Language and Gender Flashcards
What is the Difference Model?
The argument that men and women’s language has innate differences. Neither is superior, just style of speech contrasts one another because men and women belong to different subcultures.
Deborah Tannen (1990)
Suggests 6 key contrasts between Men and Women’s language:
1. Status vs Support (men see language as competitive, as a way to gain and maintain status) (women seek confirmation)
2. Independence vs Intimacy
3. Advice vs Understanding
4. Information vs Feelings (men exchange information briefly) (women are more emotive so language more verbose)
5. Orders vs Proposals
6. Conflict vs Compromise
Support
John Gray’s book Men Are From Mars Women Are From Venus has a chapter entitled “Speaking Different Languages”
Opposition
Much of her work based on personal, anecdotal evidence.
Extrapolation of results from small scale studies without empiric support
Further opposition by Deborah Cameron (2007)
The idea that men and women speak differently is an unquestioned DOGMA (widespread false idea presented as factual). There are actually few differences between the language of men and women but studies that find this are less likely to be published.
Further opposition by Janet Hyde
‘Gender similarities hypothesis’ Men and women more similar than old research suggests because the researchers were expecting a certain outcome.
Diversity Model
Suggests sex and gender are different things. Sex has no influence on language, instead it is socialisation that affects our language.
Judith Butler
proposed the idea of GENDER PERFORMALITY. The role society expects us to perform based on cultural norms.
Daily Mail Article- “Can your tweets reveal your gender?”
Study exposes inaccurate stereotypes about the words men and women use. “If you tweet about technology people will assume you’re a man”
Deficit Model
argues language used by women is inferior to that used by men.
Robin Lakoff (1975)
Proposed women are disadvantaged by adopting a language of apprehension. Women use specific linguistic features e.g.
Hedges e.g. ‘sort of’, ‘I guess’
Use of super polite forms e.g. “Would you mind…”
Question intonation - lacks certainty and clarity, seeks approval when making a declarative statement
Empty adjectives e.g. lovely - carry little meaning, so difficult to interpret
Tag questions e.g. “You’re going to dinner, aren’t you?” - demonstrates insecurity and hesitance.
Otto Jesperson (1922)
Outdated view that male language is ‘normative’ and the language of others considered extra to the norm.
- Women talk more
- Women use false starts and have half finished sentences before they think before speaking
- Vocabulary is smaller than mens
- Women use conjunction ‘and’ more = lack of complexity in sentence construction
Jesperson makes sweeping generalisations unsubstantiated by empirical investigation. Data includes quotation from literature (fictional examples)
Data for deficit model in contemporary context
Daily Mail Article 2013- Actress Lake Bell insists there is a vocal ‘pandemic’ of adults talking in ‘baby’ voices.
Young women are using ‘uptalk’ and ‘vocal fry’
Sound like ‘12-year-old little girls that are submissive to the male species’
Opposition to the Deficit Model
Pamela Fishman
Believes women use tag questions because they want to invite response and encourage elaboration. Gives women conversational power as they lack societal power
Further opposition-
O’Barr and Atkins (1980)
Analysis of courtroom cases- both men and women use features of ‘uncertainty speech’ Linguistic patterns depend on situation and power dynamics not gender
Data for opposition
Analysing Transcript of 2016 presidential debate between Hilary Clinton and Donald Trump. Hilary does not conform to Lakoff’s language of apprehension. Because, they are in equal positions of power.
Dominance Model
The language of men holds more power than that of a woman because they desire to control conversation, whereas women are more subservient.
Dale Spender 1980 - ‘Man Made Language’
Language is a system that embodies sexual inequality. It is inherently patriarchal .
Language associated with women is ‘marked’ while ‘unmarked’ words are associated with men. E.g. female professions have suffix -ess
Male words refer to both men and women e.g ‘mankind’
Zimmerman and West 1975
Proposed men are more likely to interupt in mixed sex conversations. Studies 31 conversations at Uni of California and found that 96% of interruptions recorded were by men.
Criticisms
Very small sample size that only contained white middle class students under 35. Findings not representative and cannot be used to generalise claims
Geoffrey Beattie- There could have simply been ‘one very voluble man’ in conversations recorded that increased number of interruptions for all men so data not reliable. Beattie also questioned the meanings of interruptions “why do they necessarily reflect dominance? Do some interruptions not reflect interest and involvement?”
Language and Status- Difference between genders
Men supposed to favour COVERT PRESTIGE (non-standard regarded to be of high prestige) while women supposed to favour OVERT PRESTIGE (pertaining to RP/standard forms)
Peter Trudgill’s Norwich Study (1974)
Investigated if there was a difference in use of non-standard forms between genders and different social class
Findings;
Upper working classes and lower middle classes were using non-standard form ‘in’ instead of ‘ing’
All social classes used informality
Men uses non-standard more than women across all social classes.
Jennifer Coats supports
In all styles, women use fewer stigmatised forms than men. In formal contexts (where Trudgill got informants to read from a list of words), women seem to be more sensitive to prestige pattern.
Lower middle-class women style shift very sharply (hypercorrection in formal styles)
Why is this?
Women more status conscious because..
Possibly less socially secure than men in terms of status, feel need to prove status through language. Their economic and social position dependent on men as a result of patriarchy. Women expected to use ‘ladylike language’ and women whose language is more adversary are often labelled ‘unfeminine’
