Gender - Diversity

Question 1

Name 8 Gender theorists

Answer 1

1. Dale Spender
2. Lakoff
3. Zimmerman & West
4. Fishman
5. Coates
6. Tannen
7. Jenny Cheshire
8. Trudgill

Question 2

1. Dale Spender

Answer 2

• Women ‘speak too much’
• Men have more right to ‘airtime’
• boys are more frequently involved in teacher initiated interactions than girls

Question 3

2. Lakoff

Answer 3

women are more polite than men

• women are weak - tag questions/hedging/rising innotations
• women’s lack of power - hypercorrect grammar/superpolite form e.g. ‘is it ok if?’

Question 4

3. Zimmerman & West

Answer 4

Men interrupt more than women
- 11 conversations
= men interrupted 46 times
= women interrupted 2 times

men dominate

Question 5

4. Fishman

Answer 5

Women do the ‘shit work’ in conversations - ask questions/propose topics/rising intonation
-men are using language to dominate women

Question 6

5. Coates

Answer 6

Women are more emotional and supportive in conversations than men

Question 7

6. Tannen

Answer 7

Differences
Status vs Support
Independence vs Intimacy
Advice vs Understanding
Orders vs Proposals
Conflict vs Compromise
Information vs Feelings

Question 8

7. Jenny Cheshire

Answer 8

Reading Study

young boys use more non-standard forms than girls do

Question 9

8. Trudgill

Answer 9

Men are more likely to use non-standard forms than women

• Men seek covert prestige
• Women use overt prestige

Question 10

4 different gender theory ideas

Answer 10

Deficit - intellectual inferiority
Dominance - different levels of power in society
Difference - different purposes in conversations - neither is better
Diversity - gender is just one of the aspects of our identities that affect our language