Gender Flashcards
(42 cards)
lakoff 1975
women's language weak hypercorrect grammar e.g avoiding double negatives over-apologising empty adjectives e.g lovely tag questions e.g arent you? overuse of intensifiers e.g so special lexicon e.g colour less swearing lack a sense of humour
kira hall
phone sex workers used lakoff’s features to seem more feminine
economic and social research council 2017
500% increase in the word ‘fuck’ by women since the 1990s
otto jespersen
investigated non-fluency features such as pauses and fillers
relies on evidence from literature and travellers
speculative and often dismissed as folk linguistics
otto jespersen attitudes
women have a smaller vocab
women use ‘weak’ and ‘empty’ adjectives
women fail to finish sentences because they haven’t thought about what they’re going to sya
men are responsible for adding new words to the language
women have a damaging effect
deficit model
women’s language is weak or contains weak traits
theory originates from otto jespersen’s book in 1922
men have more superior place within society - women’s speech inferior
women have a lack of something which makes their speech more inferior to men’s as theres’ is more desirable
women’s responsibility to change their language contradicts lakoff’s feminist views
men’s language is more powerful as unmarked forms are the norm biased towards men
deficit features
women speak less
softer modal auxiliary verbs to express uncertainty
polite forms e.g euphemisms
indirect requests
question intonation in declarative statements to express uncertainty
hedging e.g sort of
o’barr and atkins courtroom study
challenges lakoff
lower class men use lakoff’s language features
implies it is potentially got nothing to do with gender but power
‘powerless language’
weakness of lakoff’s research
based purely on own observations
own experiences and opinions
didn’t carry out linguistic rigorous testing
janet holmes
looked into way women are referred to affectionate nominatives
predominately from semantic fields of food and animals
‘sugar’ ‘cow’
dale spender
culture of ‘male as norm’
men are dominant and women are add ons
men are introduced first, symoblic of their role
‘mothers and fathers’ women maternal role
‘mankind’ add to the norm
gender neutral words
backlash of ‘history’
claim history is story of men
caused reshuffling and reclaiming of words e.g headteacher
dominance model
examine language use in respect to men being more dominant
schulz and lakoff
research into terms that women and men are referred to
terms to identify them as different
‘-ess’ suffix marks fenimine equivalent
semantic derogation - negative connotations e.g mistress conotation of prostitution
zimmerman and west 1975
interruptions between men and women
men interrupted 96-100% of the time
small number of subjects; white, middle class, under 35
zimmerman and west weakness
not a representative sample - research flawed and not necessarily investigating what they think they are investigating research shows traits typical of middle-class conversations but maybe atypical of all conversations
beattie
considered over 10 times the corpus of z and w
pretty much equal number of interruptions by men and women
much larger sample and representative - more accurate
pamela fishman
conversations between men and women fail because of how men act
men use 1/3 of questions as women and minimal responses
women doing ‘conversational shitwork’
stanley 1970s
number of insults for women against men
220 insults to describe promiscuous women
20 insults for promiscuous man
tyger drew honey 2015
asked people in the street how they would describe a woman who slept with over 30 men vs man sleeping with over 30 women
men and women described the woman as ‘slag’ and ‘slut’
man was labelled ‘lad’
jennifer coates
researched all male and all female groups
converse differently although topics similiar
techniques used by women to maintain conversation arent signs of inferior signs of intelligence
victoria bergvall
discussing so called differences reinforces views they exist
susan githens
women treated on norms of men
supports tannen
women invading seen as unfeminine
‘women and men have different styles, male is standard’ hurting both
deborah jones
gossiping amongst women - ‘house talk’
scandal - discuss behaviours of others
bitching - expression of anger, just as relief
chatting - intimate form of gossiping where mutually disclose and nurturing takes place
