Language and Gender Flashcards
Who is Robin Lakoff and what was the ‘Deficit Theory’?
- First linguistic to look specifically at the relationship between gender + language
- Argued that women’s lang use reflected their comparative lack of status
Lakoff claimed that women:
- Speak less (than men)
- Use fewer expletives (“oh dear…”, “oh my…”)
- Use more correct grammar
- Use more polite forms (“would you mind”, “I’d appreciate it if…”)
- Apologise more
- Don’t ‘get’ jokes as much
In the Deficit Theory, what else did Lakoff claim women did?
- Hedge (meaning a way of softening what’s being said, avoiding getting to the point - “It’s kind of”, “It’s a bit”)
- Use diminutives (embellished words, e.g. cutie, sweetie, etc.)
- Use tag questions (when a statement gets turned into a question, e.g. adding “isn’t it?” at the end
- Use question intonation at the end of statements, expressing uncertainty
- Speak in italics (adding emphasis to words)
- Use more empty adjectives
- Having a wider range of descriptive adjectives, particularly colours
- Use more intensifiers
- Use modals more
- Use ‘Wh’ imperatives
- Avoid direct requests
Who was Deborah Tannen and what was the ‘Difference Model’?
- Acknowledges men + women each use lang in specific ways because they’re socialised differently
- Men + women are socialised differently = The Difference Model
- The differences aren’t specific because men have more power than women, but because men + women want different things out of their conversations
What are ‘The Six Contrasts’?
Tannen divided up the differences between male and female speech styles into six contrasts:
- Independence vs Intimacy
- Status vs Support
- Information vs Feelings
- Orders vs Proposals
- Advice vs Understanding
- Conflict vs Compromise
What is meant by ‘Independence vs Intimacy’?
- Women often think in terms of closeness + support and struggle to preserve.
Men, concerned w/ status, tend to focus more on independence
E.g. A women asking her husband before inviting a guest over, whereas the man wouldn’t ask his wife, because if he told his friend he had to check, this amounts to a loss of status
What is meant by ‘Advice vs Understanding’?
- For men, a complaint is often a demand for solution, rather than a request for sympathy
- E.g. “When my mother tells my father she doesn’t feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the doctor. She’s disappointed with his reaction; like many men, he’s focused on what he can do, but she just wants sympathy”
What is meant by ‘Information vs Feelings’?
- Men tend to communicate more facts + info than talk about feelings + emotions
- Women tend to be more overt about how they think and feel
What is meant by ‘Orders vs Proposals’?
- Women tend to phrase things as questions, saying “Why don’t we…” or “Wouldn’t it be good if…”
- Men are more likely to use a direct imperative
What is meant by ‘Conflict vs Compromise’?
- Women will try to prevent outright fighting by acquiescing or saying they agree w/ something, even if they don’t
- This can store up resentment and cause more issues further down the line
What did Tannen mean by ‘Report vs Rapport’?
- Tannen suggested that men’s lang can be categorised as ‘Report talk’ whilst women’s lang can be categorised as ‘Rapport talk’
- Tannen summed up the difference between male and female speech:
Women:
- Speak in private contexts
- Talk too much
- Build relations
- Overlap
- Speak symmetrically
Men:
- Speak in public
- Get more air time
- Negotiate status/avoid failure
- Speak one at a time
- Speak asymmetrically
How does Gender affect our language?
Jespersen, 1922:
Women’s lang is a projection of their deficiency compared to the male norm; their lang is deficient because they have an innate deficiency
What characteristics make women's lang as deficient? Talk a lot -Tend toward hyperbole - Have a smaller vocab - Use empty + base adjectives
What characteristics did Lakoff say make women’s lang deficient and what criticisms occurred?
- Hedge more
- Use more tag questions
- Use indirect speech
- Use empty + base adjectives
- Use more euphemisms
- Use polite forms + apologetic phrasing
Criticism: O’Barr + Atkins (1980) looked at lang used in courtrooms + found that deficiency in lang is more to do with power than gender. Coined the term ‘Powerless lang”
What did Zimmerman and West find? What criticisms occurred?
In mixed-sex convos, men are more likely to interrupt than women. Men are dominating (or attempting to) the convo
Criticism: Beattie (1982) questioned why interruptions reflected dominance, why not interest? Conducted own study and found that men + women interrupt w/ more or less equal frequency
What was O’Barr + Atkins ‘Powerless Language’ Theory?
- They’re best known for developing the idea that lang is specific, depending on who has authority+power as opposed to gender
- E.g. in an interview, if a man were interviewing a woman, then the man would be more assertive in the conversation, not because of gender, but because of his authority+power
What was Beattie’s ‘Interruptions’ Theory?
- Recorded some 10 hours of tutorial discussions + some 557 interruptions
- Found that women + men interrupted with more or less equal frequency (men 34.1 , women 33.8)
