Gender Language theorists Flashcards
What did Jespersen’s Deficit View suggest about women’s language?
- The Deficit View: Women’s Language is “deficient” (inadequate)
- Common thought among many people at the time (1922)
What did Lakoff’s Deference Model suggest about Women’s Language?
- Women are socialised into being “deferential” (submissive)
3 examples: - Hypercorrectness
- Superpolitness (would you mind?)
- Empty adjectives of approval (cute)
What did Zimmerman and West’s Dominance Model suggest about Women’s Language?
- The Dominance Model: Men use interruptions during conversation to actively dominate women
- Overlaps are used to show support and engagement (within 2 or 3 words of the TRP)
What did Fishman suggest about Women’s Language?
- Women use the tag “y’know” 5x more than men
- Men actively withhold support from women
What did Holmes say about tag questions?
- They aren’t always requests for support (speaker-oriented)
- They can politely invite the other interlocutor into conversation (addressee-oriented)
What did DeFrancisco say about gender and language?
- Women introduce more topics and work harder to keep conversations going
- Men choose or reject topics
- This is called “conversational shiftwork”
What did Leet-Pelligrini say about gender and language?
- Gender AND expertise determine dominance
1. Male experts
2. Female experts + Male non-experts
3. Female non-experts
What did Tannen’s difference model suggest caused differences in language?
- Men and women are just different
- Boys socialise through competitive activities (e.g sport)
- Girls socialise through cooperative activities
- There are binary opposites such as info vs feelings or advice vs understanding
What did Fishman’s study on tag questions reveal?
- Women use the tag “y’know” 5x more than men
- This is because men actively withhold support from women
What did Holmes’ study on tag questions reveal?
- It criticised Fishman’s study
- Identified two types of tag questions
- Speaker oriented: the speaker benefits (mostly men)
- Addressee oriented: other interlocutor benefits (mostly women)
What is Anne Bodine’s Androcentric principle?
- Male speech features are valued higher than female speech features
- Women’s speech features are always condemned, even when behaving like men
What did Deborah Jones’ study on women’s conversation reveal?
- Women’s talk falls into 4 categories
1. House talk
2. Scandal (judging the behaviours of others)
3. Bitching (raging at women’s injustice)
4. Chatting (intimate things that build relationships)
What did Carmen Fought’s study on “power tools” reveal?
- Stigmatised female features such as “like” and uptalk help young women build relationships
- Young women tend to start language changes and are condemned
What did Koenraad Kuiper’s Rugby Club study reveal?
- Face threats are common amongst men
- Negative reactions to the face threats are stigmatised
What did Cameron say about Performative Language?
- All language and gender features are chosen to present ourselves in different ways
- Performing to social norms and expectations = “verbal hygiene”
What did Butler say about Performative Language?
- Gender is a choice that chooses how you perform (e.g. falsetto in Podesva’s study)
What did Coates say about men’s and women’s conversations?
- Men tell jokes
- Women tell stories
What did O’Barr and Atkins say about speech?
- Feature usage is determined by status not gender
- It is Powerless language, not Women’s Language
What dud Butler say about Drag Queens?
They identify and perform femininity for money
What did Baxter say about power and language?
- Powerful women act like Powerful men
- Therefore power > gender
What did Eakens and Eakens say about gendered language?
- Observed uni faculty meetings
- found indirect correlation between place in hierarchy and interruptions suffered (regardless of gender)
- They also found that men used delayed minimal responses to silence women
What did Pilkington’s Bakery Study say about single sex conversations?
Women:
- Talk is used to maintain social relationships
- Agree frequently and collaborate on stories
Men
- Disagree and compete
