Language and Gender

    Cards (52)

    • What are the 4 D's?
      Diversity, deficit, dominance and difference
    • Deficit Theory
      The idea that language used by women is inferior to language used by men.
    • Otto Jespersen 1922
      Argued that women talked without thinking, because they had no deep thoughts.
      Women speak with 'linguistic purity', men speak with 'vigour and creativity'.
      All his theories were anecotal.
      He overlooks that women's language is only seen as inferior because of the oppression of the patriarchy.
    • Inherent weaknesses in gendered language
      Adding intensifiers or degree modifiers - women
      Hedging - women
      Tag questions - women
      Paraphrasing - men
      Swearing - men
    • Robin Lakoff 1975
      Described the language habits of women in 'Middle America'
      Data via intuition and casual observation
      Characterised women's language as having features which characterised uncertainty
      Used terms such as 'empty adjectives', which implied inferiority to men
    • Lakoff Colour Test
      Lakoff concluded that women made finer colour distinctions than men - fuschia, scarlet/pink,red
      Women have a greater lexicon for colour, men for things like sport
    • Lakoff Conclusion
      Lakoff linked femininity and unassertive speech. Her thinking gave rise to the idea that women's language is deficient or weak, rather than acknowledging that male social power usually puts women in a lesser position.
    • Dominance Theory
      The idea that men have historically had hierarchical dominance over women, and this is reflected in language use.
    • Dale Spender
      'Male Firstness' - the male term comes first, and is used to refer generically to all people
      Language is 'man-centric', reflecting men's historical dominance of society
      This evidence comes largely from English grammatical rules (16th-18th centuries)
    • Male vs Female terms
      Master - powerful Mistress - kept for sex
      Bachelor - desirable Spinster - pitied
      Patron - benefactor Matron - old nurse
      Tramp - homeless Tramp - prostitute
      Sir - knight Madam - keeps prostitutes
    • Ann Bodine
      Suggested that female terms were subject to perjoration, and this is an example of androcentric language because of the bias in favour of males
    • Julia Stanley
      Argues that there's a negative semantic space for women - can only be female surgeons, female authors, and the distinction shouldn't be necessary.
    • Gendered morphemes
      Femininity is often signalled in words with a morpheme eg waitress, actress. Male roles get the unmarked term because they're 'more important'.
    • Zimmerman and West 1975
      Made a study of mixed sex conversation
      96% of interruptions were male - conversation magnet
      However, Beattie found that men and women interrupted with equal frequency
      Zimmerman's study is preferred by feminists because it backs up their view of hegemonic masculinity
    • Pamela Fishman
      Studied three American couples
      Discovered that women do all the work to keep conversation going
      Conversation between the sexes sometimes fails because of how men respond, or don't respond
      Women's speech tactics are used to try and get a response, reflecting their powerlessness
    • William O'Barr and Bowman Atkins 1990
      Studied three pairs
      Pair 1 - male ambulance driver and housewife
      Pair 2 - male and female in powerful social positions
      Pair 3 - male police officer and female doctor
      Both speakers from pair 1 ued the most Lakoffian features
      Lakoff's assumptions were 'neither characteristic of all women nor limited to only women'
      Often it's status which determines the frequency of Lakoffian language
    • Lakoffian Features
      Hedges - tag questions - intonational emphasis - empty adjectives - hypercorrect grammar - direct quotation - specialised lexicons - question intonation - question imperatives - less speech - qualifiers - apologies - referential tags
      These are all signs of 'inferior language'
    • Difference Theory
      The idea that there are innate differences in the way men and women use language
    • Features of difference theory
      Idea that women use 20,000 words a day, compared to 7,000 by men
      Female speech is a duet, male speech is a duel
      Men are from Mars, women are from Venus
    • Deborah Tannen
      Suggested that female speech styles are different to male, but equal
      The problem is that we don't value them equally
      Male-female conversation is miscommunicative because women are co-operative and men are competitive
    • Janet Holmes 1980s
      Looked at ideas of politeness, compliments, conversation
      Asked if women are more polite than men
      Concluded that women's language has a social function, while men's language has a referential function
      Women see compliments as positive, but men see it as face-threatening, or having an ulterior motive
    • Brown and Levinson 1987
      Positive face - the need to be liked and appreciated - if it's threatened, we're ashamed
      Negative face - the desire not to be threatened or imposed upn - if it's threatened, we're offended
      Face Theory - Erving Goffman 1969
    • John Gray 1992
      Men and women are under the impression that they're speaking the same language
      Men are from Mars, women are from Venus
      Men and women can't understand each other, because they use language in different and incompatible ways
    • Deborah Cameron 2008
      Asserted that Mars and Venus was a myth
      She challenges the idea that sex differences might have biological more than social causes
      'What linguistic differences there are between men and women are driven by the need to construct and project personal meaning and identity.'
