Language And Gender Flashcards
Heteronormativity
A set of norms or expectations based on heterosexuality
Anthropomorphism
Imposing human qualities on the animals and objects around us
Generic
For general use or general reference
What’s the generic form of reference ?
‘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
Marking
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
Tautology
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
Male as norm
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
Sex Discrimination Act of 1975
It became illegal to write a job advertisement in a way that implied people of only one sex could apply
Patronyms
Names that reflect male lines of inheritance. Eg. O’Brien
Matronyms
Names that reflect female lines of inheritance. Eg. Icelandic and Nordic societies- dottir or son
Endearment
Term used to address someone without using the person’s name
Collocation
The regular occurrence of a word or phrase alongside others
Concordance line
A line of a text from a corpus, showing where the searched item occurred within a sentence or utterance
Lexical priming. Hoey 2005
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
Where does the idea that men and women speak different languages come from?
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
Sexism
Androcentric
- language was built by men because society was controlled by men
- Lang. Has a built in bias towards men
Lakoff
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
Dale Spender
- 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
Thorne and Henley 1975
Men interrupted women more than the other way around- regarded as a universal trait that could be applied to all male-female interactions
Descriptions of men
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
Descriptions of women
Caring, loving, nurturing, sensible. Negative connotations, typically used in the modern day such as bitch. No positive description of a sexually active woman
Cameron 2007
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
Difference model. Deborah Tannen
Male and female cultures. In single sex groups, men and women understand each other; but when they come together, there are misunderstandings
What did Deborah claim by seeing her results?
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
Tannen’s study method
Took a number of speech events such as questions,consultations,apologies, problem sharing and troubles talk, reporting experiences
What did Tannen claim by looking at speech events?
Men and women could use exactly the same words but have very different understandings of them. Eg. Mixed-sex interactions
Criticism of Tannen’s further research
- 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
Folk-linguistics male and female talk
Popular cultural beliefs about language that have been passed down through generations. Eg. Women talk more than men.
What does modern research show about male and female talk?
The amount of talk we produce depends on the context we are in. Eg. Men talking about sports in a pub
History of the connection between language and gender
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.
Dominance model
Zimmerman and West
What did Zimmerman and West argue?
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
Who disagreed with the dominance model what did she argue?
Beattie. The majority of interruptions were supported, which in fact shows listening
Jennifer Coates
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
