gender

Question 1

What is the deficit approach?

Answer 1

• Female language seen to be weaker and a lesser version of male language

Question 2

What is the dominance approach?

Answer 2

Men’s language dominates women.

Question 3

What’s the difference approach

Answer 3

Men and women use language differently due to their different cultures.

Question 4

Otto Jeperson (1922)

Answer 4

Suggested male language forms were the ‘norm’ and the language of others
(including women) were ‘deficient’ and had a smaller vocabularly than men.
Theoriesed that women link sentences with the coordinating conjunction “and” as they are emotional rather than ‘grammatical’
Women use descriptive adjectives “pretty” and “nice” often as well as using the intensifier “so” (“so pretty”)
Also claimed women use adverbs and hyperbole often.

Question 5

Robin Lakoff (1975)

Answer 5

Language and Women’s Place - Described male language as stronger, more prestigious and more desirable because women are taught to speak like ‘ladies’. She proposed (Language and Woman’s Place) that women’s speech
can be distinguished from that of men in a number of ways.
These included-
The overuse of qualifiers eg “I think that”
Hedge using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”
Use tag questions “your going to dinner, aren’t you?”
Use empty adjectives eg “lovely” and “divine”
Indirect requests

Question 6

Dale Spender (1980)

Answer 6

Man-made language - suggests language is patriarchal and has been made by men for men in such a way as to ensure their continued dominance.

Question 7

Edwin and Shirley Ardner (1975)

Answer 7

Women’s conversational behaviour is less assertive and less
confident than that of men precisely because they occupy a less powerful position in society than men.

Question 8

Pamela Fishman (1983)

Answer 8

Conversational Shitwork - Women have to do the majority of the
‘conversational shitwork’ when interacting with men, because men, in their dominance, are less concerned to do so. Critised Lakeoffs believe that tag questions shows womens insecurity in conversation and instead believes women ask questions as an attribute of interactions.

Question 9

Zimmerman and West (1975)

Answer 9

Observed that in same-sex conversations that interruptions were fairly evenly distributed but in mixed-sex conversations most interruptions were carried out by men.
They used a fairly small sample of conversations with the subjects being white, middle classed and under 35.

Question 10

Deborah Tannen (1980)

Answer 10

Differences in male and female attitudes and values are cultural and that they grow up with completely different ideas about themselves, their place in the world and the functions of conversation.
Claimed there were 6 main differences:
Status vs Support
Independence vs intimacy
Advice vs understanding
Information vs feelings
Orders vs proposalls
Conflict vs compromise

Question 11

Jenny Cheshire (1989)standard prestige

Answer 11

Young females used more standard prestige forms than young males who used more of the non-standard utterances such as non standard -s “They calls me all types of names” and “ain’t” replacing the auxilliary “have” “I ain’t seen my nan in seven years”, suggesting differences were already evident in childhood.

May be because many children are in same sex friendship groups growing up, and subsequently develop different styles of speaking.

However, study was conducted in the playground on only 2 groups of boys and 1 group of girls

Question 12

Jane Pilkington (1990)

Answer 12

Women in same sex talk are more collaborative than men were in all-male talk.

Question 13

Koenraad Kuiper (1991)

Answer 13

In all-male talk amongst members of a rugby team, men were likely to pay less attention to the need to save face and instead used insults as a way of expressing solidarity.

Question 14

Jenny Cheshire (1982)vernacular

Answer 14

‘Variation is controlled by both social and linguistic factors. In boys’ speech variation is governed by norms that are central to the vernacular culture, and are transmitted through the peer group. Variation in the girls’ speech appears to be a more personal process, and less rigidly controlled by vernacular norms.’

Question 15

O’Barr and Atkins (1980)

Answer 15

Language differences are situation-specific, relying on who has the authority and power in a conversation, rather than the gender of the people involved.
They propesed this theory after studying courtroom cases for 30 months and examining them for the ten basic speech differences Lakoff proposed eg empty adjectives “cute” and tag questions “isn’t it”. Concluded that differences were not due to being a woman but instead of being powerless

Question 16

Geoffrey Beattie (1982)

Answer 16

Challenged the concept of interruptions only signifying dominance. Suggested they could also signify interest and involvement. In his study he noted 557 interruptions (compared to 55 found by Zimmerman and West) and found men only slightly interrupt more than women and thus he was critical of Z+W theory.

Question 17

Janet Holmes (1984) Tag questions

Answer 17

Tag Questions can be either Modal or Affective – i.e. signalling the speaker’s degree of uncertainty “Nobody’s using this chair, are they?” or expressing the speaker’s attitude to the addressee. “It’s a lovely day, isn’t it?”

Question 18

Janet Holmes (1990)hedging

Answer 18

Hedges are multifunctional depending on situation, context and intonation.
They could signal uncertainty in some cases, but they are also used to signal politeness and a positive attitude towards the other speaker in conversation.

Question 19

Judith Baxter (2002)

Answer 19

Identified elements of both cooperative and competitive talk in adolescent single sex conversations.

Question 20

Deborah Cameron (2008)

Answer 20

The Myth of Mars and Venus - Criticises the notion that there are innate differences in male and female speech: ‘The idea that men and women…use language in very different ways and for very different reasons is one of the great myths of our time.’

Question 21

Judith Butler (1990)

Answer 21

Gender Trouble - Coined the term ‘Gender Performativity.’ This refers to theidea that we ‘perform’ in role as we communicate: ‘We act and walk and speak in ways that consolidate an impression of being a man or a woman.’ We may conform to social norms we have learnt, but we are not biologically preconditioned. We can of course, perform other roles.

Question 22

Janet Hyde (2005)

Answer 22

The Gender Similarities Hypothesis - There are substantially more similarities than there are differences between male and female language.
Using meta analysis, Hyde found that almost 80% of the gender difference measures evaluated were either small or zero, arguing against any categorical gender divide in psychological traits.
She suggests variation previously noted may actually have been due to other contextual factors, such as age, social class, occupation or sexuality.

Question 23

Janet Bing & Victoria Bergvall (1996)

Answer 23

Observed that although we have the distinct categories of
‘day’ and ‘night’, the actual boundaries between them are indistinct. Day and night are a bipolar
dichotomy that language imposes; the reality is a continuum.

Question 24

What is Essentialism

Answer 24

A belief that any specific entity has a set of characteristics/attributes which makes it
what it is and is necessary to its identity and function; the idea is that essence is prior to existence.

Question 25

What is Social Contructivism

Answer 25

• A theory about how meaning is created through social interaction – through the things we do and say with other people.

Question 26

What is Universalising

Answer 26

• The practice of giving a universal character or application to something; generalising.
  Heterogeneity NOT Homogeneity - Feminists such as Sara Mills consider ‘gender’ as a term that

Question 27

Heterogeneity not Homogeneity

Answer 27

Feminists such as Sara Mills consider ‘gender’ as a term that allows for the premise that women should not be seen as a homogeneous group (and therefore by implication men also) but as a diverse group, subject to a range of influences.