gender seneca Flashcards
(28 cards)
Dominance theory
Language use in respect to men being more dominant
Schulz and lakoff
Conducted research into the terms in which women and men are referred to
‘Semantic derogation’ e.g. ‘mistress’
The suffix -ess
Stanley
- research from the 1970s examined the number of insults for women against men
- she found that there were 220 insults to describe a promiscuous woman vs 20 for a promiscuous male
- in 2015, Tyger drew-honey asked people how they would describe a woman who slept with 30 men vs a man who had slept with 30 women (slag, slut vs lad)
Janet holmes
- research into the way women are referred to in affectionate nominatives
- predominately from the semantic fields of food and animals e.g. sugar, honey, bitch, cow
Dale spender
- culture of ‘male as norm’, where men are the dominant models
- men are almost always introduced first e.g. lord and lady, mr and mrs, words like mankind and human
- has led to a rise in more gender neutral words e.g. head teacher
Kira hall
- support for lakoff
- found that phone sex workers often made use of lakoff features to appear more feminine
Critique of lakoff
2017: research published by ‘economic and social research council’ 500% increase in the use of ‘fuck’ used by women
Pilkington
‘Locker-room banter’ is created with in all-male groups
Millett
‘The tone and ethos of men’s house culture is sadistic, power-ortientated and latently homosexual, frequently narcissistic in its energy and motives’
Difference model
Men and women are inherently different
Robin lakoff (1975)
- research details a list of features of spoken language that makes women’s language ‘weak’:
Hyper correct grammar
Over-apologising
Empty adjectives
Tag questions
Overuse of intensifiers
Special lexicon
Less swearing
Lack a sense of humour
Judith butler - theory of performativity
Says you construct your gender based on how you behave and the language you use
Your language linguistically determines you
O’Barr and Atkins
- looked at a courtroom and found that lower class men use lakoff language features in court
- research implies that it is potentially not to do with gender but with women
- denoted as ‘powerless language’
Support for valentova and Havlicek - northwestern university
- research found that lesbian, gay and bisexual people showed no difference at birth in vowel production but chose to selectively adopt vowel productions of social-groups
Weakness of lakoff
- based purely on her own observations and not any linguistically rigorous testing
Diversity model
Claims there are more differences with in the genders than between them
Deficit theory
Women’s language is weak or contains weak traits
Valentova and Havlicek
- investigated what is called someone’s ’perceived sexual orietation’
- looked at whether or not someone could tell a mans sexuality based on their aesthetics and voice
- participants stated that there was a certain femininity in the voice of the homosexual; man, such as elongated /l/ vowel
Weakness of Zimmerman and wests study
Otto jespersen (1922)
- investigated non-fluency features such as fillers and pauses
- his research details that women speak without thinking and so use more non-fluency features
- evidence from literature and travellers (speculative and often dismissed)
Interruptions - Zimmerman and west
- 1975
-interruptions in conversations between men and women, men interrupted 96-100% more of the time
Pamela fishman
- conversations between men and women often fail because of how men act
- men use 1/3 of the questions women do, minimal responses
- women do ‘conversational shitwork’
Jennifer Coates
- researched all-male and all-female groups and states that they converse differently, although topics of conversation tend to be similar
- states that techniques used by women to maintain conversations are signs of intelligence
Kuiper
Research details that men use more insults and expletives
