Theories

Question 1

What was John Swales (2011) theory?

Answer 1

John Swales theorized about a discourse community which discusses the idea of a community as having members who shared a set of common goals, communicate internally using and owning one or more genres of education, using specialist lexis and discourse, and possessing a required level of knowledge and skill to be considered elligble to participate in the community.

Question 2

What was Hornyak’s (1994) theory?

Answer 2

Hornyak theorized that the shift from work talk to personal talk is always initiated by the highest-ranking person in the room.

Question 3

What was Herbert and Straight’s (1989) theory?

Answer 3

The two theorized that compliments tend to flow from those of higher rank to those of lower rank.

Question 4

What was Drew and Heritage’s (1993) theory?

Answer 4

The two theorized that the differences between everyday conversation and workplace talk are: goal orientation, turn taking, allowable contributions, professional lexis, structure and asymmetry. They suggest that members of a discourse commnunity share inferential frameworks (knowledge that is built up overtime and used in order to understand meanings that are implicit) with each other consisting of implicit ways of thinking, communicating and behaving. They also suggest thath there are strong hierarchies of power within organisations with many asymmetrical relations marked by language use.

Question 5

What was Janet Holmes’ (1998) theory?

Answer 5

Women managers seem to be more likely to negotiate consensus than male managers, they are less likely to just ‘plough through the agenda’, taking time to make sure everyone genuinely agrees with what has been decided.

Question 6

What was Koester’s (2004) theory?

Answer 6

Verbal or non-verbal communication that has a social function, such as to start a conversation, greet someone, or say goodbyem rather than an informative function.
Words such as, ‘so’ are used to signal a change in topic.

Question 7

What was Grice’s Maxims? (1975)

Answer 7

Grice’s Maxims were rules that need to be applied to conversations in order to make them successful.
The maxim of quantity: One tries to be as informative as one possibly can be, and gives as much information as is needed, and no more.
The maxim of quality: One tries to be truthful, and does not give information that is false or that is not supported by evidence.
The maxim of relation: One tries to be relevant, and says things that are pertinent to the discussion.
The maxim of manner: One tries to be as clear, as brief, and as orderly as one can in what one says, and where one avoids obscurity and ambiguity.

Question 8

What was Holmes’ (2005) and Marra’s (2002) theory?

Answer 8

Contrary to popular belief, women use just as much humour as men, and use it for the same functions, to control discourse adn subordinates and to contest superiors, although they are more likely to encourage supportive and collaborative humour.

Question 9

What was Goffman/Levinson’s theory?

Answer 9

Irvin Goffman/Levinson theorized the face theory.
Face: A person’s self-esteem or emotional needs.
Positive Face: The need to feel wanted, liked and appreciated.
Negative Face: The need to have freedom of action and thought and not be imposed on.
Face Threatening Act: A communicative act that threatens someone’s positive or negative face needs.

Question 10

What was the ‘Let Toys be Toys’ (2017) theory?

Answer 10

This theory was a gender theory done by a charity named ‘Let Toys be Toys’. They studied a range pf catalogues selling toys for children and found that stereotypes of toys were, majorly, true.
Boys were 4x as likely with toy cars.
97% of children with guns and war items were boys.
Girls were nearly 7x as likely seen with caring or nurturing toys.
Girls were 12x as likely with baby dolls, and 50x as likely if learning centre catalogue is included.

Question 11

What was Blatt and Hunt’s (2017) theory?

Answer 11

The two theorized, from studying popular fiction and children’s fiction, that male characters used verbs like ordered and shouted, whereas female characters used verbs like begged, murmured and wept.

Question 12

What was Robin Lakoff’s (1975) theory?

Answer 12

Lakoff studied language deficit and put forward a basic, stereotypical set of assumptions. Lakoff believed gender inequality and language are linked.
Hedging is used by women to make their point less certain and themselves less assertive.
Women use question intonation and turn declarative statements into questionsm expressing uncertainty.
Women lack a sense of hunmour, and do not tell or understand jokes.
Women also avoid coarse language and or expletives.

Question 13

What was Diaget’s theory?

Answer 13

Diaget theorized about ZPD. This is cognitive thinking. Language which we are comfortable using is what we will use. Diaget comfort zones. Zones of Proximal Developement.

Question 14

What is Gladwell’s theory?

Answer 14

Gladwell's theory was the 6 degrees of mitigation:
Command
Team obligation
Team suggestion
Query
Preference
Hint

Question 15

What was O’Barr and Atkins’ (1980) theory?

Answer 15

O’Barr and Atkins also theorized language deficit. The two saw Lakoff’s list and considered it reductive. They conducted a 30-month study, recording over 150 hours of trials in criminal court. Their hypothesis was that women’s language is in large part a language of powerlessness, a condition that can apply to both men and women. They did not beleive that powerless language was a gendered concept, only that society had associated it with women.

Question 16

What was Zimmerman and West’s (1975) theory?

Answer 16

The two theorized that men interrupt more than women. They recorded 11 everyday conversations in informal settings, and they believed that men would interrupt women more, in a display of their linguistic dominance. They then established that men do interrupt more than women, looking at their ratio of 46 male interruptions vs. only 2 by women. They then went onto to believe that men like to be in charge of conversations and women prefer to be submissive.

Question 17

What was Pamela Fishman’s theory?

Answer 17

Pamela Fishman theorized that women do all the work during conversations. She conducted an experiment that involved listening to 52 hours of pre-recorded conversations between young American couples in their homes. Following this study, she argued that mixed-gender conversations sometimes fail, not because men are naturally loud mouths, or because women are timid delicate flowers, but because of how men respond/don’t respond. She stated ‘conversation is more problematic for women, who must work harder to make it happen’. Fishman even challenged many of Lakoff’s earlier assertions. She suggested that to say women’s more frequent use of questioning was a sign of insecurity was a much too simplistic view. Fishman attributed a number of interactions of women’s questioning and aiming to keep their male conversational partners engaged and interested, which is called ‘interactional shitwork’.

Question 18

What was Geoffrey Beattie’s (1982) theory?

Answer 18

Geoffrey Beattie theorized that society believes that men dominate. Beattie wanted to prove Zimmerman and West wrong, by conducting 10 hours of tutorial discussion and some 557 interruptions (much more than the small amount that Zimmerman and West recorded). Beattie found that women and men interrupted with more or less equal frequency (men 34.1 and women 33.8).

Question 19

What was Deborah Tannen’s theory?

Answer 19

Deborah Tannen's theory is that there are six categories to a conversation in which males and females use contrastingly which are:
Status vs. Support
Advice vs. Understanding 
Information vs. Relationship
Orders vs. Proposals 
Conflict vs. Compromise 
Independence vs. Intimacy