Language and Gender Flashcards
Marked Term
The unusual form of a term, often shown by an additional suffix e.g. ladette. The unmarked term would be the regular form e.g. lad.
Rapport Talk
Attempting to build relationships through speech. Typically associated with female speech.
Pejorative Term
A judgemental term that usually implies disapproval or criticism.
Up Talk
Rising intonation used at the end of declarative statements.
Verbal Hygiene
The effort to improve or correct speech and writing to arrest change in language.
Hegemonic Masculinity
Language and behaviour associated with an idealised male group that is seen to have the most power and status within society.
Hedging
A word or phrase that makes a statement less forceful or assertive.
Filler
A seemingly meaningless word, phrase or sound that marks a pause or hesitation in speech.
Genderlect
The particular dialect used by men and women depending on their gender.
Hypercorrection
A pronunciation, word form or grammatical construction produced by mistaken analogy with standard usage in a desire to be correct.
Minimal Response
Short sounds or words that are used to maintain a conversation. Shows the listener is listening.
Social Constructivism
Places importance on social interaction as constructing identity and people coming together to create a shared construction of the world.
Semantic Reclamation
Where a group of individuals reclaim the negative meaning of a word in attempts to make it more positive.
Deficit Model
The belief that language used by women is inferior to the language used by men.
Dominance Model
The belief that the differences in language use by men and women can be explained by the hierarchical dominance of men within society.
Difference Model
The belief that men and women have innate differences in the style and function of their speech and writing.
Diversity Model
The belief that gender is not the only thing influencing men and women’s language use, rather their language behaviours are affected by the groups they belong to.
Lakoff on Gendered language
Deficit
Women are socialised into behaving like ‘ladies’ (linguistically and within society) and that this subordinate position within society stops them being powerful.
Features Lakoff found which made womenspeak sound inferior
Hedge: using phrases such as “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”, etc.
Use (super) Polite forms: “Would you mind”, “I’d appreciate if”, “if you don’t mind”.
Use Tag Questions: “You’re going to dinner, aren’t you?”
Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and clear enunciation.
Use “Wh” imperatives: “Why don’t you open the door?”
Speak less frequently
Apologise more
Use Modal Constructions: Such as can, would, should, ought to.
Dale Spender on Gendered Language
Believes that a male dominated society has structured and regulated language to reflect men’s best interests.
Zimmerman and West study on Language and Gender
Men are more likely to interrupt women in a mixed sex conversation, suggesting their dominance.
Beattie’s criticism of Zimmerman and West’s study
Critical of Zimmerman and West. In his own study found that whilst men interrupted more it was by such a slight margin that it wasn’t statistically significant.
Pamela Fishman on women in language
Women do more of the conversational work, due to their inferior position within society.
Deborah Tannen on language and gender
Women use language differently from men not out of inferiority, but because they have been socialised differently and have different conversational goals. They are aiming to keep a conversation going through their use of tag questions.
6 differences identified by Tannen
Status vs. support
Independence vs. intimacy
Advice vs. understanding
Information vs. feelings
Orders vs. proposals
Conflict vs. compromise
Jennifer Coates identify on gender differences in language
Found that boys and girls tended to belong to same sex friendship groups and subsequently developed different styles of speaking.
Deborah Jones’s categorisation on women’s talk
Categorised women’s talk into four main groups; house talk, scandal, bitching and chatting.
differences Jane Pilkington identified in gendered language
Women in same sex conversations are collaborative and used positive politeness strategies. Men in same sex conversations were less collaborative, less complimentary and less supportive than women.
Penelope Eckert on Gendered language
Diversification
Suggested that we need to explore other reason for language variation such as class.
Deborah Cameron on gendered language
Diversity
The gender ‘template’ doesn’t fit everyone; suggesting that there can be as many differences in communication between two men as there could be between a man and a woman.
Janet Holmes’ research identified
Diversity
Researched tag questions; discovering they could be used to express solidarity, or that they could weaken a command or criticism.
O’Barr and Atkins Courtroom study
Studied courtrooms and the speech of witnesses. Found that language differences are based on situation specific authority or power, rather than gender.
Judith Butler’s Gender Performitivity
The way we present ourselves, such as our speech and body language, and continually repeat these presentations, constructs our gender rather than reflecting it.
Jenny Cheshire on prestige
Males are more susceptible to covert prestige, but social attitude is more of a determining factor than gender.
James Pennebaker on number of words spoken by each gender
In mixed sex conversation the average number of words spoken by men and women were about the same. There was more difference noted within genders than between them.
