Language and gender

Question 1

What is a patronym?

Answer 1

A name that relates to the male inheritance line (e.g. ‘son’ as in ‘Johnson’ and ‘Mac’ as in ‘MacDonald’)

Question 2

What are diminutive suffixes and how are they used in job titles?

Answer 2

Suffixes can be added to job titles (e.g. ‘waitress’, ‘actress’) in order to make a feminine version of the job. This can be problematic because it separates them, and possibly seems less important

Question 3

What is lexical priming and who coined this term?

Answer 3

Hoey (2005). This refers to the idea that some words and phrases can carry an innate gender prejudice (e.g. ‘grumpy old man’)

Question 4

What did Muriel Schulz suggest and when?

Answer 4

1975- Lexical asymmetry/semantic derogation. This is when pairs of words that should have similar meanings exhibit asymmetry when about gender. Examples include madam/sir, bachelor/spinster, wizard/witch.

Question 5

While English-speaking countries use patronyms, what is an example of a country that uses matronyms?

Answer 5

Iceland. This shows that perhaps gender issues in language are not necessarily only about females, but depends on culture and stuff

Question 6

What did Hines observe and when?

Answer 6

1994- they observed that women are often referred to within the semantic field of desserts (cupcake, sweet, tart)

Question 7

What is the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis?

Answer 7

Sapir and Whorf are two people who came to the conclusion that our language constructs our view of the world and this is difficult to think beyond that

Question 8

What are marked terms and how are they potentially problematic?

Answer 8

Marked terms are when regular words are marked by gender, such as ‘male nurse’, ‘male prostitute’, and ‘working mother’. These can be problematic because they hold a certain sort of surprise when people step outside of the gender roles

Question 9

What were Tannen’s six contrasts from her book ‘You Just Don’t Understand’?

Answer 9

Status versus support- men seek status and are more competitive, while women use language to gain confirmation and support
Information versus feelings- men work with information, whereas women expect more emotional needs to be met
Advice versus understanding- women want their problems understood, while men tend to problem solve
Independence versus intimacy- Men are concerned with status and don’t want to be reliant whereas women want to feel close to the people they communicate with.
Orders versus proposals- women suggest things, men state things
Conflict versus compromise- men create conflict to show off their status, women compromise to solve problems

Question 10

Name three of Lakoff’s key traits that females use (more are listed)

Answer 10

Hedges, tag questions, super-polite forms, hyper-correct grammar, indirect requests, empty adjectives

Question 11

What study did Penelope Eckert carry out and when?

Answer 11

Jocks and Burnouts in 1989

Question 12

What was the result of the Jocks and Burnouts study?

Answer 12

Those who share social activities were more likely to use similar forms of language rather than those who were the same gender

Question 13

What was the study conducted by O’Barr and Atkins, and when did it happen?

Answer 13

1980- They studied courtroom cases and found that language differences in witness speeches were more based on context, situation, and roles rather than gender. Both men and women used powerless language at times, it depended on the context

Question 14

What was Otto Jesperson’s view and when did he publish it?

Answer 14

1922- He argued that male language was the ‘norm’ and the language of others was ‘deficient’.

Question 15

Who suggested that gender was performative and when?

Answer 15

Judith Butler- 1990

Question 16

What did Janet Hyde suggest in 2005?

Answer 16

She proposed a ‘gender similarities hypothesis’, which meant that there were more similarities than differences in the way that men and women use language. In fact, other factors such as age, occupation, class and sexuality probably had more to do with it

Question 17

What are the four ‘D’ models?

Answer 17

Deficit- this is basically Jesperson’s idea that somehow female language is lacking in something
Dominance- male speech is simply more dominant than female speech in conversation. They interrupt more, too
Difference- there is a difference between their speech, but neither is better than the other. They have different aims more than language (Tannen’s contrasts)
Dynamic/diversity- this is a Deborah Cameron heavy idea. Basically this suggests that gender does not matter compare to other factors in language

Question 18

What was Pamela Fishman’s term for how women put in work to keep a conversation going?

Answer 18

Shitwork

Question 19

Which theorists found out that men tend to interrupt conversations more than women?

Answer 19

Zimmerman and West

Question 20

What did Judith Butler research in 2006 and what were her findings?

Answer 20

She looked into mixed sex classrooms and how they operated. She found that the boys who were most dominant relied on ‘sidekicks’ to help them take and keep the floor, whereas the girls who tried to do this were just as assertive but their peers refused to act as sidekicks

Question 21

What were McRae’s results in 2009?

Answer 21

Men and women in workplace meetings did not differ in their styles of speaking- both featured a relatively co-operative style, but overall it was still men who were more likely to get their points acknowledged and acted upon