gender theorists Flashcards
what was Julia Stanleys theory about?
in 1977 she compiled similar inventories of words and found that there are more words for men and that there were more positive words, she also discovered many of the words for females has sexual overtones- she concluded that language embodies sexual inequality
what did Muriel Shultz theorise?
the fact there are more negative words aimed at women is no mistake, it represents patriarchal order and words that are marked for females become essentially swear words.
Janet Holmes pet-name theories
1992 Animal imagery used for women- bird, duck, chick all have connotations of flighty, helpless, chirpy whereas men are wolf and powerful and dominant.
Women are equally described as food: sugar sweetie, honey not often used for men. However less complimentary terms like crumpet or tart and restricted to women. By contrast there is little to no food imagery for men.
what was Fishman’s experiment and conclusion?
in 1983 she recorded couples everyday conversations, concluded women do the “donkeywork of the conversation” which is why women are pushed into low status interactional work just as they are pushed into low status jobs
what were the four types of female “talk” that Jones identified?
1990 “house-talk” “scandal” “bitching” and “chatting”
What was Goodwins experiment?
1980, noticed different genders of children play differently, girls play together and suggest things to play and do whereas boys play is hierarchical and very instructive and competitive.
What did Maltz and Borker do with Goodwins findings?
1982, they used them to understand the miscommunication in men and women’s speech and how the genders can easily misunderstand each other purely because of the way they interpret different aspects of language,. Example is backchannel features and the idea that women use them to show listening but men think “why is she agreeing with everything i say?”
What did Janet Holmes find about women’s use of politeness?
in 1995 Holmes found that women use compliments to consolidate solidarity between speaker and addressee, hedging is also used to modify the force of a statement and women use it to avoid sounding too “sure of themselves”
