Gender

Question 1

Deborah Cameron, Diversity

Answer 1

Difference is a myth. Language and communication matter more to women and so are more verbally skilled than men. Women talk more about feelings and people but men talk about things and facts. Women are cooperative and men and competitive so difference leads to miscommunication.

Question 2

Deborah Tannen, Difference

Answer 2

Girls and boys live in different subcultures and grow up with different conventions for verbal interaction. Associated dominance framework with men dominating over women.

Status vs Support
Advice vs Understanding
Information vs Feelings

Question 3

Deborah Tannen, Socialisation

Answer 3

Socialisation starts as children, ie. taught consciously how to be a boy or a girl. Women’s language is based on the rehearsed role and societal expectations.

Question 4

Janet Holmes, TV Talk

Answer 4

Women give other women 79% of compliments and receive 75%.
Men give other men compliments 10% of the time.
Women likely to be complimented on appearance but men on abilities and possessions.

Question 5

Judith Baxter, Dominance

Answer 5

Male talk is often competitive and female is cooperative. However criticised as feminist folk-linguistics was developed and disfluency deemed a myth.

Question 6

Lakoff, Vocabularies

Answer 6

Women have larger colour vocabularies then men, suggests that this is because women spend more time on colour related activities such as choosing clothes.

Question 7

Christian Ilbury, Sexuality

Answer 7

Our language reflects not only who we are but also what we want people to think of us. Might accidentally cross over out sociolects which can also be deliberate. African American English used in tweets from gay British men to reflect a ‘sassy queen’ persona.

Question 8

Jespersen, Women Language

Answer 8

Women have higher frequency of utterances and use more conjunctions to link sentences due to being ‘emotional’. Said they have a smaller vocab and so have more fluent speech, hedged more and hyperbole more.

Question 9

O’Barr and Atkins, Coutroom

Answer 9

Women’s language (term coined by Lakoff) was used by men and women, and was actually used in a powerless situation. He renamed ‘women’s language’ as ‘powerless features’.