Theories Flashcards
In Living Language (p. 222), George Keith and John Shuttleworth
Difference model
Women - talk more than men, talk too much, are more polite, are indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag, ask more questions, support each other, are more co-operative, whereas
men - swear more, don’t talk about emotions, talk about sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more.
Otto Jespersen, Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin (1922)
The deficit model
- women talk a lot
- women use half-finished sentences because they speak before they have thought about what they will say
- women link sentences with ‘and’ because they are emotional rather than ‘grammatical’
- women use adjectives such as ‘pretty’ and ‘nice’ too much. They are also fond of saying ‘so pretty’ and ‘so nice’
- women use adverbs too much and tend towards hyperbole
- women have a smaller vocabulary than men – the words they use are
the ‘indispensable small change of a language’ - women know their smaller vocabulary so well that they are more fluent in speaking and less hesitant than men, who are searching for the precise word in their large vocabularies
- novels written by ladies are much easier to read and use fewer difficult words
- women often gain spoken mastery of foreign languages more easily than men, but when put to the test in translating a difficult text, men prove superior
- women, by virtue of their sex, “shrank from coarse and gross expressions”
- women had a “preference for veiled and indirect expressions” which preclude them from being as effective as men.
- women had a debilitating effect upon the language and it was reasonable for men “certainly with great justice [to] object that there is a danger of the language becoming languid and insipid if we are to content ourselves with women’s expressions.”
- men are responsible for introducing new words into the language
Evaluation of Jespersons study
It’s folklinguistics
- Lack of Empirical Evidence: Jespersen’s assertions were primarily based on personal observations (e.g. literature) rather than systematic studies. This anecdotal approach raises concerns about the validity of his conclusions.
- Gender Bias: By treating male language as the standard and labeling female language as deficient, Jespersen’s perspective reflects the patriarchal norms of his era, leading to a biased analysis (Androcentric)
- Influence on Deficit Models: Jespersen’s work contributed to the development of deficit models in language and gender studies, which have been criticized for perpetuating stereotypes and failing to consider the impact of societal power dynamics on language use.
Robin Lakoff, Language and Woman’s Place (1975)
Deficit model
In this book and a related article, Women’s Language, Lakoff published claims that women:
- Speak less frequently
- Show they are listening by using minimal responses mm, yeah
- Speak more quietly than men and tend to use the higher pitch range of their voices
- Use hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation: Standard English and clear enunciation
- Use a greater range of intonation and ‘speak in italics’: so, very, quite.
- Use question intonation in declarative statements: women make declarative statements into questions by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a statement, expressing uncertainty.
- Overuse qualifiers: (for example, “I think that…”)
- Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”.
- Use super-polite forms: “Would you mind…”,“I’d appreciate it if…”, “…if you don’t mind”.
- Apologise more: (for instance, “I’m sorry, but I think that…”)
- Use tag questions: “You’re going to dinner, aren’t you?”
- Have a special lexicon: e.g. women use more words for colours, men for sports
- Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, and make more emotional evaluations rather than intellectual evaluations, e.g. great, wonderful, fantastic
- Use more intensifiers: especially so and very (e.g. “I am so glad you came!”)
- Use more adjectives to describe approximate amounts, around, about.
- Use euphemisms more than men
- Use diminutives more than men.
- Use more reduplicated forms e.g. ‘itsy bitsy’ ‘teeny weeny’
- Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more often.
- Use wh- imperatives: (such as, “Why don’t you open the door?”)
- Use modal constructions: (such as can, would, should, ought - “Should we turn up the heat?” “Would you like to just pass me that cup?”)
- Use indirect commands and requests: (e.g. “My, isn’t it cold in here?” - request to close a window)
- Avoid slang and avoid coarse language or expletives: ‘Oh dear’ rather than ‘Shit’
- Avoid making threats, using aggressive language and insults
- Lack a sense of humour: women don’t tell jokes well and don’t understand the punch line of jokes.
Evaluation of Lakoffs study
Which three theorists could be used to criticise.
Lakoff’s claims were based on personal observation rather than systematic data collection. Later studies (e.g., O’Barr & Atkins, 1980) found that the linguistic features she identified were more associated with power and social status rather than gender alone.
Her model presents a binary view of gender, assuming that men and women speak in fundamentally different ways. Modern research recognizes that linguistic differences are context-dependent rather than inherently tied to gender.
By portraying women’s speech as weaker or lacking authority, Lakoff’s work reinforced the idea that male speech is the norm and female speech is a deviation. Deborah Cameron and Janet Holmes later argued that women’s speech styles could be seen as strategic or cooperative rather than weak.
William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins,
Women’s Language or Powerless Language? (1980)
O’Barr and Atkins studied language use in the courtroom to test if Lakoff’s ideas fitted this specific context.
