Language in genders

Question 1

Deficit

Answer 1

Robin Lakoff (1975): Language and Women’s Place Lakoff claimed that there were certain features of women’s language that gave the impression women are weaker and less certain than men are (apologetic forms, uncertainty, tag-questions, hedging, speaking in italics, empty adjectives, avoidance of strong expression of feeling, use of implication and indirect speech)

Kira Hall SUPPORT:phone sex workers use Lakoff’s features to appear more feminine

COUNTER: O’barr and Atkins: studied courtrooms and found that those of lower class would use such language, represents ‘powerless language’ rather then gendered language

Otto Jesperson (1922): Early study into women’s language. Jespersen wrote: ‘The vocabulary of a woman as a rule is much less extensive than that of a man’ and that intensifiers such as ‘so’ were ‘a great favourite with the ladies.’ There was no corresponding chapter for men’s language in his book, suggesting that he considered men’s language was the norm and women’s was ‘other’

( Jesperson relied on evidence from literature and travelers)

Question 2

Dominance

Answer 2

Zimmerman and West: College campus study found that 96% of interruptions were men in conversations between men and women

COUNTER
Examined a small number of subjects, all being white middle class men under age of 35, not representative of full gender.
Beatie:his research considered over 10 times the corpus and discovered there was pretty much equal amount of interruptions between men and women

Dale Spender:culture of ‘male as norm’ which is evident in abstract nouns such as ‘mankind’. men always introduced first Mr and Mrs

Stanely: 220 ways to insult a promiscuous woman compared to 20 ways to insult a promiscuous man

Tyger Drew Honey: asked people on the street how they’d describe a person who slept with 30 people, women described as slag or slut whilst men described as lad

Question 3

Difference

Answer 3

Deborah Tanen: offers contrasts between gender
rapport vs report
understanding vs advice
intimacy vs independence
feelings vs information
support vs status
proposals vs order
compromise vs conflict

Koenraad Kuiper (1991) – studied all-male talk amongst a rugby team. Discovered men pay less regard to the need to save face and use insults as a way of expressing solidarity.

Pilkington: looks at ‘locker-room banter’ and finds that men use insults to create bonds with each other- not supportive like women.

Question 4

Diversity

Answer 4

Valentina and Halencik: They looked at whether or not someone could tell a man’s sexuality based on their aesthetics and voice.
Participants stated that there was a certain femininity in the voice of the homosexual men, such as elongated /l/ vowel (/l:/) sound in words like ‘towel’.

North Western university: This research found that lesbian, gay and bisexual people showed no difference at birth in vowel production, but chose to selectively adopt vowel productions of certain social groups.

William Leap:’Lavender Linguistics’ describes the sociolect (language of a social group) of homosexuals.
Leap believes that the way homosexuals interact with heterosexuals and with other homosexuals differs.
He claims that this is a whole other language.