Language And Gender Theorists Flashcards
Pamela Fishman (Dominance)
Interactional Shitwork
- Women are held responsible for carrying on conversations because men don’t try
- Research in 1990: ask 3x more questions, used supportive minimal responses, use attention gestures such as ‘you know what?’ to grab attention, topics proposed by women weren’t always taken up by the other participants
- Women are dominated by societal pressure and patriarchy, not language features themselves
Susan Ehrlich (Difference)
Representing Rape
- Men justify their actions by saying they just don’t understand
- Women are the ones expected to change their language
Dale Spender (Dominance)
- Men dominate women in language
- Features of woman’s language aren’t their fault
- Language is inherently sexist
Zimmerman and West’s Interruptions (Dominance)
- 31 conversations recorded
- Men interrupted 46 times, women interrupted 2 times
- Women only interrupt other women, men are the dominant gender
- BUT, a small population participated, only interruptions in mixed gender conversations were recorded, participants were all privileged and white
Geoffrey Beattie’s Opposition to Zimmerman and West (Diversity)
- 10 hours of conversation, 557 interruptions
- Interrupted at an almost equal frequency
- A person’s role in a conversation is more important
Esther Greif (Dominance)
- Parents interrupt daughters more than sons
- Fathers interrupt daughters more than mothers
Goldberg (Dominance)
-Men are biologically different so their dominance is inevitable
Jacobi and Schweers and Interruptions (Diversity)
- Interruption in court
- Experience, age and status had more of an impact
Robin Lakoff- Tag Questions (Deficit)
- Language in Woman’s Place
- Hedges, superpolite forms, indirect requests, tag questions
- Tag questions are used to seek approval
- Acts of exclusion
Janet Holmes- Tag Questions (Deficit)
-Tag questions used to gain a response from someone (women have a cooperative role)
Kathy O’Leary- Tag Questions (Diversity)
-Frequency of tag questions depends on occupation
O’Barr and Atkins (Diversity)
- Studied language in the court room
- People who were powerless used the language features Lakoff mentions
Betty Dubois and Isabel Crouch- Tag Questions (Difference)
-They suggested that men use more tag questions, but don’t think it means they are any less confident
Otto Jespersen’s The Woman (Deficit)
- Shallow in expression
- Smaller vocabulary/less abstract nouns
- Less subordinate clauses (less complex sentence structure)
- Less vulgar language
- Use incomplete sentences
- Talk excessively
- Are emotional
Deborah Tannen (Difference)
Her theory has roots in the Gumperz ethnicity study in an airport
- Status vs Support
- Independence vs Intimacy
- Advice vs Understanding
- Information vs Feelings
- Orders vs Proposals
- Conflict vs Compromise
- Deborah Cameron disagreed
John Gray (Difference)
-Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus
Maltz and Borker vs Helen Reid Thomas- Minimal Responses (Difference vs Diversity)
They found that women use more minimal responses and use them for different reasons (I’m listening vs I agree)
-Helen carried out systematic tests and found out people understand the different reasons through context
Janet Hyde (Diversity)
- Gender Similarities Hypothesis
- Used meta analysis and found differences between the genders were close to zero or non existent
Chambers and Liberman (Diversity)
- Reached similar conclusions to Hyde (meta analysis)
- There is as much variation within a single gender as there is in all genders
Brizendine (Difference/Deficit)
- The Female Brain
- Women are chatterboxes and speak 20,000 words a day, while men speak 7,000
- Links with Jespersen’s idea that women talk excessively
Pennebaker (Diversity)
- Conducted research on 396 students over 17 hours
- Women spoke 16,125
- Men spoke 15,669
Judith Butler (Diversity)
- Gender Troubles
- We are trained how to act as a certain gender
- Gender is actually more a spectrum/is non binary
Marjorie Goodwin (Diversity)
- The Hidden Life of Girls
- Over 100 hours of recordings of 9-12 year olds
- Socially and ethnically mixed
- Gave orders, were competitive, talked about sports and status
Rosalind Wiseman (Diversity)
- Queen Bees and Wannabes
- Women are not all nurturers
Don Kulick (Diversity)
- Papua New Guinea
- Women do angry monologues with abusive language called kros (other cultures see women as submissive)
- Women are hed (wilful or headstrong)
- Men are save (knowledgeable, judgemental)
Ladette to Lady (Diversity)
- Focused on making women more ladylike
- Shows diversity within women
Deborah Cameron (Diversity)
The Myth of Mars and Venus
About Susan Ehrlich: ‘You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to work out that someone who feigns unconsciousness in bed with you probably doesn’t want to have sex’.
Kitzinger and Frith (Difference)
- Just Say No campaign
- only a small amount of women don’t use that strategy
- Women tend to use ‘lessen the blow’ strategies to tell men they don’t want to have sex
Simon Baron-Cohen
- The Essential Difference
- Male brains are built to systemise while female brains are built to empathise
- Sex differences in language are therefore a by-product of this deeper difference
- Research using fMRI (functional magnetic resonance imaging) suggests that language in men’s brains might be more strongly lateralised
- Men are more likely to develop aphasia if they acquire brain damage
- Women can use both hemispheres