They found that the language use associated with women by Lakoff was exhibited by both men and women whenever they were in a powerless situation in the courtroom.
They renamed these features of language ‘powerless language’ rather than ‘women’s language’ and pointed to women speakers who did not fit Lakoff’s claims (they were in powerful positions in the courtroom, being well-educated professionals who were accorded status in the courtroom).
William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins,
Women’s Language or Powerless Language? (1980)
Evaluation - why is it the most relevant today?
• The Dominance Model (Lakoff, Zimmerman & West) suggests men dominate conversations due to patriarchal structures.
• The Difference Model (Tannen) suggests men and women speak differently due to different socialization.
• O’Barr & Atkins move beyond gender - focusing on the element which arguably factors the most difference between them, power.
Patriarchal power has been cemented within society since its dawn - which contributes to ideas such as one gender being superior to the other.
This perspective is more applicable today, where linguistic variation is analysed across multiple identity factors, such as race, class, and profession. Considering power and how it effects each social group. perceptions
Dominance model - Zimmerman and West (1975)
This is the theory that in mixed-sex conversations men are more likely to interrupt than women.
It uses a fairly old study of a small sample of conversations, recorded by Don Zimmerman and Candace West at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California in 1975.
The subjects of the recording were white, middle class and under 35. Zimmerman and West produce in evidence 31 segments of conversation. They report that in 11
conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only two.
From their small sample Zimmerman and West conclude
that, since men interrupt more often, then they are dominating or attempting to do so
Who criticised Zimmerman and Wests findings
Geoffrey Beattie, in 1982, was critical of the Zimmerman and West findings:
“The problem with this is that you might simply have one very voluble man in the study which has a disproportionate effect on the total.”
Beattie also questions the meaning of interruptions:
- “Why do interruptions necessarily reflect dominance?
- Can interruptions not arise from other sources?
- Do some interruptions not reflect interest and involvement?”
Geoffrey Beattie himself claims to have recorded some 10 hours of tutorial discussion and some 557 interruptions (compared with 55 recorded by Zimmerman and West).
Beattie found that women and men interrupted with
more or less equal frequency (men 34.1, women 33.8) - so men did interrupt more, but by a margin so slight as not to be statistically significant.
My evaluation of Beattie & Zimmerman and West
What were Esther Greif’s findings (1980)
- Both parents interrupt daughters more than sons
- Fathers interrupt more than mothers
He did not draw upon how social dynamics exemplify whether a person feels comfortable enough or not to interrupt.
In 1980, there would have been a social hierarchy within a household, which gave the ‘man of the house’ the leeway to interrupt, more than his female counterpart, the daughters.
So it could be said that both gender.
Dominance model - Dale Spender
Dale Spender advocates a radical view of language as embodying structures that sustain male power. She refers to the work of Zimmerman and West, to the view of the male as norm and to her own idea of patriarchal order.
She claims that it is especially difficult to challenge this power system, since the way that we think of the world is part of, and reinforces, this male power:
“The crux of our difficulties lies in being able to identify and transform the rules which govern our behaviour and which bring patriarchal order into existence. Yet the tools we have for doing this are part of that patriarchal order”
Dominance model
Pamela Fishman argues in Interaction: the Work Women Do (1983)
Conversation between the sexes sometimes fails, not because of anything inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond, or don’t respond.
Her very memorable phrase for the work that women do to keep a conversation going is ‘conversational shitwork’ (1977)
Dominance model
Fishman - Conversational Insecurity (1990)
Fishman questions Robin Lakoff’s theories.
Lakoff suggests that asking questions shows women’s insecurity and hesitancy in communication, whereas Fishman looks at questions as an attribute of interactions:
Women ask questions because of the power of these, not
because of their personality weaknesses. Fishman also claims that in mixed-sex language interactions, men speak on average for twice as long as women.
Jennifer Coates (1980s)
On the issue of topic management and topic shifts:
- Men will often reject a topic of conversation introduced by women while women will accept the topics introduced by men
- Men discuss ‘male’ topics e.g. business, sport, politics, economics
- Women are more likely to initiate conversation than men, but less likely to make the conversation succeed
1974- Peter Trudgill
Wanted to find out why people’s way of talking varied
He focused on the suffix
Found that men used more non-standard pronunciation than women
1976- Eakins and Eakins
They conducted a study of ‘verbal turn taking’ by faculty members (people in meetings). The study was focused on gender and interruption.
When conducting the experiment, it was found that the chairman was interrupted the least overall; a woman was interrupted the most overall, the men’s turns ranged from 10.06 - 17.07 seconds and that the women’s turns ranged from 3 - 10 seconds.
Men (on average) have more frequent turns, spoke for greater lengths of time, interrupted others more and were interrupted less. Women (on average) are more likely to express agreement or ask for another opinion and are less likely to interrupt others.
