Pamela Fishman

    Cards (8)

    • Fishman challenges Lakoff's Dominance Approachassertion that asking questions reveals women's uncertainty and apprehension in communication
    • Instead, Fishman views questions as a feature of interactions: women ask questions because they have power, not because they feel insecure.
    • Conversational shitwork' is her iconic expression for the work that women perform to keep a conversation going (1977).
    • In her paper titled 'Interaction: The Work Women Do' (1978), Fishman states that women do more conversational work than men
    • She observed that:
      • The men controlled the act of recording the conversations.
      • The men decided what should be edited out.
      • In at least two cases, the men attempted to control Fishman's interpretation of the recordings.
      • The women asked nearly three times as many questions as the men. 
      • The women were more actively engaged in conversation than the men.
    • Fishman concluded that women work harder than men in communication because they have less certainty of success
    • Fishman claims that women have to do most or all of the work when interacting with men
    • She adds that this is not down to the way women talk, it is more because men make minimal effort to adequately respond. 
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