Language and Gender

Question 1

Tunstall’s theory on womens roles

Answer 1

Domestic - the contented mother
Sexual - sex objects
Consumer - eager consumers
Marital - busy housewives

Question 2

Janet Holmes terms to describe women

Answer 2

metaphors are largely derogative
animal imagery for woman is negative - sweet but helpless, positive animal imagery for men - sexual prowess and predatory
Saccharine food imagery is common for women ‘sweetie’
less complimentary terms for women ‘tart’
neutral or affectionate terms acquire negative connotations and refer to women as sexual objects

Question 3

Difference model, Tannen

Answer 3

Intimacy vs independence
advice vs understanding
information vs feelings
orders vs proposals
conflict vs compromise

men and women are different, one is not dominant over the other, they have different aims in conversation, men compete women cooperate, different social expectations, men see language as a means of asserting dominance, women see it as a way of supporting ideas

Question 4

Dominance model, Lakoff

Answer 4

suggested women are more polite and have a poorer sense of humour than men
suggested that specific linguistic discursive features marked powerlessness of women, women are socialised into using these features as part of their subservient role to men

Question 5

O’barr and Atkins criticism of Lakoff

Answer 5

language differences are based on situation-specific authority or power and not gender

Question 6

Standard English and gender, Trudgill 1974

Answer 6

men used more non-standard English than women regardless of social class, men reported they used non-standard English and women reported they used SE even when they hadn’t
men deliberately adopted non-SE have covert prestige and women did the opposite for overt prestige

Question 7

Use of prestigious language

Answer 7

women are less secure than men in terms of social status and need to prove status through language, expected to behave ladylike, men are more likely to seek covert prestige with non-SE to appear tough and rebellious

Question 8

Zimmerman and West 1975

Answer 8

found men interrupted more, 96% of interruptions were by men

Question 9

Deficit model

Answer 9

model that shows the common forms of language acquisition women use:
hedging, use of polite forms, tag questions, speak in italics, use empty adjectives, hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation, use direct quotations, have special lexicon, use question intonation in declarative statements, “wh-“ imperatives, speak less frequently, overuse of qualifiers, apologising more, indirect commands, more intensifiers, lack a sense of humour

Question 10

Halliday, Ideational Metafunction

Answer 10

tool for deconstructing how gender is constructed or represented through language

1. who and whom = participants, do or have things done to them
2. is doing that = processes
3. when, where and how = circumstances