individual variation theorists

Question 1

Give some linguistic features of a dominant speaker.

Answer 1

• set agenda of conversation
• initiate conversation
• controls topic shifts
• reinforces behavioral patterns
• interrupts/ overlaps

Question 2

Give some linguistic features of a submissive speaker.

Answer 2

• responds to instructions
• speaks less
• follows agenda
• acts respectfully
• hedges and uses fillers
• avoids familiar language

Question 3

What is Howard Gile’s accommodation theory?

Answer 3

he believed speakers did one of two things when gaining the respect of an audience

converge: making language similar to that of the audience’s
diverge: intentionally differing your language from the audience’s

Question 4

Describe Peter Trudgill’s theory of prestige.

Answer 4

Two forms of prestige:
overt: making your language far more formal to sound of a higher class/ more intellectual.
covert: lowering the quality of your language to gain peer approval.
(women tended to use overt and men tended o use covert according to Trudgill)

Question 5

describe female language according to Robin Lackoff’s - a woman’s place 1975

Answer 5

women apparently use:

• occupational lexis
• domestic lexis
• qualitative adjectives
• weaker expletives than men
• [so] as a quantifier

Question 6

What are the different types of Tag Question Holmes theorised, and what percentage male or female use are they?

Answer 6

modal tags: to gain information - 61% male use
facilitative tags: to gain approval and encourage - 75% female use
affective tags: to soften situations - 63% female use

Question 7

Describe Zimmerman and West’s dominance theory

Answer 7

Males dominate conversations through interruption, overlapping and speaking as though they are right.

Question 8

what are the 5 main differences between male and female speech in Tannen’s difference theory?

Answer 8

male v female:
status v support
independence v intimacy
advice v understanding
information v feeling
ordering v proposal

Question 9

what are the two types of power and their definitions?

Answer 9

instrumental: can do/change things about society or certain situations
influential: can change people’s opinion’s but cannot cause literal change to happen

Question 10

What are Grice’s maxims of cooperation?

Answer 10

Quantity: are they as informative as possible?
Quality: are they as truthful as possible?
Relation: are they as relative as possible?
Manner: are they as clear as possible?

Question 11

What is Brown and Levinson’s politeness theory?

Answer 11

They theorised that we all have two faces:
Positive face: the need to feel accepted
Negative face: the need to be independent
They also theorised threats to these faces
Threat to positive: insulting something personal
Threatt to negative: Ordering or imposing onto someone’s freedom