Week 3 - Difference and Dominance theories (Essay topic)

Question 1

Who came up with the deficit model?

Who followed up their work?

Answer 1

Jespersen 1922

Lakoff 1975

Question 2

What is the original deficit model?

Answer 2

Jespersen

• Females more conservative
• Incomplete/incoherent sentences
• Less vocabulary

Question 3

What is the updated hypothesis for the deficit model?

Answer 3

Lakoff

• Typical female speech style
• Marked by use of certain features
• All of the features weaken or mitigate the force of an utterance

Question 4

What is WL?

Answer 4

Women’s Language

A language style specifically used by women

Question 5

What are features of WL?

Answer 5

• Specific colour terms eg. lavender
• Empty adjectives eg. lovely
• Frequent emphasis
• Tag questions
• Rising intonation where falling would be expected
• Politeness devices
• Hedging
• Intensifiers

Question 6

Why is WL existent?

What does it do?

Answer 6

• Socialisation, taught how to display feminine qualities eg. weakness
• Marks the speaker as unassertive, weak and lacking authority

Question 7

What criticisms have been made of WL?

Answer 7

• No evidence from systematic study
• Form and function issues
• Biology doesn’t affect language
• Not all women use it
• Not just women

Question 8

Who studied gender and language in the courtroom, when?

Answer 8

• O’Barr and Atkins

- 1980

Question 9

Who came up with the dominance theory?

Who added to it, dates?

Answer 9

Zimmerman and West 1975

Fishman 1978

Defrancisco 1991

Question 10

What was originally said in terms of the dominance theory?

Answer 10

• Delayed minimal responses by men
• Women silenced by male overlap, delayed minimal response or interruption by male
• Men deny women equal status as conversational partners

Question 11

What was Defrancisco’s addition to the dominance theory?

Answer 11

1991

Marital convos - women did most work but men silenced them

Question 12

What was Fishman’s addition to the dominance theory?

Answer 12

1978

• 52 hrs of recorded talk between 3 professional couples
• Unequal distribution of work in conversations
• Men discourage, women support
• Women ask questions
• Men make more statements
• Men’s topics are pursued, women’s are dropped

Question 13

What criticisms of the dominance theory have been made?

Answer 13

• Language multi-function ignored
• Gender more important than context
• Over-emphasises female subordination
• Tannen 1998 women’s actions result from powerlessness, men’s result from dominance

Question 14

Who came up with the difference theory?

Who added to it?

Answer 14

Maltz and Borker 1982

Tannen 1991

Question 15

What is the difference theory?

Answer 15

• Men and Women are two different subcultures
• Different socialisation patterns
• Different cultural rules for conversation
• Causes miscommunication

Question 16

What are the differences (difference theory) pointed out by Maltz and Borker?

Answer 16

• Minimal responses: women acknowledging, men agreeing
• Questions: women maintain convo, men request info
• New utterance: women make connections to convo, men ignore preceding comments
• Aggression: women negative, men positive and bonding
• Topic shift: women flows, men abrupt

Question 17

What are Tannen’s contrasting convo styles?

Answer 17

Rapport - report

Sympathy - problem-solving

Connection - status

Listening - lecturing

Question 18

What are the criticisms of the difference theory?

Answer 18

• Doesn’t note similarities between men and women
• Doesn’t note diversity of speech styles
• Power ignored, gender used as the distinction
• No critique of differing socialisation patterns

Question 19

Criticism of all 3 theories?

Answer 19

• All view gender from an essentialist viewpoint, gender determines your behaviour
• Gender needs to be looked at as something that we do, not what we are