Language And Gender Theory Flashcards
Trudgill- what did he research and when?
Language and social class in the 1970’s
Trudgill- how was his study grouped?
Social class and sex
Trudgill- what was he looking for in speech from both subjects?
To see who would drop the final “g” in verbs ending “ing”
Trudgill- what did he find about women?
Women were more likely to use prestige pronunciation of certain speech sounds and aim for higher prestige, they used hypercorrectness
Trudgill-what did he find out about men?
Men used a lower prestige pronunciation and appearing tough and down to earth
Coates and Jones- what was Jones’ study?
Jones’ study was on women’s oral culture which she calls “Gossip” and categories it in terms of “House talk”
Coates and Jones- what did Coates focus on?
Tag questions
Coates and Jones-what were the four categories of Jones’ Gossip categories?
- House Talk, exchange of information and resources connected with the female role
- Scandal, judging of the behaviour of others
- Bitching, expression of women’s anger at their restricted roles, expressed in private to other women
- Chatting, mutual self disclosure
Deborah Cameron- what did she research?
The idea that men and women face normative expectations about appropriate mode of speech for their gender
Deborah Cameron- what did she find about verbal hygiene?
She found examples of verbal hygiene in English grammar in schools
Deborah Cameron- what does she claim about verbal hygiene?
Verbal hygiene is a way to make sense of language and represents a symbolic attempt to impose order on the social world
The Dominance theory- what is it?
Research focused on men as more controlling and dominating in mixed sex conversation
The dominance theory- What did Zimmerman and west do? And what year?
In 1975, their small dataset found that 96% of all interruptions were male.
The dominance theory-what did Zimmerman and West conclude?
Women have less linguistic freedom and men impose their dominant status through constraints. Men and women don’t have equal conversational rights. In 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions.
The dominance theory- What did Beattie do and in what year?
In 1975, Beattie claimed to record 10 hours of discussion and found 557 interruptions. She found equal interruptions between men and women, men at 34.1% and women at 33.8%.
The dominance theory- What did Dale Spender propose?
She proposed a radical idea that the language structures we have sustain male power, so how we speak paves the way for male dominance
Deborah Tannen- What were her six contrasts?
Status VS support Independence VS intimacy Advice VS understanding Information VS feelings Orders VS proposals Conflict VS compromise
Deborah Tannen- What is status VS support?
Men have competitive conversations and want the upper hand. Women try to gain confirmation and support for their ideas
Deborah Tannen- What is independence VS intimacy?
Men focus more on independence in conversation, whereas women would want confirmation first if they wanted a friend to stay for example
Deborah Tannen- What is advice VS understanding?
Women want sympathy if they’re ill, men just give practical advice
Deborah Tannen- what is information VS feelings?
Men are more specific and give information about content of a phone call they had, whereas women will not be specific about the content of their phone call and brush away their feelings
Deborah Tannen- What is order VS proposals?
Men use direct imperatives, women say things in indirect ways “why don’t we?”
Deborah Tannen- What is conflict VS compromise?
In order to prevent conflict, women will refuse the idea whereas men will face it head on with conflict
Lakoff- what was this study?
Happened in 1970’s, a professor of socio-linguistics came up with 10 assumptions of how women speak
Lakoff- What were the 10 assumptions?
- Speaking in italics
- Hyper correct grammar
- Using more hedges
- Super polite forms
- Tag questions
- Empty adjectives
- Limited sense of humour
- Direct quotation
- Special Lexicon
- Questioning inotation
Accommodation theory-What when and who?
Howard Giles in 1970, suggested that we adapt our speech to accommodate others, and our speech changes as a result
What are the three types of convergence?
1) Upward convergence, making an effort to use a more elevated speech
2) Downward convergence(divergence), using less sophisticated Lexis
3) mutual convergence
Face theory- who’s behind it and when?
Goffman in 1955.
Face theory- what does it mean?
We talk about losing face a lot and David gave. We may feel the need to save face and use aggressive language as a way of trying not to lose face
We may present a false face to trick or impress people
