Language And Gender Flashcards
Idiolect
An individual’s personalised speech style
(E.g. Gender, sexuality, age, occupation, ethnicity, social class, region, country)
Identity
Who someone is
Variation
Difference in language use
Sociolect
A language style associated with a particular social group
Genderlect
A style of speech used by a particular gender
Sue Lees (1981)
Men control female sexual behaviour through derogatory terms - sexist language
(E.g. Slut, cougar, minx)
Terms of address
Words or titles used to address another person
Caitlin Hines (1994)
Women are often referred to as desserts - terms of address
(E.g. Cupcake, screetie, tart)
Lexical asymmetry
Pair of words which should be equal but aren’t
E.g.
Male: bachelor, wizard, lord, master
Female: spinster, witch, lady, mistress
Muriel Schulz (1975)
Suggested that pairs of words that would normally be seen as equivalents often exhibit asymmetry when they are about gender
Diminutive suffixes
Using ‘-ess’ or ‘-etté’ as a suffix to make words feminine and therefore smaller or weaker
Pejoration
The process of a word gaining more negative connotations over time
Patronyms
Names that reflect male lines of inheritance
E.g.
Son: Thompson, Samson, Richardson
Mac: McDonald, Macdougal
O: O’Brian, O’Leary, O’Hagan
False generics
Words which claim to include everyone but do not
(E.g. Mankind, man-made, man’s basic needs)
Julia Stanley (1979)
Women are not linguistically represented in our language
Dale Spender (1980)
The ‘male as norm’ rule makes male dominance seem natural
Language reflectionism
The belief that language reflects our thoughts
Language determinism
The belief that language determines own thoughts
Stereotypes - gender
Societal expectations about how men and women should behave, dress, or think
(E.g. The belief that women are less capable in science on that men should be tough and emotionless)
Gender discourses
Refers to discussions and debates about gender roles, stereotypes, and inequalities in society
Sally Hunt (2017)
- Explored how language is used to reinforce gender stereotypes and inequalities
- Gendered language: certain words and phrases are associated with femininity or masculinity
- Argued that gendered language patterns have a significant impact on how we perceive men and women and contribute to a broader societal acceptance of gender inequality
Deficit model
Women’s language is lacking something
Otto Jesperson (1922)
- No research conducted
- Women talk more and use a lot of false starts because they speak before thinking
- The words they use are ‘indispensable small change of a language’ and uses the conjunction ‘and’ more because they’re more emotive then grammatical
- Women use hyperbole a lot and use words like ‘pretty’ and ‘nice’ too much
Robin Lakoff (1975)
- No research and precise statistical evidence (observation only)
- Women use hedges, super-polite forms, tag questions, empty adjectives, direct quotation, minimal responses, intention for questions in declaratives, apologises more, euphemisms, diminutives, wh-imperatives, more modal constructions, indirect commands and request
- Avoid slang and expletives
- Have a lack of a sense of humour
Hedging
Words or phrases that express uncertainty
(E.g. Probably, maybe)
Tag questions
A type of question that are added to the end of a statement to confirm information or seek agreement
(E.g. Have you?, isn’t it? )
Question intonation
Refers to the rising or falling pitch pattern used when asking a question
Wh- imperatives
A type of sentence that is used to ask for information or give instructions
(E.g. Where did you go?, What are you doing?)
Modal verbs
A type of auxiliary verb that help provide additional information about the main verb and express a degree of certainty or obligation
(E.g. Must, shall, will)
Expletives
Words or phrases that are used to fill space or add emphasis to a sentence to convey emotion or emphasise a particular point
(E.g. Um, ah, like)
Can also take the form of swear words or vulgar language
Intensifiers
Words or phrases used to emphasise or strengthen the meaning of other words in a sentence
(E.g. Very, extremely)
Minimal responses
Refer to brief, concise replies or reactions that do not offer much information or contribute to the conversation
(E.g. Yes, no, okay)
O’Barr and Atkins (1980)
- Thought Lakoff’s list was reductive
- Study carried out in America and only in one situation (courtrooms)
- 30 month study of courtroom footage, recorded 150 hrs of trials
- Assessed lawyers, witnesses and defendants
- Language differences are situation specific
- The speech patterns were ‘neither characteristic of all women nor limited to only women’
- Speech patterns were less to do with gender and more to do with perceived power in society
Dominance model
Men’s language is more powerful than women’s language
Zimmerman & West (1975)
- Study carried out in America
- All white middle class participants
- All conversations with two participants
- Men interrupt more than women (46:2)
- Men like to be in charge of conversations and women prefer to be submissive
Geoffrey Beattie (1982)
- Was critical of Zimmerman & West findings
- Study was carried out in university seminars
- Claims to have recorded some 10hrs of tutorial discussion and some 557 interruptions (55 recorded by Z&W)
- Found that women and men interrupted with more or less equal frequency
- Men did interrupt more but by a margin so slight as not to be statistically significant
Pamela Fishman (1983)
- All while middle class participants
- Could turn the tape recorder on and off as they choose
- ‘interaction: the work women do’
- Women used tag questions four times more than men
- ‘conversational shitwork’
- Men speak for twice as long as women
Difference model
Men’s language and women’s language is different
Jennifer Coates (1989)
- Women are co-operative in conversations while men are competitive in conversations
- Acknowledges the tendency of girls to stick to playing in smaller groups whereas boys will adhere to play in larger, hierarchical groups which are based on joint activity
Deborah Tannen (1990)
- Student of Robin Lakoff
- No study conducted (observational)
- Communication technique: co-operative overlap (affirmative) and competitive overlap (disagreement)
- Report (male trait) vs Rapport (female trait)
- Cross cultural communication (male and female, two different cultures interacting)
- Binary oppositions: status vs support, conflict vs compromise, orders vs proposals, independence vs intimacy, advice vs understanding, information vs feelings
Diversity model
Language is affected by a range of factors such as age, occupation and ethnicity
Deborah Cameron (2007)
- Argued that language is not inherently gendered but instead that society assigns gendered meanings to certain words and speech patterns
- “The Myth of Mars and Venus (2008)” : challenges the myths surrounding gender differences and claims there is as much difference and similarity within each gender group as there is between men and women
Janet Hyde (2005)
- Proposed the Gender Similarities Hypothesis (2005)
- there are more similarities than differences between men and women
- Meta-analysis: used this technique to review a large number of studies concerned with all kinds of putative male-female differences
Meta-analysis
A statistical technique that allows the analyst to collate many different research findings and draw overall conclusions from them
