gender

• Deficit theory

  imbalance between men and women, womens language is weak and contains weak traits

  robin lakoff, otto jesperson
• difference theory

  language is defined more by difference rather then male dominance

  deborah tannen, jennifer coates
• Dominance theory

  men using language to maintain and reinforce their power in conversations

  zimmerman and west, dale spender
• deborah tannen

  states that for men the world is a competitive place in which conversation and speech are used to build status, whereas for women the world is a network of connections, and that they use language to seek and offer support.
• deborah tannen - 6 main contrasts in communication between men and women

  status v support

  advice v understanding

  information v feelings

  orders v proposals

  conflict v compromise

  independance v intimacy
• jennifer coates

  looks at all female conversation and identifies 4 categories of gossip

  house talk, scandal, bitching, chatting
• deborah cameron

  verbal hygiene- wherever and whenever the matter has been investigated, men and women face normative expectations about the appropriate mode of speech for their gender.
• deborah cameron findings

  the way of gender interaction perhaps rose from childhood, particularily games and activities

  disagrees with the general theory that men are more competitive in speech and that women do not challenge eavh other

  both genders gossip. women use it as a source of power to talk about others

  boys respect male dominance women see female dominance as bitchy
• Robin Lakoff: deficit theory

  She argues that the features of language used by women are 'weaker' and more uncertain than the language used by men. She refers to this weaker form of language as 'women's language.

  she studied conversation between white, american, middle class and educated women. she found their language over used qualifiers, apologises more, used tag questions, avoid aggressive language.
• Otto Jespersen

  • Jespersen investigated non-fluency features such as fillers and pauses.
  • Jespersen’s research details that women speak without thinking and so use more non-fluency features (features which disrupt the fluency of speech).
  • Jespersen’s research relies on evidence from literature and travellers. This means it is speculative and is often dismissed as folk linguistics.
• • Dale Spender believes that there is a culture of ‘male as norm’ in which men are the dominant models and women are add-ons.
  • For example, the fact that men are almost always introduced first (Lord and Lady, Mr and Mrs) and when women are not introduced first, it is symbolic of their lesser role (mothers and fathers – puts women in a maternal role).
  • In addition, words like ‘mankind’ add to the idea that men are the norm
• Zimmerman and West (1975) studied conversations in a college in the USA, found that 96% of all interruptions in mixed-sex conversation were made by men. This could suggest that women had restricted linguistic freedom
• milroy and milroy

  Closed networks consist of people who all know each other and a lack of links out of the network – they are a tight-knit group. Open networks are typified by being very broad. Many links to people outside of the normal area are involved. Men have dense, closed networks. They use a high number of non-standard forms. Women have less dense and open networks. They use a much smaller number of non-standard forms.
• in contrast to milroy and milroy clonard women hammer men - This study found that due to a rise in unemployment, men had to travel out of the community to find a job and the women all ended up working together in the town.
• peter trudgill 


  The research’s aim was to see if there was a correlation between class, gender and the use of the non-standard forms. He asked participates to state how often they used standard and non-standard forms. He found that: Women of all classes over-reported the number of standard forms they used which showed that they cared about the overt prestige. Men over-reported their use of non-standard forms, showing the covert prestige they desire. Women used more standard forms than men in a direct class-for-class comparison. The higher the class, the more use of standard forms.
• basil bernstein- social class


  He asked groups of boys to describe a comic strip containing a football smashing a window.

  From this, he defines two codes – restricted and elaborated.

  Restricted code is inherently deictic. It has a relaxed syntax (word order) and uses many simple coordinating conjunctions. Elaborated code is practically the opposite. It uses a standard syntax, more subordinate clauses and subordinating conjunctions.
• basil bernstein findings -

  • Bernstein claims that whilst middle-class children can use both codes, it is rare to see a lower-class child using anything other than restricted code.
  • Saying this, both classes did understand both codes when spoken to them
• William Labov- social class -  conducted research in 1969. His research featured black boys speaking in what would be classed as restricted code, but with a logical argument. This suggests that there is an issue with linguistically articulating ideas rather than there being a cognitive deficit


  William Labov investigated the use of the post-vocalic rhotic-r (the ‘r’ sound that appears after vowels) in words like ‘banter’ and ‘mark’.
• holmes

  women are often referred to as animals and food : 'cow', 'sugar'
• beattie

  zimmerman and wests study wasnt accurate because their sample was too small. beatties study uses 10 times as many participants and found men and women interrupt with equal fluency
• the bechdel test

  judges whether a piece of work involves two women who talk to each other about something other than men