Gender Flashcards
Keith and Shuttleworth (2000)
All male conversations
Men:
Swear more, give more commands, are competitive, don’t talk about emotions, speak with more authority, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, interrupt more
Keith and Shuttleworth (2000)
All female conversations
Women:
Talk more than men, ask more questions, support each other, are more polite, are more co-operative, are indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag
Moore (1922)
All male conversations
Men tend to discuss business and amusements
Moore (1922)
All female conversations
Women tend to discuss the opposite sex, clothes, buildings, and interior decoration
Bischopping (1993)
All male conversations
Men still more likely to discuss work + leisure
Bischopping (1993)
All female conversations
Women still more likely to discuss opposite sex
Coates (1989)
All male conversations
Argues male groups use conversation to build a hierarchy and establish dominant and submissive roles
Pursue a style of interaction based on power
Coates (1989)
All female conversations
Based around ‘womens cooperative discourses’
Talks about people and feelings rather than objects
Use non verbal repsonses rather than verbal ones
Use hedges to avoid appearing threatening
Overlap utterances in a supportive way
Jones (1990)
All female conversations
Calls all female talk gossip
House talk- exchanging information about female role (treating like a job)
Scandal- judging others, particularly women, focused on domestic morality
Bitching- expressing anger to gain support rather than expecting change
Chatting- trusting, intimate talk between women
What is androcentric language?
Language focused on or centred around men
Give examples of androcentric language
Job titles eg fireman, business man
‘He’ as a gender non-specific pronoun
Explain the effect of androcentric language
Job titles like ‘businessman’ reinforce the idea that it isn’t expected for women to be in highly paid or skilled jobs
Using ‘he’ as a gender non specific pronoun suggests men are the norm
Lexical priming
‘well used’ words which can carry gender prejudice eg grumpy old man
Job titles
Include diminuitive suffixes/ bound morphemes eg waitress, actress
Marked terms
Words marked to show an equivalent eg male nurse, female doctor
Lexical asymmetry
Pairs of words related to males and females which aren’t equal eg witch and wizard
Judith Butler (1990)
book ‘Gender Troubles’ suggests gender is created in how we perform our roles- there is no identity behind these roles, gender performativity is a repetition that becomes naturalised
Wesleyan University (2007)
Study of print media on 58 magazines
Half of adverts in these magazines portrayed women as sex objects
Increased to 3/4 of adverts in mens magazines
Julia Stanley (1997)
220 negative terms to describe a promiscuous woman
Compared to only 20 for a man
Deborah James (1995)
Derogatory labels used for women were more offensive than those used for men
Saphir-Whorf hypothesis
The language we used determines the way we view the world
Caitlin Hines (1999)
Women are referred to as desserts
Gender in the Disney classics era
Women spoke more that men eg Cinderella (1950) men=41% women=59%
Gender in the Disney renaissance era
Men spoke significantly more than women eg Pocahontas (1995) men=76% women=24%
Gender in the Disney new age era
Almost equal speech from men and women eg Tangled (2010) men=49% women=51%
Who studied gender in Disney eras and when was it?
Fought and Eisenhauer (2017)
What did Eisenhauer conclude about gender in Disney films?
Masculinity depicted through use of imperatives
Femininity assosciated with mitigation
Name the 4 gender models
Deficit model
Dominance model
Difference model
No difference model
Describe the deficit model
The idea that women’s language is inferior to men’s
Describe the dominance model
The idea that men dominate conversation and interrupt women
Describe the difference model
The idea that women’s language isn’t inferior to men’s, just different
Describe the no difference model
The idea that there is no difference between how men and women speak or that the difference is exaggerated
Describe Robin Lakoff’s contribution to the deficit theory
Lakoff’s ten basic assumptions of women’s language include hedges (possibly, maybe), tag questions (don’t you think?, won’t you?), empty adjectives (lovely, sweet)
Evaluate Robin Lakoff’s work
Direct quotation and hedges may actually be an advantage as direct quotation is more accurate and hedges cause less conflict
Describe Henry Moore’s (1922) contribution to the deficit theory
Women tend to discuss the opposite sex and clothes whereas men tend to discuss money, business and amusements
Moore believed these tendencies would continue over time as they were manifestations of our ‘original natures’
Evaluate Henry Moore’s (1922) work
Lacks reliability as data gathered by walking up and down Broadway
Old- may be outdated
Describe Zimmerman and West’s (1975) contribution to the Dominance Model
Old study on a small sample of white, middle class under 35’s
Report that in 11 mixed sex conversations men used 46 interruptions whereas women used 2
Concluded since men use more interruptions they are dominating or attempting to do so
Evaluate Zimmerman and West’s (1975) study
Small and unrepresentative sample
Describe Geoffrey Beatie’s (1982) contribution to the Dominance model
Repeated Zimmerman and West’s study and found men and women interrupt with more or less equal frequency
Describe Deborah Tannen’s contribution to the difference model
Men engage in report talk (engaging information) whereas women engage in rapport talk (making emotional connections)
Stems from socialising in same sex groups as children
Calls these differences in approach ‘genderlects’
Names some main differences between men and women’s use of language including ‘advice vs understanding’ - men seeing complaints as a challenge to come up with a solution whereas women actually want empathy/ emotional support
Also ‘orders vs proposals’ - women formulate requests as proposals rather than orders to prevent conflict whereas men see this as being manipulated
Adjectives assosciated with each gender
Men- powerful, discipline, handsome
Women- pretty, elegant, patient
Sanghari (2017)
Believes the words: curvy, bitchy, bossy, pushy and whinging only apply to women
