language and gender Flashcards
what did Otto Jespersen propose?
The Deficit View
What was the Deficit View?
Jespersen believed that women’s language was ‘deficient’
eg. women are hyperbolic, women link sentences with ‘and’ because they are emotional rather the grammatical, women are more fluent due to their smaller vocabulary sizes
what did Robin Lakoff propose?
The Deference model
What was the Deference model?
- Lakoff identified 10 features of ‘Women’s language’
- she believed women were socially conditioned to speak in a deferential way, which grants men higher status
- eg. hypercorrectness, superpoliteness, tag questions
criticism of Lakoff
- lakoff was one of the first serious social linguists to look at gender
- however she did not do any impirical research
- and her observation was based solely off her availability sample (highly-educated, middle class women)
what did Zimmerman and West propose?
The Dominance Model
what was the Dominance Model in response to?
- a response to Lakoff’s ideas
- whereas Lakoff said that women’s behavior is weak and men merely respond appropriately to it
- The Dominance Model claims that men deliberately behave in an uncooperative way when talking to women in order to undermine and dominate them
what two kinds of turn-taking violations did Z+W identify in their Dominance model?
1) Overlaps
a slight over anticipation of the end of the interlocutors turn
2) Interruptions
the next interlocutor decides to speak at a point which is clearly not the transition relevance point
interruptions prevent a speaker from completing their turn
what did Z+W find when counting irregularities between same-sex pairs?
- men overlap women, women don’t overlap men
- men interrupt women 23x more than women interrupt men
Beattie’s criticism of Zimmerman and West
- criticized their very small data sample
- also identified that most of the interruptions were from one particular individual which skewed the data sample
-also challenged their interpretations of interruptions, saying they could be interpreted as excitement or enthusiasm
G. Eaken’s and B. Eaken’s criticism of Z+W
- studied interruptions in university faculty meetings
- there was a hierarchal preference as people with higher status were not interrupted
dominance through minimal responses
- identified a ‘delayed minimal response’
- pausing before you say ‘mhm’ reverses the effect
- exclusively used by men when talking to women
- actively chosen to show boredom and lack of engagement
Pamela Fishman
- taped three young couples over several days and counted the number of tag questions used by the speaker
- Fishman noticed that women she studied used tag question ‘y’know’ 5x more than men
- she claimed that this tag question is an attempt to stimulate a response from the male interlocutor
- she concluded that men actively withhold support from women, making women do the ‘conversational shitwork’
Janet Holmes
- tags can be used for two different purposes
1) speaker-oriented tags
used for the benefit of the speaker
eg. its 12o’clock isn’t it?
2) addressee-oriented tags
used fir the benefit of the listener either for support
eg. That’s a nice picture, isn’t it?
or as a hedge
eg. That was a bit silly, wasn’t it?
what did Holmes’s study reveal?
- men and women used about the same number of tags
- men used far more speaker-oriented tags
- women used far more addressee-oriented tags
what did DeFrancisco observe?
observed that women:
- introduce more topics than women
- talk more than men
- worked harder at keeping the conversations going
Helenea Leet Pellegrini
1) male experts
2) female experts 2) male non experts
3)female non experts
what did Deborah Tannen observation?
- men and women’s language is different because of social conditioning
- these differences are not a result of women’s deference of men’s attempt to dominate them
- ‘boys and girls grow up in different cultures’, ‘ talk between men and women is cross-cultural communication’
- boys socialize through shared competitive activity whereas women socialize through collaboration/ co operation
the different purposes of Men/Women’s conversation
womens conversation is predominantly rapport talk to establish and maintain relationships
mens conversation is report talk used to give information
Tannen’s binary opposites
M W
status v support
independence v intimacy
advice v understanding
information v feelings
orders v proposals
Tannen and turn violations
Tannen identified two kinds of turn violations
1) uncooperative overlaps
what Zimmerman + West would call an interruption
2) co operative overlaps
what did Tannen say cooperative overlaps are a sign of?
high involvement speakers
what is the Andocentric principle and who is it by?
Anne Bodine
the idea that make stuff is always superior to girl stuff and language clearly centers around men
what are the four categories that Deborah Jones claims womens talk falls into?
- house talk
- scandal
- bitching
- chatting
