Langauge And Gender Flashcards
Deficit theorists
Lakoff (1975)
Jespersen (1922)
Dominance theorists
Zimmerman and West (1975) Deborah Tannan (1992)
Difference theorists
Keith and Shuttleworth (1990) Tannen's diff. model (1990) Komarovsky (1962) Janet Holmes (1984) Fishman (1980) Robin Lakoff (1975)
Modern theories
Deborah Cameron (2008) Jane Hyde (2005) Mary Talbot (2010)
Lakoff (1975) - deficit
“women’s vocabulary includes trivial words…they are relegated to decisions on unimportant subjects”
Lakoff (1975) - deficit
"”a woman will include tag questions, intensifiers and qualifiers to add uncertainty to her speech and avoid opinion”
Jespersen (1922) - deficit
“there is a danger of the language becoming vague and insipid if we are to content ourselves with the language of women”
Zimmerman and West (1975) - dominance
“men dominate by interrupting. 31 conversation snippets, 46 interruptions male, 2 women. Women kept being interrupted so spoke less”
Deborah Tannen (1992) - dominance
“men assume role of information giver because this reinforces strength and status”
Deborah Tannen (1992) - dominance
“women see listening as supporting which is essential for bonding, this is why they dominate less”
Deborah Tannen (1992) - difference
“men use imperatives to come across as an authoritative figure. Women do the same but cloak the imperative, eg, lets go downstairs instead of go downstairs”
Keith and Shuttleworth (1990) - difference
Common differences in language used by each gender.
Women - polite, indecisive, supportive.
Men - interrupt, swear, talk about sport, no emotion
Tannen’s difference model (1990)
“support vs status / intimacy vs independence / understanding vs advice. Conforms to individual evolutionary functions”
Komarovsky (1962) - difference
58 working class couples speaking. Men = business, money, sport. Women = Family and personal matters.
Janet Holmes (1984) - difference
“women use 75% facilitative tags, men use 61% modal tags. Modal tags = seek info. Facilitative tags = draw listener in”
Fishman (1980) - difference/dominance
“women use 3 times more tags than men and say ‘you know’ 5 times more often. This isn’t to express uncertainty but to keep the conversation going”
Robin Lakoff (1975) - difference
“women are more likely to comply to grammatical rules than men”
Deborah Cameron (2008) - modern theory
“the idea that men and women use language in very different ways and for very different reasons is one of the great myths of our time”
Jane Hyde (2005) - modern theory
“there are more similarities than differences between male and female languages. Differences often stem from age, class, education, occupation or sexuality”
Mary Talbot (2010) - modern theory
“gender is socially constructed. People will acquire characteristics that are either ‘masculine’ or ‘feminine’ and their language will reflect this”
