Deficit Approach

• Otto Jespersen 1922

  • Believed men and women's language differ majorly
  • No corresponding research about men's language indicating that he believed it as a norm
  • based research off thoughts and observation - no data collection

  Conclusion:

  1. Women's language simplistic
  2. "lively chatters" due to their roles - cooking, cleaning, sewing - said it requires "no deep thought"
• Robin Lakoff:

  'Language And A Women's Place' - 1975

  Believed womens language is made to sound uncertain making them seem powerless and lacking authority compared to men

  
  

  • deficit approach
  • looked at specific group - American, white, middle class, educated
  • interpreted findings to relate to all women

  Noted 10 features of womens language:

  1. hedging
  2. tag questions
  3. specialist lexis (green - emerald)
  4. polite
• William O'Barr and Bowman Atkins conducted a courtroom study in 1980, they studied language variation in a specific institutional context for 30 months. They examined the witnesses for the 10 speech differences between men and women that Robin Lakoff proposed.

  •  "neither characteristic of all women nor limited only to women"
  • The first man and woman both spoke with a high frequency of "women's language" components - man drove in ambulance, woman was a house wife.
  • The women who used the lowest frequency of women's language traits had an unusually high status - educated, middle class