Language And Gender

Front 1

Robin Lakoff (1975), feminist. Language and Woman’s Place.

Back 1

Women useless authoritative, assertive and more insecure language than men- reflecting their social place e.g. Hedging, mitigated imperatives, qualifiers, tag Qs, apologies, am more Qs, empty adjectives, . Features of uncertainty, more tentative. Deficit approach- women’s language is inferior, men’s is ‘norm’.

Front 2

Criticisms of Deficit approach.

Back 2

Lakoff’s fundings based on observation not precise study, attributing features to ‘uncertainty’ is general, reliant on steeeotyping men and women, doesn’t acknowledge conscious choice in language and code switching.

Front 3

Janet Holmes 1992

Back 3

Tag questions, unlike Lakoff, aren’t a sign of inferiority but politeness and maintaining discussion and power creation (multi functional). Other features (e.g. heading and fillers) shouldn’t be merely attributed to uncertainty.

Front 4

Dubois and Crouch 1975

Back 4

Men actually use more tag questions than women which isn’t suggested to imply uncertainty- quantitive study reduced any confirmation bias.

Front 5

O’Barr and Atkins (1980)

Back 5

Language in the court room, many of Lakoff’s features did occur for women but also working class men. Uncertain speech depended on power relations (context) not gender- less assignment to gender avoids the deficit approach.

Front 6

Dominance Approach- Zimmerman and West (1975)

Back 6

Small amount of data, found 96% of interruptions were men- they sought to impose their dominant status by constraining convo (e.g. interruptions). Parents assume power in the same way as men.

Front 7

Dominance Approach- Pamela Fishman. 1983

Back 7

Men didn’t do enough collaborative work so were dominant. Women dominated into keeping convo going ‘interactional shitwork’: inviting contributions by name, asking questions, open ended questions, back channelling, converging language choices, positive politeness strategies.

Front 8

Criticisms of dominance approach

Back 8

Tends to blame men for language, generalises all men behave similarly.

Front 9

Difference Approach

Back 9

Men and women’s language is different as they belong to different ciltures

Front 10

Pilkington and Coates- separate research

Back 10

Coates (1989)- all-female talk is cooperative and supportive, not the same with mixed or all-male talk.

Jane Pilkington (1992) found similarly that all- women talk was more collaborative than all- male. Women used more positive politeness strategies and men were more tolerant of silence, ‘politeness’ was feminine.

Front 11

Deborah Tannen (1990)

Back 11

Wrote bestselling ‘You Just Don’t Understand’ suggesting how men and women struggled to communicate due to different goal’s ‘miscommunication’. Men: status, independence, advice/solutions, orders, conflict. Women: support, intimacy, understanding, proposals, compromise. Also suggested women prefer ‘rapport- talk’ (developing + maintaining relationships) and men prefer ‘report- talk’ (telling someone something).

Front 12

Act that made it illegal to write a job application to imply a certain sex

Back 12

Sex Discrimination Act of 1975

Front 13

Dale Spender

Back 13

‘Male as norm’- male pronouns used to refer to everyone. This can be addressed by replacing him with him/her, using they, Sweden successfully introduced gender neutral ‘hen’. Aka the generic male.

Front 14

Issues with titles

Back 14

Women have to clarify status, property of men. ‘Ms’ associated with divorcees.

Front 15

Semantic Derogation

Back 15

Negative connotations attached to some words. Arguably terms reserved for describing women have strong negative connotations

Front 16

Sara Mills 1995

Back 16

Examples of Paris of terms which demonstrate female terms semantic derogation. E.g Master- superior, mistress-promiscuity. Sir- skilled, madam- bossy, subordinate. Lord- power, Lady- general person.

Front 17

Semantic deterioration

Back 17

Female terms became more negative over time whilst male terms stay more positive e.g. lord vs lady

Front 18

Peter Trudgill

Back 18

Focused on phonological features how men and women pronounce the ‘ing’ suffix. Across all classes men tended to use more non standard pronunciation e.g. ‘playin’) and seek covert prestige- double negatives, non standard forms (ain’t) irregular past formations (done it)

Also used a reevaluation questionnaire- men said they used non standard more than they actually did, women said they used nonstandard less than they actually did

Front 19

Jenny Cheshire

Back 19

Teenagers in Reading, looked at non standard grammatical forms e.g. ‘I come down the park yesterday’, multiple negations, ‘ain’t ‘. Nearly all cases, boys used more non standard forms than girls. Girls who wanted to identify with rebellious boys also used less standard.

Front 20

Koenrad Kuiper (1991)

Back 20

All-male talk (rugby team) men paid less attention to saving face and actually used insults (face threatening acts) to express solidarity.

Front 21

Pros and cons of difference approach

Back 21

Avoids blaming men or women, avoids gender essentialism (inherent differences in gender) and blames culture. But, studies in specific contexts, polarises men and women, ignores WHY there are differences, generalisations, outdated.

Front 22

Social Constructionist Approach aka post modernist aka performative.

Back 22

Language previously seen as a result of gender- biological determinism. Now language is seen to construct gender, we speak to appear/ construct ourselves. No factor completely determines our language.

Front 23

Janet Holmes 2009

Back 23

Workplaces in New Zealand, found that men use different conversational styles to accomplish different types of masculinity: ‘father’, ‘hero’ and ‘good bloke’.

Front 24

Deborah Cameron 1997

Back 24

Focused on a group of young men who liked to ‘gossip’- stereotypically feminine. Didn’t find that they adopted ‘feminine’ convo styles, still used language to construct a ‘red-blooded, heterosexual’ identity e.g. labelling other men ‘gay’ when they deviated from the groups norms of masculinity.

Front 25

Judith Butler (1988,1990)

Back 25

Gender is not innate but a performance of constant repeated acts that are labelled male or female

Front 26

Deborah Cameron (1990) Verbal Hygiene.

Back 26

Humans have a tendency to monitor others’ language and set standards of what is correct, politically, in grammar and style. In most cultures these expectations are imposed more upon women

Front 27

M

Back 27

M

Front 28

Anderson and Leaper 1998

Back 28

Modern mixed convo behaviours are less gendered, variations are ‘influenced more by situational factors’ and there is little evidence for ‘inherent differences between women and men’.