1981- Edelsky
Edelsky said that the floor was ‘a specific type of speaking turn that contains the acknowledged going on within a psychological time/space’. This happens in turns within a conversation between 2 people or more.
In a work environment men usually speak for a longer time whereas women were usually pressured into speaking for a shorter time and be much more brief. Women are more likely to begin new topics however men have ‘the floor’ much more often. Floor one was much more prevalent whereas floor two, people are more likely to be cautious of the time the spend dominating the floor.
When generalized, it was found that ‘floors’ were held during formal debates or other formal events, whereas ‘floors’ were developed in any informal circumstances, such as lunch meetings or outings. It all depends on what is had when having the ‘floor’.
1982- Jenny Cheshire
She studied relationships between girls and boys and how it effected their grammar
When put into groups, she found that when the same gendered groups were talking together, they were more likely to conform against the subject topic, therefore changing the way they speak around each other
Suggests that variation in dialect is a concious choice, influenced by social attitude
1989- Herbet and Straight
Study is specifically concerned with the responses used by women in all-female compliment exchanges in an under graduate level university setting. Cross cultural comparison of German and Italian was used to highlight any similarities or differences in compliment responses
It was found that children were brought up to say ‘thank you’ to a compliment but adults felt embarrassed when responding. Americans were found that they tend to give out many compliments and accept few, whereas south Africans would give out few and accept many. However this can depend on social relations.
This suggests that because relations (American) are obliged to use stereotypes such as compliments in order to negotiate the relations formed. Although most people will give out compliments frequently, few will accept them.
1989- Jennifer Coates
She suggested that different styles of speaking are different because of all gendered friendship groups therefore creating gender stereotypes within language.
An example she found was how women use epistemic modal forms (perhaps; sort of, probably, etc) to avoid face-threatening facts. This is seen as female co-operation.
1990- Deborah Tannen
Created the Difference Theory which includes 6 different contrasts: status vs support; advice vs understanding, independence vs intimacy, information vs feelings, conflict vs compromise and order vs proposals.
Found that through these contrasts, it changed both the way women and men think and talk among each other. Women would want to have support and understanding, whereas men are more likely to want to stand alone and do things their own way.
1990 to 1991- Tracy and Heisenberg
An experiment was conducted, where male and female subjects would criticize either a superior or subordinate, acting as the respective opposite - superior criticizing subordinate and vice versa. People who knew little about what was happening were asked to judge the criticism and structure of it.
Different results were derived from this, which observed differences between the men and women. The research shows that women were more caring and considerate when in the role of the superior, inversely so in the role of the subordinate.
Most criticisms started with positive comments prefaced by negative comments and concluded with feedback and that most people paid great attention to face value. Some people rated low when paying attention to face value by making personal attacks and strong reprimands for minor errors.
1992- Jane Pilkington
Conducted research on conversations in a bakery in 9 months so as to look at male and female conversations. Found that women talked to affirm solidarity and maintain relationships, and men like to challenge each others points of view and disagree.
What are the general ideas surrounding the diversity approach
- Concept of femininity and masculinity change depending on the context
- Gender is fluid
- There are multiple femininities and masculinities
- Other theories tend to assume cis-gender
Sapir-Whorf Hypothesis
language precedes thought and controls it – human thought is only possible through language.
Known as linguistic determinism
Julia Stanley
there are 220 terms for promiscuous females and only 20 for a male – most of them are horrible - sexually insulting reflec t the dichotomy of the patriarchal society
1992- Janet Holmes
Her study focused on whether men and women spoke differently and ‘whether the differences are related specifically to gender or, alternatively, to status and power.’
She found that in doctor-patient conversations female doctors were interrupted more often than male physicians. In addition, in business organisations, men but not women tended to dominate the interactions. This fits with this stereotype of men having more power and authority and that they are superior to women, as brought about when men were seen as the main breadwinner and women were stay at home wives and mothers.
1992- Susan Herring
Study created to examine how computer-mediated discussion groups (such as chat forums, bulletin boards, etc) where individuals contributed and exchanged information within a field of common interest, affected participation by women
She analysed the number of women contributors; the overall gender difference in contribution, the average amount of words submitted by each contributor, and the total amount of words that were contributed.
It was found that women were less interested in the topics than men; women were too busy, intimidated or fearful to participate.
2008- Deborah Cameron
One of Cameron’s most famous pieces of work is Verbal Hygiene, where she write that she believes that there’s a massive gender diversity in language.
She first blamed this on how children were taught the English language, but she released that all classes were mixed gender and that the same basic rules of grammar were taught to everyone, young or old.
She concluded that the spoken language, rather than depending on gender, depended on lexis and context.
