Language And Gender

Question 1

Heteronormativity

Answer 1

A set of norms or expectations based on heterosexuality

Question 2

Anthropomorphism

Answer 2

Imposing human qualities on the animals and objects around us

Question 3

Generic

Answer 3

For general use or general reference

Question 4

What’s the generic form of reference ?

Answer 4

‘He’. Referring to people in the world as male. Researchers show that children didn’t process the term ‘he’ or ‘man’ as referring to both sexes, but as only referring to male figures

Question 5

Marking

Answer 5

Identifying an item as different from the norm. Eg. ‘A family man’- the term family modifies the noun man, marking the man as a particular type of man, someone who spends time with his family. Suggests that there are other kinds of men who don’t do this

Question 6

Tautology

Answer 6

Producing redundancy in meaning by saying the same thing twice. Eg. ‘A family woman’. Phrase sounds odd because the traditional idea of a woman is that she’s family oriented

Question 7

Male as norm

Answer 7

Male is correct, standard and the female is incorrect, substandard with resulting pressure on the female to change.
Believed that they fell into different spheres:
Women- caring/stay at home taking care of the children
Men- make a living

Question 8

Sex Discrimination Act of 1975

Answer 8

It became illegal to write a job advertisement in a way that implied people of only one sex could apply

Question 9

Patronyms

Answer 9

Names that reflect male lines of inheritance. Eg. O’Brien

Question 10

Matronyms

Answer 10

Names that reflect female lines of inheritance. Eg. Icelandic and Nordic societies- dottir or son

Question 11

Endearment

Answer 11

Term used to address someone without using the person’s name

Question 12

Collocation

Answer 12

The regular occurrence of a word or phrase alongside others

Question 13

Concordance line

Answer 13

A line of a text from a corpus, showing where the searched item occurred within a sentence or utterance

Question 14

Lexical priming. Hoey 2005

Answer 14

The way in which some words appear to be ready made for certain meanings, as a result of their habitual use in the same contexts. Eg. A good woman, the good girl, iron man 2, the wolf man

Question 15

Where does the idea that men and women speak different languages come from?

Answer 15

Old story based on a mistake. Early anthropologists studying language and culture in what is now the Caribbean, thought they had discovered men and women speaking different languages within the same society. It turned out that one group of men (The Caribs) had killed the men in another group (The Arawaks) and abducted the Arawak women. They were really speaking different languages but not because of gender

Question 16

Sexism

Answer 16

Androcentric

• language was built by men because society was controlled by men
• Lang. Has a built in bias towards men

Question 17

Lakoff

Answer 17

She looked at the characteristics of female language. Women were disadvantaged by having to adopt forms of language that made them sound unconfident. Eg. Hesitation, approval seeking tag questions, hedges such as sort of

Question 18

Dale Spender

Answer 18

• language as a result of maintaining male dominance and women’s language is a result of subordination
• women were trapped in a world of language that was not of their making, because men had historically controlled the meanings. Eg. Taboo term avoided by women, referred to a part of their bodies

Question 19

Thorne and Henley 1975

Answer 19

Men interrupted women more than the other way around- regarded as a universal trait that could be applied to all male-female interactions

Question 20

Descriptions of men

Answer 20

Positive connotations such as strong, dominant, powerful, competitive. Some being references to popular characters society will recognise as being interested in women such as Don Juan, Casanova

Question 21

Descriptions of women

Answer 21

Caring, loving, nurturing, sensible. Negative connotations, typically used in the modern day such as bitch. No positive description of a sexually active woman

Question 22

Cameron 2007

Answer 22

All theories were biased because they concentrated on the differences between men and women’s speech rather than the difference, it’s more to do with the situations, not gender

Question 23

Difference model. Deborah Tannen

Answer 23

Male and female cultures. In single sex groups, men and women understand each other; but when they come together, there are misunderstandings

Question 24

What did Deborah claim by seeing her results?

Answer 24

Men were more concerned with status and independence whereas women wanted affiliation, maintain the strength of the community, try to avoid conflict, show support rather than solutions

Question 25

Tannen’s study method

Answer 25

Took a number of speech events such as questions,consultations,apologies, problem sharing and troubles talk, reporting experiences

Question 26

What did Tannen claim by looking at speech events?

Answer 26

Men and women could use exactly the same words but have very different understandings of them. Eg. Mixed-sex interactions

Question 27

Criticism of Tannen’s further research

Answer 27

• Men and women don’t normally grow up in different communities in the way suggested, so they can’t be unaware of each other’s meanings
• the way of how ‘different’ is used in societies

Question 28

Folk-linguistics male and female talk

Answer 28

Popular cultural beliefs about language that have been passed down through generations. Eg. Women talk more than men.

Question 29

What does modern research show about male and female talk?

Answer 29

The amount of talk we produce depends on the context we are in. Eg. Men talking about sports in a pub

Question 30

History of the connection between language and gender

Answer 30

Previously, language was a result of gender: I am male or female, therefore I use language in this way. Now language is seen as constructing gender: I use language in this way, which constructs a certain kind of gender identity. Eg. Gender fluid ‘he or she’-they.

Question 31

Dominance model

Answer 31

Zimmerman and West

Question 32

What did Zimmerman and West argue?

Answer 32

Men were more dominant in opposite sex conversations. They supported the claim by recording conversations between men and women and finding that men interrupted 96% of the time

Question 33

Who disagreed with the dominance model what did she argue?

Answer 33

Beattie. The majority of interruptions were supported, which in fact shows listening

Question 34

Jennifer Coates

Answer 34

Men will often reject topics of conversations introduced by women while women accept topics introduced by men. Men will discuss male topics such as sports and women are more likely to initiate the conversation but are less likely to make it succeed