Gender and Language

Gender and Language

1. Robin Lakoff 1960's-1970's

   • Women's language features
     • Lexical hedges, Tag questions, Rising intonation on declaratives, Empty Adjectives, Precise colour terms, Intensifiers, Hypocorrect grammar, Superpolite forms, Avoidance of strong swear words, Emphatic stress.
       • Lakoff says people who use these features will seem weak, unassertive, un-confident and unauthoriative.
         • Vicious circle that creates and reproduces gender inequalities.
           • Women's language reflects their lack of power and authority in society.
             • Learn these features through interaction, socialisation and social expectations of how a woman should behave.
   • O'Barr & Atkins
     • They tested Lakoff's women's language hypothesis
       • Analysed how frequently WL features were used in the courtroom testimony of witnesses.
         • Many scenarios to consider; Social class, age, race, culture. Language use cant be defined just by gender
       • Findings
         • Men were more polite when addressing people.
           • Women use more quotes which shows they are uncertain of what they're saying and need evidence to back up their statements
             • Women were hesitant when speaking.
         • Gender was not the sole determinant of people's interactional language and behaviour
           • Gender was a powerful determinant of people's interactional language and behaviour
             • Being female often correlated with lower social status and power than being male
     • Renamed Lakoff's idea of women's language as Powerless Language
   • Reflectionism
     • How society's views affect the language women use.
   • Her research is outdated and could be argued as no longer valid. Only contains data from people within the same sociolect
     • Collected data from her friends so there's not an equal representation of women.
       • Not reliable as she made up conversations that she used for evidence and TV shows
         • Raises the issues as to whether her research has any real validation and relevance
     • Criticisms

2. Deborah Tannen

   • Men use language to maintain independence & hierachy as they like being centre stage.
     • Women always speak as if they are in private
       • Men are more comfortable speaking in public. Better at speaking in groups.
       • Women criticise peers who try to stand out
   • Difference Approach
     • Not down to social status but instead how they are brought up

3. Zimmerman & West

   • Investigated whether there was any difference in women's and men's turn taking in interaction
     • Taped 2 participant conversations. Examined when smooth speaker switches did and didn't happen
       • Overlaps - this is a feature of co-operative conversations. Shows interest and enthusiasm. - Think they have finished speaking but they haven't.
         • Interruptions- this is a feature of competitive conversation - know the speaker hasn't finished but interrupt anyway.
       • Findings
         • Same sex pairs appear to be more comfortable and conversation flows without many interruptions
           • Men interrupt more in conversations than women and they have more overlaps