English Language Revision - Language and Gender

Language and Gender

Trudgill (1974)

Trudgill discovered that across social classes, men tended to use a more non-standard pronounciation, whereas women over-reported. This led Trudgill to think that male speakers attached a covert prestige to non-standard forms, giving them higher status.

Cheshire (1982)

Cheshire supported this research after observing that boys used non-standard forms more than girls did.

Deficit Theory

Robin Lackoff (1975) - Language and Women's Place

Features that regard women's language as deficient and 'powerless'

• Hedges such as "sort of", "kind of" & "it seems like"
• Tag questions such as "You're going to dinner, aren't you?" - shows insecurity
• Precise colour terms such as ''mauve'' and ''navy''
• Intensifiers such as "so" and "very"
• Use super polite forms such as "Would you mind"
• Empty adjectives such as "charming", "sweet" and "lovely"
• Have a special lexicon for things such as colours and clothes
• Apologise more
• Avoid coarse language and expletives
• Lack a sense of humour

O'Barr and Atkins (1980)

By observing courtroom trials they found that many of the features that Lackoff described as 'women's language' was used by those of a lower-class or less authoratitive and therefore named…