Langauge and gender

Theorist: Victoria Defrancisco

Main arguments:

• Males dominate the conversation
• Males use stratergies to silence women
• Men interupt coversations more than women
• Male conversation more likely to be developed
• Males use fake listening tokens
• Males have a lower MLU
• Males are more likely to make conversational violations and flout more maxims

Theorist: Robin Lakoff

Main arguments:

• Women speak less
• male speak is the norm
• women language is less powerful
• "hedges"
• "tag question"
• "fillers"
• Mitigating face threataning act
• Upspeak

Advive vs understanding

• Tannen claims that, to many men, a complaint is a challenge to find a solution:

"When my mother tells my father she doesn't feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the doctor. Invariably, she is disappointed with his reaction. Like many men, he is focused on what he can do, whereas she wants sympathy."

Information vs feelings

• Historically men's concerns were seen as more important than those of women, but today this situation may be reversed
• The giving of information and brevity of speech are considered of less value than sharing of emotions and elaboration
• From the viewpoint of the language student, no value judgment is made regarding purposes and topics in speech

Orders vs. proposals

• Women often suggest that people do things in indirect ways - "let's" or "why don't we?" or "wouldn't it be good if we?"
• Men may use, and prefer to hear, a direct imperative

Conflict vs. compromise

"In trying to prevent fights, some women refuse to oppose the will of others openly. But sometimes it's far more effective for a woman to assert herself, even at the risk of conflict."

• This situation is easily observed in work situations where a management decision seems unattractive
• Men will often resist it vocally, while women may appear to accede, but complain subsequently

"Learning the other's ways of talking is a leap across the communication gap between men and women, and a giant step towards genuine understanding"

Independence vs. intimacy

• Women often think in terms of closeness and support, and struggle to preserve intimacy
• Men, concerned with status, tend to focus more on independence
• These traits can lead women and men to starkly different views of the same situation
• Professor Tannen gives the example of a woman who would check with her husband before inviting a guest to stay - because she likes telling friends that she has to check with him
• The man, meanwhile, invites a friend without asking his wife first, because to tell the friend he must check amounts to a loss of status
• Often, of course, the relationship is such that an annoyed wife will rebuke him later

Definition: Androcentric language means lanaguage that is centered around the man as the 'norm'

Example: Mankind, Mam cave, Man hours

Definition: a marked term is where there is a term that is clearly marked or labeled to go with a certain gender. an unmarked term is a term which has no gender linked term so can be used for both sex.

Example: an example for a marked term would be fireman or police offer. An example for unmarked terms would be Police officer.

Definition: lexical asymmetry is two words that mean the same thing but one for one gender and one for the other and sometimes they mean the same thing but sometimes negative semantic fields surround the words so there is no longer lexical asymmetry between the two words as they mean different things.

Example: An example would be Sir and Madam these are not symetrical as Sir is considerd to be a noble high class gentlemen. whereas Madam is now commonly accociated with a lady who is having a tantrum "being a madam"

Definition: Pejorative: has menaing that has become negative over time. Semantic Derogration: the sense of negative meaning or connoatation that some lexical terms have attached to them

Example: Semantic derogation: peak- used to be good "reach your peak" now something bad for someone "thats so peak"

• Maxims- flouting the maxims- breaking the maxim
• Turn taking- pragmatic part of language
• Topic management 
• Mean length Utterance (MLU)
• Interuptions
• No response
• Delayed response
• Faked listening tokens
• Diffused punchlines

Deixis- not sure what is meant 

Phatic: Polite conversation to start a conversation 

Subverting: Going against

Atypical: Opposite of typical