation → reflecting an asymmetrical relationship.
Difference Theory
Tannen created the idea that there are male and female ‘cultured’ with their own rules, shared meanings and ways of doing things. → In single sex groups, men and women understand each other, but in a mixed sex group, there are misunderstandings
Diversity Theory
Argues against Dominance models
Robin Lakoff 1975
DOMINANCE THEORY
She noted assumptions that categorised women’s speech, as including the following:
- avoid course language or expletives
- Speak less frequently
- lack of a sense of humour; women do not tell jokes well & often don’t understand the punchline of jokes
This theory claims that women are conditioned from childhood to be subordinate in language
She referred to this as being encouraged to ‘talk like a lady’
Examples of Lakoff’s theory
Hedging
Polite forms: ‘would you mind if…’, ‘i’d appreciate it if…’
Tag questions
Use of empty adjectives: ‘divine, lovely, adorable’
Have a special lexicon: women use more words for things like colours,
men for sports
Zimmerman and West 1975
DOMINANCE THEORY
Is that men are more likely to interrupt than women when engaged in mixed-sex conversations
What was Zimmerman and West’s procedure?
his study was conducted in 1975 on a small sample of conversations, which were undertaken at the university of california.
All participants were under 35, white and middle class.
What were the findings of Zimmerman and West’s Study?
In 11 conversations between men and women:
Men used 46 interruptions.
Women only used 2
what are the criticisms of this study?
Ungeneralisable/unreliability:
- Using a male dominated sample size with only white middle class people restricts the general findings of a study (i.e., you can’t say ‘women’ as you’ve only studied one subsection of women) →cultural relativism
- ‘Small sample’ of conversations
- Not mentioned what was discussed
Pamela Fishman 1983
DOMINANCE THEORY
Conversational Shitwork
Studied 52 hours of mixed gender conversations
What were Pamela Fishman’s findings?
- women (just like the housework) do more of the ‘chores’ in mixed gender conversations = aka ‘the shitwork’
- women made more of an effort to create an inclusive conversational atmosphere –> encouraging male participation by discussing topics that would interest them
- Men discussed topics that would interest them - they would then dominate the conversation
- Women are required to be ‘linguistically available’ to men, by limiting their opportunities and focussing on male involvement
Trudgill 1972
DIFFERENCE THEORY
Suggests differences are down to social values rather than biology
Women tend to value aspects of life that embody ‘overt prestige’ - showing ore affinity with social conformity and standardised forms if of the language
Men tend to value aspect of life that embody ‘covert prestige’ (individualism, going against social convention etc) hence tendencies to exhibit language behaviours less bound by conventions of politeness etc
Malz and Borker 1982
DIFFERENCE THEORY
They argue that women and men also have different discourse norms since they typically acquire communicative competence in single sex groups
Give an example of Malz and Borker’s theory
The different interpretations of minimal responses - the back channelling ‘mhm’ which women use more frequently than men.
Women believe these responses mean ‘i hear you’
Whereas Men believe these responses mean ‘I agree with you’
They tend to misinterpret each other - leading to frustration and communicative breakdown
What did Malz and Borker say that girls learn in their former years, that differs to boys?
Girls learn to:
- Create & maintain relationships of closeness and equality
- Criticise each other in acceptable ways
- Interpret accurately the speech of other girls
Whereas boys learn the following:
- Assert a position of dominance
- Attract and maintain an audience
- Assert themselves when another speaker has the floor
Characterised as:
Girls = talk as collaboration-oriented
Boys = talk as competition-orientated
Deborah Tannen 1990
DIFFERENCE THEORY
‘You Just Don’t Understand: Men and Women in conversation’
The analogy about stopping for coffee
What are a few examples of Deborah Tannen’s difference theory?
Status Vs Support: Tannen claims that men grow up in a world in which conversation is competitive and therefore strive to ensure that others don’t dominate them. Women however, use conversations to gain support and confirmation rather than status.
ndependence Vs Intimacy: Tannen claimed that due to the fact that men are concerned with status, they focus on more independence. Women on the other hand, think in terms of intimacy, seeking support and closeness from their partner.
O’Barr and Atkins 1980
They investigated Lakoff’s hypothesis that women used “weaker” language than men in the context of the courtroom. They took the 10 features that Lakoff claimed and looked at the language used by a number of witnesses both male and female to see if Lakoff’s hypothesis was proved.
How did they do this/ key points?
Process of the investigation
Each witness was given a score by dividing the total number of women’s language features by the number of utterances.
Scores varied from 1.39 (indicating an average of more than one WL features per utterance) to 0.18 (indicating very infrequent WL features).
Key Points about the speech sets:
These sets were actually spoken by women. This shows that the use of WL features, as defined by O’Barr and Atkins for this study, does not correlate with the speaker’s gender. They found that not only did some female witnesses use very few WL features, but also some male witnesses used a high proportion of WL features.
What were the findings of this research?
Findings:
WL features are not characteristics of the speech of all women.
WL features are not restricted to the speech of female speakers
The scores of speakers can be placed on a continuum ( from high to low) - more women have high scores while more men have low scores
→ O’Barr and Atkins believe that Lakoff’s description of such features as women’s language is inaccurate
→ They believe that powerless language has been confused by women’s language → because in a society like theirs, women are usually less powerful than men
Deborah Cameron 2008
There isn’t a natural difference between men and women’s language - they are raised to use language differently
Linguistic language into gender is flawed and limited
