Language and Gender
- Created by: bethmci
- Created on: 25-03-17 15:28
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- Language and Gender
- AO2
- Robin Lakoff (1975) Language and Women's Place (deficit but pioneeded dominance)
- Argues that women's language reflected and perpetuated their lower social status. Clasified women's language as powerless
- Hedging (‘a bit’ ‘sort of’) Empty adjectives (lovely) Elaborate colour terms (mauve) Phrasing statements as questions Super-politeness Avoiding taboo language Use of tag questions to seek approval Rising intonation
- Problems with Lakoff: Research based on intuition rather than evidence. Claims disproved. She used her circle of friends for research
- Peter Trudgill (1974)
- Studied speech in Norwich. Found women more likely to use standard 'ing' but they said they used it more than they actually did. Men said they used non-standard form more than they actually did
- Women seek prestige forms of language whereas men seek non-standard forms
- Men PERHAPS want to appear more manly. Women PERHAPS need language to gain power
- Konraad Kupier- lockeroom talk
- Volleyball team were more likely to save face, did insult kept in the lockeroom and deemed mild
- Rugby team were more likely to insult and use sexual humiliation
- Baxter and Wallace- builders discourse (women find it difficult to get into industry)
- Zimmerman and West- 96% of men interrupt in mixed sex conversations- used a small sample size of white men)
- JENNY CHESHIRE (I1982) Girls use less taboo and non-standard forms . Boys use non-standard forms to show solidarity.
- PAMELA FISHERMAN (1982)? DOMINANCE Interaction:
the Work Women Do
?She
argues that women do the ‘shitwork’ in
conversation;
- asking questions to facilitate talk and coming up with new topics. ?She also found that in mixed-sex conversations men spoke twice as long as women. ?Women provide ‘support talk’; minimal responses, back-channelling etc.
- DEBORAH TANNEN (1990)- You Just Don't Understand. Difference approach
- ?Research links to the socialisation process and she argues that that is what teaches us to talk in male and female ways.
- ?Also supported the idea of the ‘male as norm’ and used terms such as ‘mankind’ to justify this.
- ?Status vs. support ?Independence vs. intimacy ?Advice vs. understanding ?Information vs. feelings ?Orders vs. proposals ?Conflict vs. compromise ?Report vs. Rapport
- JANNET HOLMES (1990)
- Women use tag questions to encourage, be polite and facilitate (CONTRADICTS LAKOFF)
- DALE SPENDER (1980)- Man Made Language
- Language is inherently more sexist towards men. Women who speak like men are viewed as negative and 'bitchy'
- JENNIFER COATES (1993)
- Female talk is essentially COOPERATIVE. Support each other's rights as speakers
- ?Women’s interruptions and overlap are a sign of support and encouragement. ?Women’s use of hedging is a way of respecting ‘face’.
- DEBORAH CAMERON-Questions many of the myths around language and gender and suggests that we need to take into a range of factors to decide if men and women do really speak the same language
- DEBORAH JONES (1990) HOUSE TALK, SCANDAL,BITCHING AND CHATTING
- Robin Lakoff (1975) Language and Women's Place (deficit but pioneeded dominance)
- AO1
- Sex- refers to biological differences
- Gender- refers to socially expected characteristics
- Hetronormativity- set of norms or expectations based on heterosexuality
- Actor-the person 'acting' the verb
- Affected- person affected by the verb
- Marked form- waitress or hostess
- Unmarked form- police officer, fire fighter
- Covert marking- when the noun is sterotypically male or female
- Overt marking- openly stating the difference (female doctor or male nurse)
- Semantic derogation- words take on negative connotations or denotations
- Semantic deteriotation-a dissaprovement in the the meaning of a word
- Covert prestige- status given to non-standard forms
- Overt prestige- status given to RP
- Tag question- a question converted from a statement e.g. it's nice out, isn't it?.
- Hedging- avoiding making a definate statement or commitment
- Expletive- swear word
- AO2
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