Gender Flashcards
(21 cards)
Robin Lakoff Criticisms
Deborah Cameron:
o ‘[Lakoff’s] more general argument, that there is a connection between language-use, gender and power, still stands.
Though few researchers today believe that power differences on their own explain everything, power is still very much part of the picture, because the evidence continues to point to it as one important influence on men’s and women’s use of language’
Otto Jesperson Criticisms
First of all, like Lakoff, Jesperson actually conducted none of his own research.
He based all of his ideas on literature and works of fiction.
Secondly, and probably the worst one, he quoted others who hadn’t done any work either.
Otto Jesperson (gender)
Women leave sentences unfinished more than men.
They begin talking without having thought out what they are going to say.
Women are fond of hyperbole. Women use adverbs of intensity with disregard of their proper meaning.
Male dislike of words comes from their common usage (they want fresh and exclusive language); thusly, men are the chief innovators
o Women’s vocabulary is much less extensive than men’s. Women stay in the central field; men will coin new expressions or repurpose the old-fashioned
Deborah Tannen
One of Tannen’s key ideas is ‘the male as norm’ - as shown through androcentric language
• ‘if we believe that women and men have different styles and that the male is the standard, we are hurting both women and men’
Christine Howe
Diversity model:
Idea that suggests sex and gender are different things.
Linguists who support this model would also argue that one’s biological sex has no influence on language.
Instead it is society and socialisation that affects our language.
In a completely equal society between men and women, there would be no difference between the language used by a man and that used by a woman.
Theorist info:
This theorist suggests that, like Tannen, socialisation begins at the ages of 3/4.
As a result, she’s suggesting that the genders are fundamentally the same.
Therefore, she proposes that, after socialisation, there are some differences (but to because of more variables than just gender!).
Women = are active listeners + use minor interjections + don’t use any offensive language + aren’t competitive.
Men = want to gain conversation power and thus, are more likely to respond to what is being said. This can make it harder for other participants (i.e. women) to join in on the conversation
Dale spender
The dominance model:
In 1980, Dale Spender stated that men dominate women in language.
This means that the features of a woman’s language is not of their making.
Therefore, language is inherently patriarchal.
Man made language (1980):
o Written for a popular audience rather than an academic one; her work occupies a radical feminist position
o English Language is sexist
o Gender differences in language disadvantage and silence women
o Her ideas are a form of social constructionism based on the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis: that language shapes how we see the world
- Language is made by men
- Those who make symbols and their meanings are in a privilege and advantageous position
- They have the potential to construct a reality in which they are the central figures, the potential to legitimate their own primacy, to create an ideology beyond challenge
o She makes observations based on 16th, 17th and 18th Century grammarians, who inscribed the following:
The term male should ‘precede’ the female (husband and wife) - Wilson, 1553
One reason for this was that the male was the ‘worthier’ gender – Poole, 1646
The male gender was ‘more comprehensive’ than the female’ - Kirkby, 1746
• Criticism of: linguistic determinism oversimplifies the relationship between language and thought. There isn’t just one use of language. Her word was comprehensively critiqued by Maria Black and Rosalind Coward:
o She disregards class and ethnicity
o Her work assumes ‘meanings’ derive from clear-cut groups
William o Barr and Bowman Atkins
1980 study looking at courtroom cases and witnesses’ speech
- Challenged Lakoff’s view of women’s language
- Describe ‘powerless language’: language differences are based on a situation-specific authority or power, and not gender
- Differences Lakoff reported are shown, through their study, to be a result of lack of power, no inherently gendered
- “neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women”
Don Zimmerman and Candace west
1975 study in the USA analysing conversations in a college community
- In same-sex conversations, interruptions were distributed fairly evenly among the speakers. In the cross-sex conversations, men were responsibly for 96% of interruptions
- Concluded: ‘men deny equal status to women as conversation partners with respect to rights to the full utilization of their turn and support for the development of topics’ 
Issues with the study’s
Very small
Didn’t count interruptions within same sex conversations
Subjects were all white middle class
Geoff Beattie 1982 criticism:
One overbearing man would have a disproportionate effect
Debates that interruptions equate to dominance
Deborah Cameron critiqued difference theory
‘The idea that men and women differ fundamentally in the way they use language to communicate is a myth in the everyday sense: a widespread but false belief.
But it is also a myth in the sense of being a story people tell in order to explain who they are, where they have come from, and why they live as they do.
Whether or not they are “true” in any historical or scientific sense, such stories have consequences in the real world.
They shape our beliefs, and so influence our actions. The myth of Mars and Venus is no exception to that rule’
‘In the universe of Mars and Venus, the fact that we (still) live in a male-dominated society is like an elephant in the room that everyone prestends not to notice’
‘[Dale Spendor] said that people overestimate how much women talk because they think that, ideally, women should not talk at all’
Review of 56 studies:
Men talk more than women (34 studies – 60.8%)
o Women talk more than men (2 - 3.6%)
o Men and women talk the same amount (16 – 28.6%)
o No clear pattern (4 – 7.0%)
Janet Hyde
- There are substantially more similarities than there are differences between male and female language
- Differences that do exist may be due to a number of other variables: age, ethnicity, education, occupation, sexuality, politics, etc.
