Gender and Language Theories

Otto Jespersen - 1922

• The deficit approach is attributed to him
• Showed that some language features seem to be exclusively male or female
• Showed that language is used to create an identity
• Was incorrect in saying that some features are inherently male or female
• Believed that women have a debilitating effect on language, and men introduce new words

William Labov - 1966

• The most prestigious accent in New York is rhotic (meaning it uses the post-vocalic /r/)
• Recorded the speech of shop assistants at a high-end, mid-range, and cheap department store
  • Women of all classes used the post-vocalic /r/ more than men, and were more likely to use hypercorrection
  • Subjects at the high-end stores used the prestige variety more often
• The sound was used to gain overt prestige

Trugill - 1972

• Observed the use of the 'ing' suffix in Norwich
• Women used the Standard English form more - /ŋ/ rather than /n/
• They used it more frequently in formal settings
• The sound was used to signal social status and overt prestige

Clarke-Stewart - 1973

• From 'Women, Men, and Language'
• Observed American mothers with their first-born children from 9 to 18 months of age
• Language skills in girls (both comprehension and vocabulary) seemed to be significantly higher
• This paralled with girls' more positive involvement with their mothers
• Girls' mothers compared to boys' mothers:
  • Spent more time in the same room as their children
  • Had more eye contact with them
  • Use more directive and restrictive behaviours
  • Had a higher ratio of social to referential speech

Robin Lakoff - 1975

• Used the deficit approach in her book 'Language and Women's Place', which was met with widespread criticism
• Used observations, rather than statistical evidence
• Found various features of women's speech:
  • Hedges
  • Empty adjectives
  • Super-polite forms
  • Apologising more
  • Speaking less
  • Avoiding coarse language
  • Tag questions
  • Hyper-correct grammer and pronunciation
  • Indirect requests
  • 'Speaking in italics'
• Only studied white, middle-class women
• Implied an almost complete dissimilarity between men and women's language, highlighting women's uncertainty and powerlessness

Don Zimmerman and Candace West - 1975

• Studied 31 examples of speech from white, middle-class college students
• Found that men interrupted far more (96% of the time)
• Concluded that men's dominance lay in conversational management, by:
  • Speaking more
  • Using longer terms
  • Being interrupted less
  • Interrupting more

Geoffrey Beattie - 1982

• Studied 557 interruptions
• Men interrupted slightly more, but not enough to be statistically significant
• Critical of Zimmerman and West's study, saying the sample size was too small

Jenny Cheshire - 1978

• Found that teenage gangs in Reading used a high level of non-standard forms
• They used them to express the rejection of Standard English, which they related to the education system and adult society that labelled them as 'failing'
• Individuals who conformed more the the gang sub-culture used more non-standard varieties
• Girls were more likely to use a prestige form when speaking with teachers than boys
• A third of the girls did not associate much with the other girls
  • They criticised the others' language and behaviours
  • They used far fewer non-standard forms

Dale Spender - 1980

• Wrote 'Man-Made Language'
• Interpreted womens's silence as a form of opression
  • Referred to this as 'assymetry' - a power imbalance between speakers
• Language is man-centric, reflecting men;s historical dominance
• She gave examples of grammatical rules created in the 16th to 18th centuries:
  • Male terms always come before female ones
  • Male terms are generic
  • Men's names are used in adresses on envelopes - e.g. 'Mr and Mrs Ronald Jones'

Leslie and James Milroy - 1980

• Studied the language of three working-class communities in Belfast
  • Ballymacarret (Protestant, low male unemployment)
  • The Hammer (Protestant, substantial male unemployment)
  • The Clonard (Catholic, substantial male unemployment)
• The stronger the social network, the greater the use of vernacular forms - in Ballymacarret, women used less of these, as they were less likely to work
• In The Hammer and The Clonard, younger women used more non-prestige forms; it was a way of showing solidarity with unemployed men
• Gender, religion, unemployment, and strength of social networks all had an impact on an individual's speech

