What is Robin Lakoff’s Deference Model? - 10 features
- Superpoliteness
- Hedges - ‘sort of’
- Hyper-correctness
- Tag Questions - ‘isn’t it’
- Speaking in Italics - ‘Please’
- Empty adjectives of approval - ‘lovely’
- Use of implication
- Special Lexicon - ‘lavender’ instead of ‘purple
- Question in declarative statement - ‘dinner soon okay?’
- Women have no sense of humour.
What were some criticisms of Lackoff?
Men use more tags than women
What is Zimmerman and West’s Dominance Model?
Man speak in a deliberately uncooperative way when talking to women to undermine them.
What is Zimmerman and West - Turn-taking?
Overlaps - previous speakers turn ending but start new turn to early but near TRP.
Interruptions - violations of turn-taking.
Same sex - Overlaps more common - 22 rather than 7 interruptions.
Mixed sex - Interruptions more common - 48 interruptions rather than 9.
What were some criticisms of turn-taking?
Eakens and Eakens - status, work - hierarchal preference.
Beatties - small scale data sample
What was Zimmerman and West - dominance through minimal response?
U NDERSTANDING
L ISTENING
A AGREE
S UPPORT
Minimal respond - listener being unsupportive, mixed sex conversation with men dominating women.
What did Pamela Fishman say?
Women used tag ‘y’know’ 5x more than men.
What did Janet Holmes say - oriented tags?
- Speaker-oriented tags - to benefit the speaker, mostly used by men
- Addressee-oriented tags - benefit the listener, mostly used by women.
Men use to benefit themselves whereas women use to benefit listener.
What did Victoria DeFrancisco say?
She observed women:
1. introduce more topics than man
2. talk more than men
3. worked harder at keeping conversations going
Men also reject topics when speaking to women.
What did Helena Leet-Pellegrini find?
Male experts talked the most and violated others people’s turn more than other speakers.
Non/experts spoke the least - used more minimal response.
What did Tannen say?
- Language is different due to differences in upbringing and social conditioning
- Small boys - wide spaces, competitive
- Small girls - play in in smaller spaces, 2/3 groups
Women’s and Men’s conversation by Tannen?
Women’s conversation- rapport talk to establish and maintain relations.
Men’s conversation- report talk to give information.
What did Deborah Jones say?
Women talk falls into one of the 4:
1. Housetalk
2. Bitching
3. Scandal
4. Chatting
What did Jane Pilkington find in her Bakery Study?
- Women agree more frequently
- Men find long pauses acceptable
- Women support
What did Janet Hyde say about gender similarities?
They’re are far more similarities between men’s and women’s speak than differences.
What did O’Barr and Atkins’s Courtroom study find?
They studied courtroom study for 30 months. Found that Lakoff 10 feature are not necessarily a result of being a women but powerless.
Women’s Language should be re-named ‘powerless language’.
Low status speakers use feature of women’s language regardless of gender.
What did Cameron’s Performative Language say?
That language is a ‘performance’ and that we present ourselves in a chosen way.
Cameron believes language differences are due to expectation placed by society not biological.
What is Bulter’s Performative Language?
- We perform the gender we want to represent.
- Gender is constructed through language.
- Gender roles are dependent on your background and cultures.
- Drag - exposes performative nature of femininity, socially determined.
What did Judith Baxter say determines language rather than gender?
Gender doesn’t determine language, contexts like being at work or status do.
