Language and Gender

DEFICIT - Robin Lakoff "Language and Woman's Place" (1975)

Women:

- Hedge

- Use (super) polite forms

- Use tag questions

- Use empty adjectives

- Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation

- Use question intonation in declarative statements

- Speak less frequently

- Overuse qualifiers and use more intensifiers

- Use indirect commands and requests

- Lack a sense of humour

William O'Barr and Bowman Atkins (1980)

They examined courtroom cases for 30 months, looking for 10 basic speech differences between men and women that Lakoff proposed. They discovered that Lakoff's proposed differences were not necessarily the reuslt of being a woman, but of being powerless.

DOMINANCE - Zimmerman and West (1975)

They found that in mixed-sex conversations men are more likely to interrupt than women. The subject of the recording were white, middle class and under 35. Zimmerman and West produce in evidence 31 segments of conversation; in 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only 2. They conclude that, since men interrupt more often, then they are dominating or attempting to do so. However, this was a very small sample.

DOMINANCE - Dale Spender

Language embodies structures that sustain male power. She refers to the work of Zimmerman and West, to the view of the male as norm and to her won idea of patriarchal order. It is especially difficult to challenge this power system, since the way that we think of the world is part of, and reinforces, this male power: the male as norm, the female as "other".

DOMINANCE - Geoff Beattie (1982)

He recorded 10 hours of tutorial discussion with 557 interruptions. Beattie found that women and men interrupted with more or less equal frequency (men 34.1, women 33.8) - so men did interrupt more, but by a margin so slight as not to be statistically significant. Beattie criticised the work of Zimmerman and West: you might simply have one very voluble man in the study who has a disproportionate effect on the total. He also questions the meaning of interruptions and why they have to necessarily reflect dominance.

DOMINANCE - Christine Christie "Towards a feminist pragmatics" (2005)

Gender differences still exist - studied pragmatics of public discourse, applying/exploring Brown and Levinson. She focused on the use of politness forms in UK parliament. She argues that feminist linguistics needs to engage more with pragmatics of gender issues e.g. the assumptions that underpin phrases like "think like a woman", "throw like a girl". She found that many women modify their assertiveness to meet expectations because they've found themselves more successful this war.

DOMINANCE - Pamela Fishman "The Work Women Do" (1983)

Conversation fails between the sexes, not because of anything inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond, or don't respond. Counters Lakoff by saying women ask questions because of the power of these, not because of their personality weaknesses. Fishman also claims that in mixed-sex language interactions, men speak on average for twice as long as…