English Language and Gender Theories

- Men are more likely to interrupt in mixed-sex conversations than women

- In 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only 2

- Geoffrey Beattie criticises this - saying interruptions don't necessarily reflect dominance, some can show interest like back channeling

- Represents male and female language in six contrasts:

- Status vs. Support - for men, conversation is competitive, whereas for women, talking is often a way to gain confirmation and support 

- Independence vs. Intimacy - women often think in terms of closeness and support, and struggle to preserve intimacy, whereas men focus on independence, e.g. a wife is likely to check with her husband before inviting a guest to stay, whilst men wouldn't as they'd lose status

- Advice vs. Understanding - to many men, a complaint is a challenge to find a solution, but when women complain, they often just want sympathy, not a solution

- Report vs. Rapport (Information vs. Feelings) - men are more concerned with facts/information, women with emotions

- Orders vs. Proposals - men use imperatives, women use hidden directives and hedging

- Conflict vs. Compromise - men will argue, women will try to find a middle ground

- Terms like "men", "man", and "mankind" imply male is the norm

- The term for the species or people in general is the same as that for one sex only

- If people believe that men and women's speech styles are different, it is usually the women who are told to change 

- Interruption isn't the same as making a sound while another is speaking 

- This sound can be supportive and affirming 

- Tannen calls it cooperative overlap

- Or it can be an attempt to take control of the conversation - an interrupt or competitive overlap

- High involvement and high considerateness:

- HI speakers are concerned to show enthusiastic support (even if this means simultaneous speech), while HC speakers are more concerned to be considerate of others, so choose not to impose on the conversation

- Looked at conversations between American graduate school couples, all feminists, white, and age 25-35 - concentrating on two characteristics common in women's dialect, including tag questions

- Found women frequently used tag questions "isn't it?" or "couldn't we?"

- For women, tag questions are a method of beginning and maintaining conversations with men

- Argues women use tag questions to gain conversational power 

- Women need to use questions when speaking to men as they often don't respond sufficiently to declaratives

- Found they also use "you know?", which is a way to check the other person is listening 

- Women used 4 times as many yes/no tag questions as men 

- Not as Lakoff says, that it's because women are more uncertain, but because women need to try to keep the conversation going due to the inferior social position of women  - shitwork

- Coates looks at all-female conversation and builds on Tannen's ideas

- House Talk = exchange of information dealing with female role 

- Scandal = talk about behaviour of others, especially other women

= Bitching = overt expression of women's anger - not meant to make change, just to vent to other women

- Chatting = intimate form of gossip - mutual self-disclosure, nurture role

- Coates sees women's simultaneous talk as supportive and cooperative

- Says women use more of these than men:

- Hedges

- Adjectives

- Super polite forms and apologise more

- Speak less frequently 

- Avoid swearing

- Tag questions 

- Hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation (prestige way of speaking)

- Indirect requests 

- 3 maxims = don't impose, give the receiver options, and make the receiver feel good

- There are all of these findings about men and women 'speaking different languages', but "beliefs on this subject are not timeless and universal"

- Women do give direct orders, challenge one another, boast, swear, etc. 

- Men and women typically misunderstand each other, leading to tension and conflict 

- But there is actually very little difference in the way they speak 

- Thinks that when all the necessary reservations and qualifications have been taken into account, the answer is yes, women are more polite than men

- Bases her research on Brown and Levinson's idea of positive and negative face 

- Women use more positively orientated politeness and men use more negative

- This is because women and men have different perceptions of what language is used for

- Men use language as a tool to give and obtain info (the referential function of language)

- Women use language as a means of keeping in touch (the social function)

- Women pay and receive more compliments, and regard compliments as positive politeness

- Men tend to consider compliments as less positive than women do, and often see them as face threatening or at least not as unambiguous in intentions 

- The discrepancies in complimentary language my be due to differences in perception of the purpose of compliments - women use them to build connections, men to make judgements

- Says language is a system that embodies sexual inequality 

- Female words are used as insults - "don't be such a girl" would lead to a loss of prestige 

- The words to describe women are consistently sexualised or imply over-emotion and weakness

- Nick Clegg had been described by critics as a "harlot", a "flirt", and "arm candy"

- Men have more control over meaning and talk, and women are damned if they do and damned if they don't talk like a lady 

- Men use more tag questions in their research

- Believes many earlier studies have seemed to accept gender differences as a given, and have failed to consider social or relational contexts 

- Studied 7 happy couples age 21-63, living together between 2-35 years, their first marriage

- Recorded conversations of them living day to day at home

- Made them listen to 30 mins of it, and to note anything they liked or disliked

- She was looking for: talk time, question asking, topic initiations, topic success/failure, turn talking including interruptions, and minimal/delayed/failed responses

- Both sexes equally as likely to raise all topics except personal emotion/concerns

- Only 5 instances of this (all raised unsuccessfully by women)

- All women expressed concerns about getting their husband's attention, and got put down

- Men tried to silence women by telling them to stop worrying about a topic they tried to discuss