Theories - Language and Gender Flashcards
(17 cards)
Who made the theory of ‘Male as the Norm’, and what is it?
Julia Stanley, it is the idea that masculinity is the baseline for everything. For example, ‘mankind’. It is ‘convenient’ but misogynistic and makes women invisible.
What is ‘marking’ and what does it reveal about hidden norms?
Adding a label onto a title, eg. ‘working mother’. It suggests that working as a mother is unnatural to society. Also happens to men, but less commonly, eg. ‘male prostitute’.
What are ‘collocations’?
Words that ‘fit’ together, eg. salt and pepper, sweet and sour.
What is ‘lexical priming’ according to Hoey?
The way words and phrases come with an undercoat layer based around stereotypes eg. ‘bellows’/’strides’ are typically masculine.
Give an example of language differentiation in gender.
How language is used in advertising to target specific groups, eg. ‘lego friends’ for girls, ‘lego ninjago’ for boys.
What did Goldberg study in relation to perceptions of gender?
Women respect men more than other women. Female students read articles by John T Mckay VS Joan T Mckay. The one written by ‘John’ was given much better response than the one written by ‘Joan’, despite them being the exact same article.
Who studied language and controlling sexual behaviour, and what did they find?
Julia Stanley. She found that there were many more discriminatory words to describe sexually active women than for men. Men control women’s behaviour with this.
Lakoff Deficit Theory
Women adapted language to seem weaker, eg. hedging, back channelling, politeness etc.
Fishman Dominance Theory
She studied 52 hours of mixed gender interactions and found that women did the ‘shit-work’ and made more effort to start and continue conversations, whilst men only joined in when the topic interested them.
What did Zimmerman and West find?
That men were more likely to interrupt women. They studied 11 mixed gender conversations, and found that men interrupted women 46 times, whilst women only interrupted twice.
AO3 - What was negative about Zimmerman and West’s study of interruptions?
Only studied 11 conversations, small sample, low representativeness. All participants were under 35, white and middle class.
Why was Beatee’s study of interruptions different than Zimmerman and West’s?
It studied 557 conversations, and found that men and women interrupt each other equally, and because the sample size is larger it’s more valid.
Report talk VS Rapport talk - what are they and who discusses them?
Tannen says that men use report talk whilst women use rapport talk. Men aim to share information, whilst women aim to build relationships.
According to Tannen, men and women have opposite goals when trying to communicate, give 2 examples of these.
Status VS Support, Advice VS Understanding, Independence VS Intimacy, Information VS Feelings, Orders VS Proposals, Conflict VS Compromise.
Trudgill Difference Theory
Men prefer covert prestige and individuality, so are less likely to speak politely. Women prefer overt prestige and community, so are more likely to speak politely.
How do Malz and Borker say men and women differ when back-channelling?
Women say ‘mhm’ to tell the other person they are listening, whilst men interpret this as ‘i can hear you’.
What did Obar and Atkins find that contrasted with Lakoff’s deficit theory?
They studied courtrooms over a period of 30 months, and found that both genders used ‘weaker’ language, it was not specific to women. Language differed because of power dynamics.
