theories

• Difference theory believes that men and women do speak differently.
• Dominance theory believes that men’s language is superior and a woman’s language is inferior.
• Deficit theory refers to the language that men use being seen as the standard and women's language is seen as insufficient.
• The deficit theory can be seen as sexist because it portrays women as lower status and inferior.
• The diversity theory talks about how sex and gender are not the same thing and that social interactions change our language.
• Robin Lakoff thought that women's language lacked authority compared to men's. Men use more slang and swear words. Women use more backchannelling, tag questions and intensifiers.
• Robin Lackoff created the Politeness Principle which is a series of maxims which women feel obliged to set their conversation to. They would give their receiver options when asking a question and make the receiver feel good.
• Zimmerman and West, dominance theorists, found that 90% of conversations included features such as interruptions more frequently in men's conversations. Men spoke more and responded to women in a delayed way.
• Deborah Tannen created the Difference Theory. There were contrasts between men and women. For example, independent vs dependent, dominant vs bossy, and information vs feelings.
• The difference theory was criticised because it made assumptions about gender roles. It also ignored other factors like age, ethnicity and sexual orientation.
• Deborah Cameron, a Diversity theorist, argues that differences are a myth and differences are caused by expectations in society. Spoken language depended on lexis and context.
• Otto Jespersen's observations were that women talk a lot, use simpler words and exaggerated more. Men have larger vocabularies and are in charge of establishing new words in the English Language.
• Peter Trudgill found that men used more non-standard pronunciation than women.
• Eakins and Eakins found men (on average) have more frequent turns and spoke for greater lengths of time. A man's turn ranged from 10-17 seconds whereas a woman's turn ranged from 3-10 seconds.
• Eakins and Eakins conducted a study of 'verbal turn taking' and he focused on gender and interruption.
• O'Barr and Atkins developed their findings based on Lakoff's work and believed that language differences are situation-specific. He believed that it relied on who has authority and power rather than gender.
• Jenny Cheshire studied relationships between girls and boys and how it affected their grammar.
• Jenny Cheshire suggested that variation in dialect is a conscious choice and is influenced by social attitude.
• Jenny Cheshire found that where the same gendered groups were talking together, they were likely to change the way that they spoke around one another.
• Fishman focused on the use of tag questions in a mixed gendered conversations.
• Fishman found that tag questions are used by women after declarative clauses to continue conversations. Women feel as though they don't have control of the conversation.
• Jane Pilkington conducted research on conversations in a bakery for over 9 months.
• Jane Pilkington found that women talked to affirm solidarity and maintain relationships and men like to challenge each other's points of view and disagree.
• Janet Holmes found that in doctor- patient conversations, female doctors were interrupted more often than male physicians.
• Polari was passed on via word of mouth with no standards of spelling or pronunciation.
• Polari was necessary when homosexuality was stigmatised through the institutions of law, medicine and religion.
• Butler argued that gender differences in language are socially constructed and inherently performative.
• Lakoff suggested that tag questions and fillers were found in women's language more than in men's.
• The Deficit Model shows that women have an inferior social status in comparison to men.
• Research conducted by O'Barr and Atkins on American courtroom trials found that many of the features that Lakoff deemed to only be female, were found in both men and women who were of a low social status.
• The Diversity approach focuses on the idea that sex and gender are different. Gender refers to socially constructed characteristics.
• Butler believed that gender is performative and a social construct to represent traditional gender roles reinforced by society.
• O'Barr and Atkins found that language features such as tag questions and fillers, were used by those who had a lack of power in the room.
• Deborah Cameron's theory argues that that way we speak is tailored personally to us and is characterised by our own emotions and interests.
• Lakoff's theory was produced in the 1960s where society was a lot more oppressive towards women which had an impact on their language.
• Goodwin found that boys use more directives and explicit commands to girls. For example, 'get off'.
• Goodwin (1980) found that girls use mitigated directives and modal auxiliaries.
• Goodwin (1980) believed that linguistic forms reflect social organisation of the group where boys are hierarchically organised.
• Deborah Tannen found that women were more tentative and gave suggestions.