Language And Gender Theory

Question 1

Trudgill- what did he research and when?

Answer 1

Language and social class in the 1970’s

Question 2

Trudgill- how was his study grouped?

Answer 2

Social class and sex

Question 3

Trudgill- what was he looking for in speech from both subjects?

Answer 3

To see who would drop the final “g” in verbs ending “ing”

Question 4

Trudgill- what did he find about women?

Answer 4

Women were more likely to use prestige pronunciation of certain speech sounds and aim for higher prestige, they used hypercorrectness

Question 5

Trudgill-what did he find out about men?

Answer 5

Men used a lower prestige pronunciation and appearing tough and down to earth

Question 6

Coates and Jones- what was Jones’ study?

Answer 6

Jones’ study was on women’s oral culture which she calls “Gossip” and categories it in terms of “House talk”

Question 7

Coates and Jones- what did Coates focus on?

Answer 7

Tag questions

Question 8

Coates and Jones-what were the four categories of Jones’ Gossip categories?

Answer 8

• 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

Question 9

Deborah Cameron- what did she research?

Answer 9

The idea that men and women face normative expectations about appropriate mode of speech for their gender

Question 10

Deborah Cameron- what did she find about verbal hygiene?

Answer 10

She found examples of verbal hygiene in English grammar in schools

Question 11

Deborah Cameron- what does she claim about verbal hygiene?

Answer 11

Verbal hygiene is a way to make sense of language and represents a symbolic attempt to impose order on the social world

Question 12

The Dominance theory- what is it?

Answer 12

Research focused on men as more controlling and dominating in mixed sex conversation

Question 13

The dominance theory- What did Zimmerman and west do? And what year?

Answer 13

In 1975, their small dataset found that 96% of all interruptions were male.

Question 14

The dominance theory-what did Zimmerman and West conclude?

Answer 14

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.

Question 15

The dominance theory- What did Beattie do and in what year?

Answer 15

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%.

Question 16

The dominance theory- What did Dale Spender propose?

Answer 16

She proposed a radical idea that the language structures we have sustain male power, so how we speak paves the way for male dominance

Question 17

Deborah Tannen- What were her six contrasts?

Answer 17

Status VS support 
Independence VS intimacy
Advice VS understanding 
Information VS feelings 
Orders VS proposals
Conflict VS compromise

Question 18

Deborah Tannen- What is status VS support?

Answer 18

Men have competitive conversations and want the upper hand. Women try to gain confirmation and support for their ideas

Question 19

Deborah Tannen- What is independence VS intimacy?

Answer 19

Men focus more on independence in conversation, whereas women would want confirmation first if they wanted a friend to stay for example

Question 20

Deborah Tannen- What is advice VS understanding?

Answer 20

Women want sympathy if they’re ill, men just give practical advice

Question 21

Deborah Tannen- what is information VS feelings?

Answer 21

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

Question 22

Deborah Tannen- What is order VS proposals?

Answer 22

Men use direct imperatives, women say things in indirect ways “why don’t we?”

Question 23

Deborah Tannen- What is conflict VS compromise?

Answer 23

In order to prevent conflict, women will refuse the idea whereas men will face it head on with conflict

Question 24

Lakoff- what was this study?

Answer 24

Happened in 1970’s, a professor of socio-linguistics came up with 10 assumptions of how women speak

Question 25

Lakoff- What were the 10 assumptions?

Answer 25

• 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

Question 26

Accommodation theory-What when and who?

Answer 26

Howard Giles in 1970, suggested that we adapt our speech to accommodate others, and our speech changes as a result

Question 27

What are the three types of convergence?

Answer 27

1) Upward convergence, making an effort to use a more elevated speech
2) Downward convergence(divergence), using less sophisticated Lexis
3) mutual convergence

Question 28

Face theory- who’s behind it and when?

Answer 28

Goffman in 1955.

Question 29

Face theory- what does it mean?

Answer 29

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