Gender

Question 1

Gender

Three key models

Answer 1

• The dominance model: men are more dominant in language.
• The deficit model: women’s language is inherently weak
• The difference model: women and men communicate differently

Question 2

Dominance

Pamela Fishman

Answer 2

• Women are left to do the ‘conversational shitwork’ in communication with men.
• If they do not do it, the conversation will fail.

Question 3

Dominance

Holmes - gendered metaphors

(3)

Answer 3

• Metaphors to describe women are largely derogatory
• Women are often referred to as food or animals. For example, bird, sugar, sweetie.
• Often portray women as sweet and helpless, whereas metaphors for men make them appear strong (stag do vs hen night)

Question 4

Dominance

The Bechdel test

Answer 4

This judges whether a piece of work (book, film, theatre, TV etc) has:
* Two women
* Who talk to each other
* About something other than men

Many pieces of work fail this test!

Question 5

Dominance

Zimmerman and West

Answer 5

Found that men interrupt women 96-100% of the time in mixed-sex conversations

Question 6

Dominance

Beattie

(2)

Answer 6

• Argues that Zimmerman and West’s study wasn’t accurate because their sample size was too small.
• Beattie performed a similar study with 10 times as many participants and found that men and women interrupt with equal frequency.

Question 7

Dominance

Spender

(2)

Answer 7

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

Question 8

Deficit

Lakoff

Answer 8

• Believes that women’s language contains many different features which make it weak.
• Women’s language use contributes to their inferior place within society.

For example:
* Intensifiers/degree modifiers - ‘very’, ‘so’, ‘really’
* Hedging - expressing weak opinions - ‘sort of’
* Weak adjectives - adjectives which contain a small value, for example ‘nice’

Question 9

Deficit

Jesperson

Answer 9

Women’s language is littered with non-fluency features because they speak before thinking.
* E.g half finished sentences because they haven’t thought about what they are going to say.
* Women have a smaller vocabulary.

But this is only based on his perception.

Question 10

Difference

All male conversations are competitive whereas all female conversations are co-operativeTannen

six different ways that men and women communicate.

Answer 10

There are six different ways that men and women communicate differently.
* Advice vs understanding
* Conflict vs compromise
* Independence vs intimacy
* Information vs feelings
* Orders vs proposals
* Status vs support

Question 11

Difference

Coates

Answer 11

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

Question 12

Difference

Tannen

report vs rapport orientated

Answer 12

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