Gender Theorists Flashcards
George Keith and John Shuttleworth (1999)
- Theorised that men and women display different traits when talking in spontaneous conversation.
Women - Talk more than men
- Are more polite
- Complain
Men - Swear more
- Talk about women and machines in the same way
- Competitive in conversation
Peter Trudgill (The Norwich study)
- Men used the non-standard form more than women, across all social classes.
- Women are more susceptible to overt prestige.
- Women are more ‘status conscious’.
Otto Jespersen (1922)
- Male language forms are the ‘norm’ and the language of others (including women) were ‘deficient’.
- Women use less sophisticated vocabulary than men.
This study is incredibly outdated and unreliable as it was written in 1922, when women were not able to be in higher positions
Robin Lakoff (1975)
- Uses a deficit approach.
- She sees female language to be deficient due to a variety of features:
- Hedges (phrases like ‘sort of’ and ‘kind of’)
- Empty adjectives ‘adorable’ ‘gorgeous’
- Super polite forms.
William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins (1980)
- Discovered that the differences that Lakoff and others supported are not necessarily the result of being a woman, but of being powerless.
- They concluded from their study that the quoted speech patterns were “neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women”.
Jenny Cheshire (1982)
- Looked specifically at grammatical variations in the speech of young children. She considered the frequency of the children using:
- *Non-standard ‘s’ (she calls me…)
- *Non-standard ‘has’ (you has to…)
- Multiple negation
- Overall, boys used the non-standard forms more frequently than girls did.
- Variation in boys’ speech is governed by the norms that are central to the vernacular culture.
- Variation in girls’ speech is more of a personal process; less rigidly controlled by vernacular norms.
Pamela Fishman (1983)
- Fishman argued that for women, tag questions are actually used to start conversations with men and to subsequently continue and sustain dialogue.
- Men often do not respond to a declarative statement or will respond minimally.
- Women are the ones who are trying to initiate a conversation and keep it going, an action she terms Conversational Shitwork
Deborah Tannen (1990)
- The difference model is the theory that men and women do speak differently.
- Represents male and female language use in a series of six contrasts to show this difference:
- Status vs Support = Men use language to show power and dominance in conversations. Women are more likely to use language that supports and agrees with others.
- Independence vs Intimacy = Men will use language to show they do not need to rely on others. Women use language to connect.
- Advice vs Understanding = Men are more likely to offer solutions to problems. Women will show empathy and understanding.
- Information vs Feelings = Men are far more likely to be factual in their language choices. Women will use language choices that are less factual and more emotional.
- Orders vs Proposals = Men are far more likely to be direct in their language, using imperatives to command others. Women will avoid a commanding tone and be more suggestive.
- Conflict vs Compromise = Men are more likely to use language to argue a point. Women will use language to avoid such conflict, and far more likely to negotiate a solution.
Zimmerman and West
- Zimmerman and West concluded from their study that “men deny equal status to women as conversational partners”.
- By interrupting men can prevent females from talking and can gain the floor for their own discussion; “they engineer female silence”.
Dale Spender
Spender believed that, by being more active in public life than women, men have been more able to get their opinions heard.
Jennifer Coates
Coates theorises that girls and boys develop different styles of speaking due to their largely differing interactions in their all boys and all girls friendship groups.
Deborah Cameron (1995)
Verbal hygiene theory
Women are socialised to be feminine so their language must reflect that, e.g not being taboo.
Mary Talbot
“Gender… is socially constructed. People acquire characteristics which are perceived as ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’.
Julia Stanley
- Found that many of the words for women had sexual overtones.
- Of a smaller sample, there were 220 words for a sexually promiscuous female and 20 for a sexually promiscuous male.
Sara Mills
Suggests that many female terms are marked and indicate sexual promiscuity (mistress, madam, hostess) whereas unmarked male terms such as “bachelor” shows freedom and independence.
