Language and Gender

• Lakoff's Deference Model


  Lakoff's Deference Model proposes that women's speech is deferential. Examples of deference in women:

  • Hedges
  • Superpoliteness
  • Hypercorrectness
  • Tag questions
  • Speaking in 'italics'
  • Empty adjectives ('that's lovely')
  • Use of implication rather than directness
  • Specialised lexicon
  • Question intonation

  These features suggest hesitancy and submissiveness. Men treat women as subordinates as they believe them to be deferring.

  
  

  Flaws:

  Based on a limited observation size. Dubois and Crouch's research found that men use tag questions more, and that they do not mean deference.
• Victoria DeFrancisco's Conversational Shitwork

  This suggests women work harder than men to continue conversations. They:

  • Introduce more topics than men
  • Talk more than men
  • Worked harder to maintain conversations

  Men's behaviour in conversation is unsupportive.
• Helen Leet-Pelligrini - Gender and expertise


  Gender and expertise indicate dominance in a conversation.

  • Male experts control topics and speak more.
  • Female experts and male non-experts behave as equals.
  • Female non-experts speak the least and are the most supportive.
• Deborah Tannen - Difference Model

  
  

  Deborah Tannen's Difference ModelMen and women are socialised to use conversation for different purposes. It identifies six main contrasts in communication between men and women.

  • Status vs. support
  • Advice vs. understanding
  • Information vs. feelings
  • Orders vs. proposals
  • Conflict vs. compromise
  • Independence vs. intimacy

  Women use rapport talk to establish and maintain relationships. Men use report talk give information. They use speech to compete for positions of power and status or to protect themselves from others’ attempts to gain status over them.