English language theorists
- Created by: Helena Louise Grace
- Created on: 12-02-18 10:50
Davis Crystal
· “Range of opinions about the purpose of email as a communicative medium”
· No one accepted style or type of language when it comes to writing an email
· Most of the time the subject line is an indication of the identity of the message
· Greetings and farewells do not always feature in emails
· Mistakes are the result of the speed and spontaneity of which emails can be written
Otto Jespersen (Defecit framework)
Published language “it’s nature, developments and origins” – (1922)
· Women talk a lot
· Women use half-finished sentences because they speak before they have thought about what they want to say
· Women link sentences with and because they are emotional rather than grammatical
· Women often use empty adjectives
· Women have small vocabularies
Robin Lakoff (Dominance framework)
“Language and a women’s place” (1975)
Women are more likely to...
· Hedge – using phrases like “sort of,”, “kind of” and “it seems like
· Use of super polite forms – “would you like”
· Use tag questions – “aren’t you?”
· Speak in italics (intentional emphasis on words such as so, very, and quite)
· Use empty adjectives
· Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation
· Use direct quotations (men perhaps more often)
Robin Lakoff (Dominance framework)
Women ...
Speak less frequently
Overuse qualifiers such as “I think that”
Apologies more
Use modal construction (can, would, should, ought)
Avoid expletives
Use indirect commands and requests such as “isn’t it cold in here
Use more intensifiers such as “so” and “very”
Lack a sense of humour
Zimmerman and West
1975
· In mixed sex conversations men are more likely to interrupt than women. Their conclusion was that since men interrupt more often, or attempt to, they are dominating the conversations which reflects stereotypes of masculinity in patriarchal society
Pamela Fishman
“Interaction : The Work Women Do” (1983)
· Conversations between sexes sometimes fail because of they way men respond (or lack of response). The success of men’s topics is due to the supportive efforts of women who use minimal responses supportively to develop the topic of conversation. Women are pushed into low status jobs just as they are into low status interactional work. The difference in husband and wives conversation is due to the larger social order in every day interaction.
Dale Spender (Dominance approach)
“Man Made language” (1985)
· The English language embodies a particular world view. Language embodies structures that sustain male power. Language patterns are manifestations of a patriarchal social order. It is difficult to change this power system because we are part of it, our man made language bocks women’s version of reality. Their meanings are systematically supressed.
Deborah Tannen
“Can we Talk?”
· Status vs support
· Independence vs intimacy
· Advice vs understanding
· Information vs feeling
· Order vs proposal
· Conflict vs compromise
Janet Homes (Difference Framework)
1995
· Women make more compliments than men (reflected in Tannen’s theory – women seek support and sympathy)
· “The chicken metaphor tells a story of a girl’s life. In her youth she is a chick and then she marries and begins feeling cooped up so she goes to her hen parties and cackles with her friends. Then she has her brood and begins to peck her husband. Finally she turns into an old biddy.”
Barbara Johnstone
Story telling – 1990
Men – protagonist usually teller, almost male
Women – protagonist often others, gender varies
Men – individual reality
Women – social reality
Men – contests among individuals or with nature
Women – community norms and fear of flouting them
Men – skill, resourcefulness, and heroism
Women – embarrassment and fear
Men – more detail on place, time, object and description
Women more detail of characters, named characters and dialogue
Jennifer Coates
Men talk tends to fit stereotypes (tend to talk about impersonal things unlike women)
· Women’s conversational topics flow in a natural order
· Men seem to take turns, making individual monologue type speeches. This is about “playing the expert”
· Men also have conversations were participants are limited to single utterances per turn
· Men appear to take turns more, as overlapping is seen as an attempt to grab the floor (this rule is avoided when participants are excited)
Michael Halliday “Ideational Metafunction”
Helps readers to deconstruct and identify how gender has been constructed and represented through language
· What, who, where, when and how
· Is the action presented objectively or neutrally?
· Participants, process, and circumstance
Brown and Levinson
Positive face – desire to be approved of or liked
· A positive face can be addressed through a compliment or threatened through criticism
· A negative face is their desire not to feel imposed upon or not to be disturbed.
· A negative face can be addressed if another speaker refrains from asking the person something or if they ask it in a way that minimises the disturbance. It can be threatened by the person being asked to do something that they do not want to be asked to do.
· Positive politeness – polite behaviour addresses a positive face
· Negative politeness – polite behaviour addresses a persons negative face
· Bald on record – nothing is done to reduce the threat. It is a face threatening act
· FTA (positive face) – you are clearly not a good cook)
· FTA (positive and negative face) – close you mouth when you eat you fat swine
Grice's maxims
Maxim of Quantity – not too much or too little information
· Maxim of quality – don’t lie or mislead
· Maxim of relation – don’t be irrelevant
· Maxim of manner – don’t be unclear or obscure
· Observe a maxim – follow the rules of the maxim
· Flout a maxim – not literally observing the maxim but not completely ignoring it
· Violating the maxim – not following it at all
Norman Fairclough
Synthetic personalisation – artificial friendliness that powerful institutions use to reinforce power
Building relations through personalisation between the producer and receiver. Often achieved through the use of personal pronouns
Manipulation of member’s resources – ideologies and cultural references are used by the producer to represent a product in a particular way
Building the consumer – the consumer is made to accept the product is what they need.
Peter Trudgill
Trudgill found that men were less likely and women more likely to use the prestige pronunciation of certain speech sounds. In aiming for higher prestige (above that of their observed social class) the women tended towards hypercorrectness. The men would often use a low prestige pronunciation - thereby seeking covert (hidden) prestige by appearing “tough” or “down to earth”.
Howard Giles
Accommodation Theory – Howard Giles – 1973
Describes how speakers change their language to resemble that of their listener: convergence, divergence, upwards/downwards/mutual. (People adapt language and pronounciation so as to not stand out in a social environment.)
Drew and Heritage
Goal orientation - within a work place, the conversations will revolve around a particullary topic or goal
Turn taking / restrictions - there are rules that imply who speeks when within a work place scenario
Allowable contribution - there are restrictions on what sort of participation is considered allowable within a working environment
Asymmetry - one speaker may have more knowledge or power in a work place scenario than another speaker
Preffessional lexis - there tends to be alot of jargon
Structure - workplace conversations are often structured in a specific way.
French and Raven
Legitimate power - dependent on a position (ie a President has legitimate power but looses this if he loses an election)
Reward power - if you have the power to reward people then they are more likely to do what you ask of them in hope of recognition
Coercive power - threats and punishment and the power to take things away
Expert power - gained through knowlege and an understanding of a tpoic
Referent power - comes from someone liking you, and therefore respecting your charisma and appeal
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