It is believed women have a larger colour vocabulary than men. Robin Lakoff (1975) states this as a fact and suggests this is because in society women spend more time on colour related activities such as choosing clothes compared to men.
Julia Stanley (1977) complied similar inventories of words and found there were more words to positively describe men
She also discovered 220 words for women who were sexually promiscuous and only 20 for sexually promiscuous males
The dominance model by Zimmerman and West (1975) states that men are more likely to interrupt in a conversation.
They reported that in 11 conversations, men used 46 interruptions, but women only 2. They studied white, middle class people under 25 at California university. Men interrupt in order to show their dominance
Dale Spender builds on the idea of the dominance model theory, she identifies the idea that men dominate women in language, representing the patriarchal society
Problems with Zimmerman and West's research
Very small study, few people & few conversations
Didn't count interruptions with same gender conversations
Subjects were all young, white, middle class - very little variety
Geoff Beattie criticised Zimmerman and West's research as he argued the reason men interrupted more was due to one dominant male in the group, disproportioning the study.
Beattie questions whether interruptions necessarily reflect dominance? Some interruptions may just reflect interest and involvement
Geoff Beattie recorded 10 hours of conversations containing 557 interruptions
found women and men interrupt pretty equally. Men 34.1 average and women 33.8 average interruptions.
Men interrupted more but to a very small extent
Beattie's findings are not as widely used as Zimmerman and West's research, this is arguably because his research goes against what people already believe
Lakoff claimed that women...
Speak less than men
Use fewer expletives
Use hyper correct grammar and clear annunciation
Use more polite forms
Apologise more
Don't tell or understand jokes as well as men
In 2006, Brizendine claimed women are chatter boxes and speak 20000 words a day compared to men only speaking 7000 times (3 X more).
This claim was widely used, reaffirming negative stereotypes in society
Pennebaker was doubtful of Brizendine's theory and thought the data was lopsided, Pennebaker had collected data for a decade and found sexes are equal with the amount they speak
Pennebaker's study:
Pennebaker used an EAR (small voice recorder) to record the number of times ppts spoke in a day. The recorder came on every 12.5 minutes for 13 seconds for a 17 hour period in a day. His results found men and women talk relatively equally - women only spoke slightly more. It was found the ppt who spoke the least (500 words) was a man and the ppt who spoke the most (47000 words) was also a man. There were more differences within genders, rather than between them
Maltz and Barker said in conversations boys:
Assert a position of dominance
Attract and maintain an audience
Assert themselves when another person is speaking
Dale Spender believes there's a culture of males being the norm, where males are dominant and women are add-ons.
This is why men are usually announced first e.g. "Mr and Mrs"