Language and gender

Language and gender

1. Men and women use language differently

   • Trudgill 1983
     • Found women's social class accents closer to RP than mens
   • Cheshire 1982
     • Studied adolescent girls and boys, boys tended to use more non-standard grammatical forms
   • Using standard English and RP gives person overt prestige, women tend to seek

2. Possible explanations for women using more prestigious forms than men

   • Less secure in terms of social status
   • Society expects higher standards of behaviour from women
   • Men already have higher social status than women
   • Non-standard language associated with working class men
     • Tough, down to earth qualities

3. Women's politeness

   • Robin Lakoff features characteristic of women's language 1975
     • Hedges and fillers
     • Apologetic requests
     • Tag questions
       • In their data men more tag questions than women - Dubois and Crouch 1975
     • Indirect requests

4. Approaches to difference in language use

   • Other explanations
     • Courtroom trials - O'Barr and Atkins 1980
       • Low social status or inexperienced aspects Lakoff called women's
     • Women's language not weakness but desire to cooperate - Holmes 1984
     • Few differences, situation affects more than gender - Cameron 2007
     • Interrupting is dominant? - Beattie 1982
   • Deficit - Robin Lakoff 1975
     • Women speak less than men
     • Women less expletives
     • More intensifiers
     • Features of women's language reflect inferior social status
     • Women's language weaker and prevents women being taken seriously
   • Dominance - Zimmerman and West 1975
     • Recorded interruptions, 96% men
       • Men dominant in male-female convos reflects men's dominance in society
   • Difference - Tannen 1990
     • Men concerned with
       • Status and independence
       • Direct orders and don't mind conflict
       • Facts and problem solving
     • Women concerned with
       • Forming bonds
       • Avoiding conflict through politeness
       • Understanding through compromising
       • Supporting

5. Represented differently

   • Marked terms
   • Generic terms
   • Lexical asymmetry
   • Patronising terms

6. Sexism

   • 3rd person masculine pronoun 'he' or 'his' refers to both sexes
   • More insults for women
     • Animal theme
     • Lots for promiscuity
       • Sara Mills list 1995
     • Positive connotations for men promiscuity
   • Views on avoiding sexist language
     • Can be frustrating or pointless
   • Sexist language avoiding and changing
     • Sex discrimination act 1975