Gender

• Female


  Of or denoting the sex that can bear offspring or produce eggs.
• Male


  Of or denoting the sex that produces gametes with which a female may be fertilized or inseminated to produce offspring.
• Gender


  Socially expected characteristics.
• Feminine


  Having characteristics that are traditionally thought to be typical of or suitable for a woman.
• Masculine


  Having characteristics that are traditionally thought to be typical of or suitable for men.
• Sara Mills notes that there are over 200 derogatory terms for women, many of which are sexual. There are far fewer for men.
• There is no male equivalent to the fixed expression 'Damsel in Distress'
• Both of these are examples of lexical gaps.
• Heteronormativity


  The belief that heterosexuality, predicated on the gender binary, is the norm or default sexual orientation. It assumes that sexual and marital relations are most fitting between people of opposite sex.
• Hegemonic masculinity


  The concept used in gender studies since the early-1980s to explain men's power over women. Stressing the legitimating power of consent (rather than crude physical or political power to ensure submission), it has been used to explain men's health behaviours and the use of violence.
• Lakoff - Language and Women's Place (1975) - deficit model


  Women are disadvantaged by having to adopt forms of language that make them sound less confident, e.g. hesitation, approval-seeking tag questions and euphemistic politeness terms. She termed this 'talking like a lady' - deficit model
• Lakoff claims women:


  • Speak less frequently
  • Show they are listening by using minimal responses mm, yeah
  • Speak more quietly than men
  • Apologise more
  • Use tag questions
  • Avoid slang and avoid coarse language or expletives: 'Oh dear' rather than 'Shit'
  • Avoid making threats
  • Lack a sense of humour
• Covert Prestige


  Going against the accepted norms of society by using non-standard forms of English
• Overt Prestige


  Trying to conform to socially respectable behaviour by using Standard English
• Trudgill 1983


  • Explains men's higher use of non-standard forms than women due to its association with masculinity and toughness
  • Men tended to claim to use more Non-Standard English than they actually did, suggesting they consider such language to have some sort of prestige attached to it
  • Men tend to desire Covert Prestige
  • Women desire Overt Prestige in an attempt to secure their place in society
• Jenny Cheshire in Reading (1982)


  • Investigated the speech of adolescents in an adventure playground and found similar patterns to those which exist among adults
  • Suggests that the some differences in male and female language use are already strongly evident during childhood
• DOMINANCE MODEL – PAMELA FISHMAN (1983)

  • Experiment involved listening to 52 hours of pre-recorded conversations between young American couples
  • Fishman argues that women use questions to gain conversational power rather than from lack of conversational awareness
  • Men often do not respond to a declarative statement or will only respond minimally
  • Fishman concludes that women's style of communicating is not from lack of social training, but to the inferior social position of women
• Julia Stanley (1977): 'found 220 words for a promiscuous women and only 20 for the equivalent male'
• Muriel Shulz (1975) argues that it is not an accident that there are more negative words for women. It represents patriarchal order and is rule governed. Words that are 'marked' for females become pejorated.
• Difference Model continued – Coates tag – questions - it is not just the presence of minimal responses at the end, but also their absence during the course of an anecdote or summary, which demonstrates the sensitivity of participants to the norms of interaction.
• Otto Jespersen (1922) claims:

  • Women talk a lot
  • Women link sentences with 'and'
  • Women use adjectives such as 'pretty' and 'nice' too much
  • Women use adverbs too much and tend towards hyperbole
  • Women have a smaller vocabulary than men
  • Men are responsible for introducing new words into the language
  • Women often gain spoken mastery of foreign languages more easily than men, but when put to the test in translating a difficult text, men prove superior
  • Women, by virtue of their sex, "shrink from coarse and gross expressions"
• Differences between men and women in conversation - Tannen


  • Status versus Support
  • Independence versus Intimacy
  • Advice versus Understanding
  • Information versus Feelings
  • Orders versus Proposals
  • Conflict versus Compromise
• status vs support - Tannen

  • men conversation competitive
  • women gain support
• Independence versus Intimacy - difference model Tannen (1990)


  Men are concerned with status and focus more on independence, women think in terms of closeness and support, and strive to preserve intimacy
• Advice versus Understanding -difference model Tannen


  To many men a complaint is a challenge to find a solution, whereas women seek understanding
• Information versus Feelings - Tannen


  Women's conversations are mostly on feelings, whereas males give more information
• Orders versus Proposals - tannen


  Women suggest things, whereas men prefer direct imperatives
• Conflict versus Compromise - Tannen


  Women avoid conflict, whereas men don't
• Gender performativity - Judith butler 1990


  The notion that gender is something that can be performed, and someone's gender identity is a result of recurrent behaviours that emulate gender roles and norms
• Butler's view aims to prove that there isn't a difference between men's and women's language. It is up to an individual to choose the language they use and how they want to portray themselves to others
• Sex


  The biological characteristics that make up a male or a female
• The sex we are assigned at birth does not always determine the sex or gender we identify with
• Difference is a myth - Deborah Cameron (2008)

  in an article titled what language barrier? she Staes that language and gender theories are based on the myth that men and women communicate in ways that are fundamentally different from one another
• Zimmerman and west (1975) - dominance model


  Interruptions: In 11 conversation between men and women found that 96% of interruptions done by men and 4% done by women
• Beattie (1982)


  counter to Zimmerman and west - recorded 10 hours of discussion: found that men and women interrupt at a pretty equal frequency.
• O'barr and Atkins (1980)


  Study: covered language in courtrooms - studied them for 30 months. They found that (what lakoff claimed) wasn't result of being a women but result of being powerless