English Language Theorists

Women have a lak off (lack of) certain things which make womens speech inferior to mens - 'Language and a Women's Place.' The 1975 (band) very outdated. Only made assumptions, didn't base it on actual research.

Women;

• use hedges
• use empty adjectives
• use super polite forms
• apologise more
• speak less
• avoid expletives
• use tag questions
• have hyper correct grammar and pronunciation
• use indirect requests
• speak in italics
• lack a sense of humour
• use modal constructions

Found 2 functions of tag questions;

• Modal - request info/confirmation on info.
• Affective - indicate concern, 2 types;
• Softner - would otehrwise be an impolite demand.
• Faclitative - invite listener to take conversational turn/comment on speakers observations.

Findings;

• Women use more tag questions.
• Men used more modal tags (61% to 35%,) and more softeners (13% to 6%.) Based on actual evidence unlike Lakoff.

Advancement - Cameron, McAliden and O'Leary (1988);

• Used huge sample oncluding same sex and mixed sex convos.
• Men used 60 tags - 40% modal, 60% facilitative.
• Women used 36 tags - 35% modal and 75% facilitative.

'You Just Don't Understand' - 6 contrasts, outdated and broad generalisations. Men vs Women;

• Conflict vs Compromise
• Orders vs Proposals
• Information vs Feelings
• Advice vs Understanding
• Independence vs Intimacy
• Status vs Support

Men are more dominant in conversation due to womens less powerful posiiton in society.

Recorded conversatios both mixed and same sex and founf, in mixed sex conversations, men interrupt 96% of the time.

This shows that men are dominant in conversation.

Geoffry Beattie said that this could have just been one male that interrupted a lot and also that the nature of interruptions could be supportive e.g. agreeing with the female.

Recorded set of subjective and stereotyped suggestions about males and females;

Women -

• Talk more/talk too much
• More polite
• More indecisive/hesitant
• Complain and nag
• Ask more questions
• Support each other
• More cooperative

Men -

• Swear more
• Dont talk about emotions
• Talk about sports, women and machienes all in same way
• Insult each other frequently
• Competitative in convo and dominate it by speaking with more authority
• Give more commands and interrupt more

Womens style of communicating is not from lack of social training but from inferior position in society.

Women use tag questions to carry on conversation or to make sure males are listening not because they were uncertain and tentaitve. 

Language is man made and favours men.

Research is inconclusive, traditional, stereotypical and outdated.

Language is man made and favours men.

Research is inconclusive, traditional, stereotypical and outdated.

Looked at difference between terms for promiscious men and women and found there are a lot more for a promiscous female (220) than a promiscous male (20.)

Most of the male terms related to homesexuality or had positive connatations such as stud.

Whereas the terms used for women reffered both to a woman in terms of being a '****' but also mocking abstience. 

Actually no difference in how men and women speak.

Down to different brains - female brain and male brain, either gnder can have either or a balanced one which suits them for certain jobs.

Challenged Lakoff by saying lnaguage differences are situation specific. Those who have authoirty are less likely to show charactersitics she listed as womens speech, which could be a women but this is down to situatuation not gender.

Studied courtroom cases observing witnesses and examined for basic speech diffferences. 

Discourse communities - groups that have same goals/purposes and use communication to achieve goals.

Defining characteristics;

• Boradly agreed set of common public goals.
• Mechanisms of intercommunication among members.
• Has some specific lexis in adition to owning genres.

6 power statergies;

• Expert Power - Knowledge and skill that someone else requires.
• Referent Power - Power from another person liking you/wanting to be you - charisma and fame.
  
• Legitimate Power - Invested in role.
  
• Reward Power - Give others what they want.
• Coercive Power - Force someone to do something against their will.
• Informational Power - Proving information to a person that leads to them thinking/behaving in a different way.

Accomidation theory.

Convergence - fitting in/agreeing. 

Divergence - Expressing differences.

More likely to converge if of lower power so not to challenge those above.

Common goals and agreed way of achieving them;

• Quality - Truthful
• Quantity - Contributions
• Relevance - Keeping to topic
  
• Manor - Avoid being obscure, be poliet and thoughful.

To break maxim = social nusiance, appear negative/difficult.

Positive face - feel valued and apprecoated by someones elses langauge.

Negatie face - imposed and uncomfortable.

Face threatening act - damages face of speaker.

4 human politeness strategies;

• Postive politness - recognise desire to be respected.
• Negatice politness - recognise imposing on desire.
• Bold, on record - rude, don't minimise effect.
• Indirect, off record - takes pressure off.

DIfferent categories of different power;

• Situational - specific to situation, don't consider other factors.
• Institutional - power derived from instiutional hierachy.
• Societal - from belonging to a particular group e.g. age/gender etc...

Convergence - make accent similar

Divergence - establish differences (Martha's vineyard)

Divergence - Fisherman changed prouncication by exaggerating tendency of ou in speech e.g. mouse to mice.

Desire to keep identity seperate to tourists.

Department store in NY.

Look at eprception of social class and prounciation of 'r.'

Upper calss = more prouniciation of r phoneme.

Prestige.

Covert - Used by men as dont need to seek power, are less formal and drop standard English.

Overt - Seeked by women to show power they don't have in society

Clipping of 'g'

Matched guise technique - 1 man, 13 different accentss to look at stereotyping impressions of accent.

How pleasant/unpleasant

How comfortable/uncomfortable

How much prestige/status

RP first

Birmingham worst

Added solidarity to Giles.

Yorkshire came first.

RP 5th.

Birmingham second to last before New York.

Triparite hierachal framework.

First class - RP, French.

Second level - Regional British accents (sub.)

Third class - wokring calss, industrial towns.