Gender Theories

Gender Theories

1. The Deficit Theory

   • Robin Lakoff
     • She describes the male language as stronger more prestigious and more desireable
     • She argues that women are socialised into behaving like 'ladies' and that this prevents them from being powerful in our culture
     • She claims that women...
       • Apologise more
       • Overuse qualifiers
       • Use modal constructions
       • Hedge
       • Speak less frequently
       • Use 'wh' imperitives
       • Use question intonation and declarative statements
       • More intensifiers
       • Have special lexicon
       • Use direct quotation
       • Use indirect commands and requests
       • Lack of sense of humour
       • Avoid coarsing and swearing
       • Super polite forms
       • Use tag questions
       • Use hypo correct grammar and pronunciation
       • Use empty adjectives
       • Speak in italics

2. The Dominance Theory

   • Zimmerman and West- 1975
     • In mixed- sex conversations, men are more likely to interrupt than women
   • Geoffrey Beattie
     • Beattie found that men interrupted with more or less an equal frequency
     • Men did interrupt more, but by a margin, so slight as not to be statistically significant
   • O'Barr and Atkins
     • Studied the language of the courtroom. They found the women lawyers to be more assertive and more interuptive
     • They also found that both sexes used Lakoff''s 'female' language. They concluded that these weak traits were actually a powerless language, rather than the 'female' language
   • Pamela Fisherman
     • She questions Lakoff's theory. She claims that in mixed- sex language interactions, men speak, on average, twice as long as men

3. The Difference Theory

   • Deborah Tannen
     • She looked at how men and women in conversation. She attempts to explain "male-female miscommunication" by claiming that male- female speech is "cross cultural communication"
   • Jennifer Coates
     • She looks at all- female conversation and builds on Deborah Tannen's ideas
     • All famale talk is co- operative: speakers negotiate discussions and support each other's rights as speakers. These patterns are not found in mixed- sex talk
   • Jane Pilkington
     • Women in same- sex talk are more collaborative than men in all- male talk
     • Women aim for more positive politeness strategies
     • Men are less supportive and complimentary to each other
   • Koenrad Kuiper
     • He studied all- male talk amongst a rugby team
     • Men pay less regard to the need to save face and they use insults as a way of expressing solidarity