Gender Flashcards
Otto Jespersen - The Deficit Approach
Male language is the ‘norm’ and the language of others (including women) is deficient
Robin Lakoff (1975)
- Hedges
- Use (super)polite forms
- Use tag questions
- Use empty adjectives
- Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation
- Use direct quotation:men paraphrase more often
- Have a special lexicon:women use more words for things like colours, men for sports
- Use question intonation in declarative statements
- Use “wh-” imperatives
- Speak less frequently
- Overuse qualifiers
- Apologise more
- Use modal constructions:(such ascan, would, should, ought- “Should we turn up the heat?”)
- Avoid coarse language or expletives
- Use more intensifiers
Janet Holmes (1992) - opposing Lakoff
Suggests that tag questions may not suggest uncertainty, but may maintain a discussion or be polite. She said that hedges and fillers may act as politeness or boosting devices.
Dubois and Crouch (1975)
Found that men use more tag questions.
O’Barr and Atkins (1980)
Having investigated courtroom language, found that men from lower-class background use many of Lakoff’s features. They felt that ‘powerless language’ was a better description.
Pamela Fishman (1983)
-She listened to 52 hours of conversations between young American couples.
-She agreed with Lakoff that tag questions were more commonly used by women.
-She didn’t see it as uncertainty, but used to start conversations or keep them going.
-She called it ‘conversational shitwork’ – males are reluctant to do this ‘shitwork’ due to their dominant role.
Zimmerman & West (1975)
-Don Zimmerman and Candace West recorded conversations at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California in 1975.
-They report that in 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only two.
Geoffrey Beattie (1982) - opposing Zimmerman & West
“The problem with this is that you might simply have one very voluble man in the study which has a disproportionate effect on the total.”
- Also stated that interruptions do not necessarily reflect dominance
Deborah Tannen (1990)
Tannen represents male & female language in a series of 6 contrasts that suggest difference:
Status vs. support
Independence vs. intimacy
Advice vs. understanding
Information vs. feelings
Orders vs. proposals
Conflict vs. compromise
Report talk and rapport talk
Deborah Tannen’s distinction of information and feelings is also described asreporttalk (of men) andrapport talk(of women).
Women:
- Talk too much
- Speak in private contexts
- Build relations
- Overlap
- Speak symmetrically
Men:
- Get more air time
- Speak in public
- Negotiate status/avoid failure
- Speak one at a time
- Speak asymmetrically
Peter Trudgill (1974)
- Men were less likely and women more likely to use the prestige pronunciation of certain speech sounds.
- In aiming for higher prestige, the women tended towards hypercorrectness. The men would often use a low prestige pronunciation - thereby seeking covert (hidden) prestige by appearing “tough” or “down to earth”.
Deborah Jones
1990 study of women’s oral culture, which she callsGossipand categorizes in terms of House Talk, Scandal, Bitching and Chatting.
Deborah Cameron (1995) - Verbal hygiene
- Women’s verbal conduct is important in many cultures; women have been instructed in the proper ways of talking just as they have been instructed in the proper ways of dressing, in the use of cosmetics, and in other “feminine” kinds of behaviour.
Joan Swann – ‘Yes, but is it gender?’
- Speech is intensely context dependent
- There are so many other influences on
why we speak the way we do: occupation,
age, ethnicity, personality…. - Are we just promoting a new form of determinism/ fatalism…sexism? ’you’re a man, so you speak like this…’?