    • Deborah Tannen Genderlect
      Genderlect - a way of speaking characteristic of only one sex
      Boys and girls grow up in different subcultures of words; talk between men and women can be like sub-cultural communication
      As adults, we reinforce patterns established in childhood, and females and males therefore have different expectations about the role of talk in relationships, which can lead to misunderstandings, especially when it comes to metamessages (subtext)
    • John Locke 2011
      Male - male speech is a duel, female - female speech is a duet
      Men 'network' through speech, women use speech to 'gossip'
      Men and women talk differently because our ancestors followed different evolutionary paths
    • Judith Butler 1990
      'Gender trouble' - gender is something we do, not someone we are
      concept of 'performativity' within different contexts or communities of practice
      We perform our identities according to different situations and contexts
      She argues that gender role are taught to us from an early age, driven by cultural and social expectations
      Gender 'trouble' messes with binary IDa
      We're now accustomed to gender as a spectrum
    • Community of practice
      An aggregate of people who come together around mutual engagement in some common endeavour.
    • Diversity Theory
      The idea that gender interacts with other variables of identity and social location, and this makes everyone's use of language different
    • Deborah Jones 1990
      Put female gossip into four categories
      House talk - exchanging information based on occupation
      Scandal - judging behaviour of other women
      Bitching - expressing anger at women's restricted role and inferior social status (venting)
      Chatting - intimate self-disclosure, exchanging secrets
    • Jennifer Coate 1996 - 'Women Talk'
      Sharing leads to connection and understanding
      Talk is collaborative
      'Linguistic parallelism' to 'maximise solidarity'
      Speak in the same way, finish each others' utterances
      Hedging preserves 'openness' and respects group values
      Gossip is a feature which establishes and maintains power relations, characteristic of a friendship group
    • Nigel Nicholson - London Business School 2013
      Men gossip as well, but call it 'networking'
      He called it a term invented to make male gossip respectable
      Concept of 'old boys club'
    • Rosalind Wiseman 2002
      Wrote the book 'Queen Bees and Wannabees', which inspired 'Mean Girls'
      Adolescent girls can be verbally competitive and aggressive in cliques
    • RW Connell 1995 - 'Masculinities'
      Masculinities concern the position of men in a gender order
      They can be defined as patterns of practice by which men engage that position
      'Hegemonic masculinity' - most dominant version of it, social constructed
    • Non HM examples
      Complicit - admitting HM's social/physical power
      Subordinate - lesser than HM, seen as deviant (effeminate men)
      Marginalised - trivilaised or discriminated against due to class, race etc
      Connell said 'Whatever was hegemonic would shape acceptable gender behaviour and relations within a certain time.'
    • Examples of Hegemonic Masculinity
      Heterosexulity, muscular body type, stoicism, risk taking, political strength, autocratic leadership style
    • Examples of Emphasised Femininity
      Vulnerability, fragility, acceptance of marriage, sexual receptivity, motherhood
    • HM Summary
      Hegemonic Masculinity exists in a 'relational' framework of power and dominance to other groups, including those that resist, and this plays out at local, regional and global levels.
    • Jennifer Coates 2003 - Four commonalities in how male gender is constructed
      Topics are stereotypically masculine
      Characters in stories are all male
      Narrator pays great attention to detail
      Narrator makes elaborate use of taboo words
    • Jennifer Coates 2003 Conclusion
      HM discourses are homophobic and misogynistic and tend to avoid self-disclosure. Is this discourse a deliberate performance, whether chosen or forced? Is it just 'banter', eg Andrew Tate?
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