Pamela Fishman - 1983

• Studied conversations between American couples
• Found that women used tag questions four times as much as men
• Concluded that they were used not to represent uncertainty (like Robin Lakoff said) but to start and maintain conversations with men
  • Men do not always respond to declarative statements, or will only respond minimally
  • Women used tag questions to gain conversational power
  • Women were often the ones to begin and sustain conversation, doing what Fishman termed 'conversational shitwork'
• Said that this is due to male dominance; men are relucatant to do the 'conversational shitwork' due to what they perceive to be their dominant role

William O'Barr and Bowman Atkins - 1980

• Language differences are situation specific, relying on authority and power rather than gender
• Studied courtroom cases and looked for hedges and tag questions (which Robin Lakoff identified as typical of women's language)
• Used three pairs of witnesses - one male, one female - to show that these features displayed powerlessness, not womanhood:
  • The first used many 'women's language' components
    • One was a housewife
    • One was an ambulance driver
    • Neither stereotypically had much power or control
  • The second was between the other pairs in the frequency of the features
  • The third used very few of the features
    • Both were expert witnesses - one a doctor, and one a policeman
    • Both had more power in their jobs and lives than the others

Jennifer Coates - 1989

• Used the difference model
• Boys and girls usually have single-sex friendship groups growing up, and so develop different ways of speaking
• Female language is co-operative in single-sex conversations
  • More tag questions
  • More modal verbs

Deborah Tannen - 1990

• Originally a student of Robin Lakoff
• Wrote 'You Just Don't Understand'
• Women and men do speak differently
  • People's desire to affirm women's equality makes them reluctant to admit observable differences
• Her representation of male and female language revolves around six contrasts: (male  - female)
  • Status - support
  • Independence - intimacy
  • Advice - understanding
  • Information - feeling
  • Order - proposals
  • Conflict - compromise
• Used the word 'genderlect' to refer to the different language use of men and women
  
• Language is not necessarily used by men to be dominant, although it is clearly different

Judith Butler - 1990

• Wrote 'Gender Trouble'
• Reinforcing a binary view of gender and asserting that 'women' are a group with common characteristics and interests is wrong
• We are not biologically constructed, but we conform to social norms
• We learn to perform gender from a young age, including through phrases such as 'I now pronounce you man and wife' or 'it's a girl/boy'
• Language is just one part of how we learn this performance
  • There is a difference between 'I speak like this because I am male/female' and 'I speak like this and so I come across as masculine/feminine'

Penelope Eckert - 1990

• Criticised previous gender theorists for viewing gender as a discrete variable which can be treated in isolation
• Gender interacts with other aspects of identity and social locations, such as ethnicity, age, and class

John Gray - 1992

• Wrote the non-academic self-help relationship book 'Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus'
• Inspired by Deborah Tannen's difference model

Janet Hyde - 2005

• Gender is something that speakers 'do' as a part of deliberate projection of their identity
• Criticised deficit, dominance, and difference models of identity
• Proposed a 'gender similarities' model
  • There are many more similarities than differences between male and female language
  • Where there are differences, they may be due to other variables
    • Class
    • Ethnicity
    • Education
    • Occupation
    • Sexuality
    • Politics

Deborah Cameron - 2008

• Wrote 'The Myth of Mars and Venus: Do Men and Women Really Speak Different Languages?'
• The myth that men and women use language in very different ways has developed around ideas such as:
  • Women pay more attention to being good listeners than men
  • Men have a desire to be competitive, resulting in an aggressive speech style
  • Women talk about people, relationships, and feelings, while men talk about facts and things
• Challenges the work of Pamela Fishman, Robin Lakoff, and Deborah Tannen
  
• These myths have shaped our expectations of men and women, and what linguistic behaviour is deemed normal or deviant, promoting further myth-making

Judith Baxter - 2014

• Women are more aware than men that the people they are interacting with may have their own agendas
• They adjust their language to reflect this by double-voicing
  • Anticipatory double-voicing anticipates others' response and tries to dilute or deflect criticism
  • Mitigating double-voicing attempts to build solidarity