Gender

• What did Lakoff say about gender and language?

  The deficit model - Women are criticised for their use of language defying the male norm, e.g. tag questions being indirect, hedges being weak
• What did Obarr and Atkins say about gender and language?

  Context is important, as men from lower social classes are said to use the same features women use in the deficit model
• What did Tannen say about gender and language?

  The difference model - Men and women have different attitudes to language use due to different socialisation

  • Status vs support
  • Advice vs understanding
  • Information vs feelings
  • Orders vs proposals
  • Conflict vs compromise
  • Independence vs intimacy
• What did Cameron say about gender and language?

  Diversity model - There are more important influences and many similarities like fillers and indirect requests
• What did Zimmerman and West say about gender and language?

  Dominance model - Men control in conversation, with 96% of interruptions coming from men - overlapping
• What did Beattie say about gender and language?

  Male ‘overlapping’ could be seen as support
• What is covert marking?

  Less obvious marking, e.g. Lord and Lady
• What is overt marking?

  More obvious marking through modification, e.g. emperor and empress
• What did Trudgill find about gender and language in his Norwich study?

  Women speak closer to RP, which has prestige, than men
• What did Cheshire find about gender and language in her Reading study?

  Boys spoke more non-standard forms like ‘ain’t’, perhaps due to peer group norms from dense social circles
• What did Holmes say about gender and language?

  Tags and fillers have complex social purposes, with women using positively orientated politeness features (social function) and men using more negatively orientated politeness features (retrieval function)
• What did Coates say about gender and language?

  Female talk is cooperative whereas male talk is competitive
• What did Fishman say about gender and language?

  Women do the ‘conversational shitwork‘ by using tag questions to start and continue conversation, with men being reluctant to do this due to their dominant role - women use ‘y’now‘ tag 5x more than men
• What did Kuiper say about gender and language?

  Male talk uses insults to express solidarity and doesn’t worry about saving face
• What did Howe say about gender and language?

  Differences caused by socialisation - Men have strategies for gaining power, are more likely to put their point across, making it harder for the listener to participate and women are active listeners and use minor interjections like ‘uh huh’ to show interest
• What did Schulz find about gender and langauge?

  Semantic derogation - female marked terms often have negative connotations, e.g. mistress - this is lexical asymmetry
• What are some collocations in gender and language?

  Feisty women, mean girl etc.
• How does the Sapir-Whorf hypothesis link to language and gender?

  Language precedes thought, hence semantic derogation has real-life implications
• What did Miller and Swift say about gender and language?

  Non-marked pronouns and terms are more common
• What did Goddard suggest about gender and language?

  We ’perform’ gender, meaning people can present a gender of their choosing and language induces cognitive models, e.g. policeman = man
• What did Eakins and Eakins find about gender and language?

  They studied interruptions in university faculty meetings, with status as well as gender determining whether someone would get interrupted or not - a hierarchy preference
• What did DeFrancisco say about gender and language?


  Women introduce more topics than men and worked harder to keep conversations, they are less successful at getting topics accepted because men they’re talking to often reject it, using silence and inexpressiveness to control conversation - women have to do conversational shitwork
• What did Leet-Pelligrini say about gender and language?

  Gender and expertise were the best predictors of conversational dominance, with male experts interrupting the most
• What did Jones say about gender and language?

  Women’s talk falls into house talk, scandal, bitching about their restricted role in society and chatting
• What did Bodine say about gender and language?

  The English Language is androcentric, e.g. mankind
• What did Mills say about gender and langauge?

  Female terms have undergone semantic derogation, e.g. master vs mistress and sir vs madam - these are non equivalent parallels
• What is ‘the generic ‘man’’ in gender and language?

  Where man is used to refer to any humans, e.g. mankind, man the tills, best man for the job