Flashcards
Language and Gender
Cards in this deck (9)
- 1Otto Jesperson, 1922-Women talk a lot
-Women use half-finished sentences because they don't think before they speak
-Link with 'and' because emotional rather than grammatical
-Overuse 'pretty' and 'nice'
-Men are responsible for introducing new words into our language?!
-Didn't conduct any studies, heavily criticised - 2Robin Lakoff, 1975-Deficit theory
-Women speak less frequently
-Show listening by using 'mmm' and 'yeah'
-Speak quite than men and use a range of pitches
-Use greater range of intonation, speak in italics/emphatic stress
-declarative sentences into questions/uncertainty
-Hedges, overuse qualifiers, tag questions, apologetic, intensifiers, lexicon (range of words for subjects), super-polite forms.
-Lack sense of humour
-Avoid slang, taboo language
-Stereotyped, didn't do research, ideas based on observations - 3Dale Spender, 1980-Dominance theory
-Idea is that men dominate our society in language, reflects a patriarchal society
-Language imbalance (titles, terms more common for women)
-Negative correlations with the names given to label women e.g.. Mistress has sexual connotations
-Only men have permanent names, women don't have right to be surname addressed - 4Zimmerman and West, 1975-Spender built on their original theory of interruptions (competitive overlapping)
-Small sample of discussions
-Reported that in 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions and women only 2
-Concluded that this proves men are attempting to dominate
-Didn't count interruptions between same sex, very little variety - 5Geoff Beattie, 1982-Criticised Z&W, explained that there may have been a particularly voluble man causing a disproportionate effect
-Questioned why it would reflect dominance, why not interest?
-Recorded 10 hours of discussion and 557 interruptions
-Found men and women interrupted more of less at equal frequency (men only slightly but statistically insignificant) - 6Janet Holmes, 1984-Explored Lakoff's tag q's
-Referential tag q's (uncertainty e.g. we turn here, don't we?)
-Affective, FACILITATIVE (express solidarity and intimacy e.g. we love that show, don't we?)
-Affective, SOFTENING (weakening a command or criticism e.g. take out the rubbish, won't you?) - 7O'Barr and Atkins, 1980-Looked at courtroom cases and witnesses' speech
-Findings challenged Lakoff's view
-Language differences are based on situational-specific authority or power rather than gender - 8Pamela Fishman, 1980 and 1990's-Seemed to agree with Lakoff and Spender
-Women ask more Q's and backchannel support
-Women do more conversational work (conversational shitwork) due to inferior position in society
-Women might speak this way to maintain relationships with men
-Women ask more Q's, have more minimal responses, are attention-getters and little topic initiation compared to men - 9Deborah Tannen, 1990-Difference (idea that socialisation begins when we are taught how to be a girl/boy)
-Speech styles are a series of contrasts e.g. Status vs Support, Independence vs Intimacy, Advice vs Understanding, Info vs Feeling, Orders vs Proposal, Conflict vs Compromise