Genderlect Flashcards
Semantic rule of male-as-norm (requirement to classify words on the premise that the standard/normal human being is a male one)
Dale Spender
Conventional language use puts women in their place through sexist language/being left out of language.
Language and the woman’s place - Robin Lakoff 1973
Girls are socialised to use language in a way that makes them sound trivial, silly, powerless or uncertain. This women’s talk includes:
Tag questions
Hedges
Weak expletives/avoiding course language
Empty adjectives
Intensifiers
Euphemisms
Apologising more
Speaking less frequently
Hyper-correct grammar/punctuation
Indirect requests
Using tone to emphasise certain words
Lack of humour
Rising intonation
Modal constructions
Direct quotation
Wh- imperatives
Special lexicon
Robin Lakoff
Studied courtroom cases for 30 months to observe a broad spectrum of witnesses examining them for the features of woman’s talk identified by Robin Lakoff and discovered that woman’s talk is not necessarily due to being a woman but actually a result of being powerless.
O’Barr & Atkins
Men and women are biologically different so speak differently.
Men vs woman:
Status vs support
Independence vs intimacy
Advice vs understanding/support
Information vs feeling
Order vs proposal
Conflict vs compromise
Difference approach - Deborah Tannen 1980s
Tag questions have a range of purposes other than just sounding uncertain
Janet Holmes
Men interrupt women to assert dominance
Zimmerman and West
Interruptions are equal by gender and don’t always assert dominance. For example back channel support
Beattie
Women and men aren’t so different. Women are just held to a higher level of verbal hygiene
Janet Hyde
Power in language is a result of context and function rather than gender
Deborah Cameron