Rusty Barrett
- 1995 study into African American drag queens
- Drag queens use language to ‘play act’ at being women
- Gay men, in the context of their performance, stereotyped white women’s language and many of the features could be linked to Lakoff’s supposed ‘Women’s Language Features’
- When performing their drag identities, the men used a mixture of African American features, features that were thought of as stereotypically gay, and features of upper-middle-class white women’s language
Robert Podesva
2007 research into phonological variation of gay professionals – particularly looking at the use of falsetto
• Use of falsetto amongst gay men is thought to be a socially marked behaviour and may be involved in the performance of a stereotypically ‘camp’ gay identity
• Podesva recorded one openly gay male named Heath in three different contexts:
o Barbecue with gay friends
o A conversation with his father
o A meeting at work
Falsetto utterances:
BBQ- 35
Father- 10
Work-15
Total utterances:
BBQ- 386
Father- 260
Work- 403
% falsetto utterances
BBQ- 9.07
Father- 3.85
Work- 3.72
Not only was the falsetto more common in the barbecue setting, it was also longer in duration, higher in pitch and involved a wider pitch range
• Podesva argued that falsetto is used for expressive purposes: to signal emotion.
Argued that expressiveness tends to be linked to femininity, thus it is not a gay feature, rather a feature that takes on gay meaning via association
Raewyn Connell
Models of Masculinity:
o Hegemonic Masculinity: behaviours and language associated with the idealised male group that is seen as having the most power and status in society
o Subordinate Masculinity: showing qualities opposite to hegemonic and therefore viewed as weaker/inferior
o Complicity Masculinity: not fitting the hegemonic criteria but also not challenging it due to admiration 
o Marginalised Masculinity: having masculinity that fits the characteristics of hegemonic masculinity, but is excluded on the basis of other factors (race, disability, sexuality)
• Asserts that the hegemonic femininity associated with women is not about social power but instead depends on women’s appearance and physical attractiveness. 
Refers to is as ‘Emphasised Femininity’ - which implied a less powerful identity than men
Jane Sunderland
Discourses can be categorised in the following way:
o Resistant: a discourse that challenges accepted views
o Subversive: a discourse that undermines accepted views
o Conservative: a discourse that shows a more traditional and unchallenging attitude
o Progressive: a forward-thinking discourse 
• These can co-exist and become competing, dominant, co-existing or alternative
Jennifer Coates
(Real) Men Talk: Investigating the Stereotypes (2005)
o Men are subject to contradictory stereotypes about talk
o Evidence of male-talk found by male researcher inviting friends over to his flat for a take-away and some beers, and then turned the tape-recorder on
o Study of tape-recorded conversations in different settings to try to clarify male-talk and female-talk
o Topics of conversation often ascribed to stereotypes (when all-male conversations became more personal, they dealt with matters such as drinking habits or personal achievements, rather than feelings)
o Another all-male characteristic is that men will often ‘hold the floor’: taking turns to give long monologues where they ‘play the expert’
o Can often take the form of an exchange of rapid-fire turns
o Overlapping talk is scarce in all male talk
Mary talbot (2003) Could be used anecdotally
Synthetic sisterhood: theorised due to teenage girls’ magazines, an analysis of how the linguistic devices construct a simulated friendship between the reader and producer (including presuppositions: implicit assumptions).
Edward Sapir and Benjamin Lee Whorf
Base concept very much debated
• The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis (linguistic determinism), the language that people speak controls how they think.
Joanna Thornborrow 2004
Could be used anecdotally
One of the most fundamental ways we have of establishing our identity and shaping other people’s views of who we are, is through our use of language
William Labov (His case studies and then their findings on gender)
New York City Study, 1962
o Looked at the pronunciation of /r/ in the middle and end of words
o Believed the higher the social class, the more frequent the occurrence of rhotic /r/ in speech
o Conducted the study in three department stores: Saks Fifth Ave (high), Macy’s (middle) and S. Klein (lowest)
o Collected data through a variety of methods including:
▪ Participants read a word list and a passage (carefully considered speech)
▪ Informal interview (natural speech)
o Higher rhoticity in social classes when reading the word list, as opposed to the interview
Martha’s Vineyard Study 1961
Terminology: demand characteristics – a subtle cue that makes participants aware of what the experimenter expects to find or how participants are expected to behave
o This study focused on the /au/ and /ai/ vowel sounds in words such as mouse and mice (diphthong)
o Labov interviewed 69 people, from a variety of groups; he used interview technique to encourage participants to say the words with those vowels (trying to avoid demand characteristics)
o Labov noted that locals had a tendency to pronounce these diphthongs with a more central point, more like [əu, əi]
o Fishermen would centralise /au/ and /ai/ more than any other occupational group – a small group making up 2.5% of the population had begun to exaggerate a tendency already existing, subconsciously establishing and identifying themselves as locals
o 30-60 age group centralised more than younger or older people; up-islanders centralised more than people living in the area of Down-Island (more touristy)
o Conclusions: those seeking to identify as native Vineyarders rejected mainland speech.
Fishermen’s dialect influenced by resentment and antipathy to the summer visitors.
Tight knit community stars to echo fishermen as they epitomise desirable values.
This was new and an innovation, but slowly became the norm (the vowel change)
Gender:
1966: women in New York tended to style shift more than male informants (less conservative linguistically)
o Martha’s Vineyard: men leading the linguistic change
