Language + gender

• Jesperson- Deficit (1920s)

  • Women's language is unfinished due to lacking intelligence
  • use of non-fluency features
  • Criticism: Outdated folk-linguistics, presupposes equal intelligence between all men and all women
• Spender- dominance (1990s)

  • language reinforces the patriarchy
  • can link to linguistic determinism
  • Example: men compete and interrupt more to assert dominance
  • criticism: outdated
• Butler- performativity (2000s)

  • Gender is a social construct
  • Genderlect becomes less relevant as gender becomes less binary
• Hyde- similarities (1980s)

  • more inter-gender differences than intra-gender differences
  • i.e. class, age, occupation
• Lakoff- deficit (1970s)

  • Builds on Jespersen's theory
  • example: 'lack of sense of humour' 'Tag questions' 'special women's lexis, sewing etc'
  • Criticism: outdated, Dubois and Crouch conference, occupational lexis
  • At this time women had less freedoms, internalised misogyny
  • Lakoff based this on her social circle, full of academics
• Lavender languages- polari (1960s)

  • Homosexuals used it as their own secret language
  • words like 'dolly' 'bevy' and 'scarper' have joined mainstream language
  • Fell out of usage in the 1970s when homosexuality was decriminalised
• Tannen difference- (1990s)

  • men and women have different aims of communication
  • can be compared to cross-cultural communication
  • 'thoughts vs feelings', 'compromise vs conflict', 'independence vs intimacy'
  • Tannen said that these differences are due to cultural norms rather than inherent biological differences