Gender Theory

• Cultural Hegemony (Gramsci)


  The idea that some belief systems benefit all of society eg. patriarchy and heteronormativity
• The Heterosexual Market (Eckert)

  The idea that there is a point in a childs life where their social life begins to split according to gender order. (For example play can begin to seed the idea of heteronormativity through the notion of pairing boys and girls, playing family, or boys rescuing girls)
• Doing Gender (West and Zimmerman)


  The performance of tasks and signaling based upon the gender assigned to us by society and, in turn, ourselves
• Intersectionality (Crenshaw)


  The idea that each marginalised identity we poses does not exist by itself but interacts with others
• Saphir-Whorf Hypothesis

  The notion that we cannot think outside of language and our language shapes our thinking
• Animals Terms (Hines)


  Women tend to be catagorised as small animals
• Patriarchy (Spender)


  The idea that Patriarchy is a frame of reference, a particular way of classifying and organising the objects and events of the world. Our language conveys that male is the norm
• You just don't understand' (Deborah Tannen)


  Boys and girls grow up in different worlds. They spend most of their time in same-sex groups and thus learn to speak in a 'male' or 'female' way
• Communities of practice (Eckert)


  A group of people who may belong to a community wil speak a certain way and there will be things influencing how they speak
• Men's topics (Coates)


  Jennifer Coates did a study that revealed that men mainly speak about Sports, Women and Technology
• Gender Displays (Goffman)


  We learn cues or traits that allow us to display our gender identity and establish it to another party in conversation
• Controlloing the conversation (Zimmerman and West)


  -Men make the most violations (interruptions) in conversation

  -There are fewer interruptions in same sex conversation
• The work women do (Pamela Fishman)


  -Women use lots of tag questions

  -Men don't respond to declaritives

  -In mixed sex conversations, men speak for twice as long as women

  -The idea that the 'female style' of communicating is due to an inferior social position to men
• Womens Language (Lakoff)


  Women use a range of specific features (tags, hedging, fillers, etc.) in order to appear less authoritative and assertive. As such, their speech can suggest tentativeness and uncertainty. This is seen as deficient language
• Questions (Tannen)


  -Women use questions to form connections, show respect and interest and soften disagreements

  -Men don't ask questions as it damages status, and if they do it is to show off knowledge or engage in conflict
• Prestige (Trudgill)


  The notion that certain aspects of grammar and prounciation are seen as more prestigious. Men are supposedly more likely to use these prestige forms (G-dropping, TH fronting etc.). Women don't use these because they have to work harder to present themselves well while main gain prestige from machismo
• Powerless language (O'Barr and Atkins)


  Many features of 'female language' and also present in men of lower status. Therefore, it can be theorised that the dominant factor in determining speech style is status rather than gender
• Gossip (Coates & Jones)


  Women' gossip can be catagorised into either House talk, Scandal, Bitching and Chatting
• Competition vs Connection (Tannen)


  Women speak to connect while men speak to gain social power. Thus they are pit against each other
• Deficit approach

  The idea that women speak a 'lesser' version of the English language and a man's language is more desirable
• Dominance approach

  The idea that men dominate conversation and women's speech is naturally passive, men's being naturally assertive
• Difference approach

  The idea that variation in the ways males and females use language is a result of being raised in different communities of practice
• Models of masculinity (Connell)


  There are 3 catagories of men;

  1) Hegemonic men who display the dominant form of masculinity

  2) Complicit men who do not act hegemonically but benefit from hegemony

  3) Subordinate men who are oppressed by hegemonic masculinity
• Diminutive suffixes (Leech)


  The notion that diminutive suffixes give something a feminine quality
• Semantic Derogation (Schulz)


  The idea that feminine equivalents of words go through pejoration and become less desirable (Eg. Bachelor and Spinster or Bloke and Crone)
• Male identity (Kiesling) ...