3.4 Language and Gender

• Heteronormativity - A set of norms or expectations based on heterosexuality.
• Miller and Swift (1981) - Handbook to Non-Sexist Writing

  Made writers think around the problem of not having a gender - neutral pronoun in English.
• Tautology - Producing redundancy in meaning by saying the same thing twice.
• 'Family Woman' is an example of something that sounds like a tautology. The idea of a woman is often that they are already family orientated which is what makes it seem odd.
• The term 'man flu' has been criticised as being sexist because it implies men have weaker immune systems than women.
• Sex Discrimination Act (1975) - Made it illegal for job advertisements to be written in a manner which implies that only one gender can apply.

  Since then, reinforcing stereotypes in public has become more difficult.
• Patronyms - Names that reflect male lines of inheritance.
• Matronyms - Names that reflect female lines of inheritance.
• Nordic societies can use matronyms plus the mothers first name to create a surname.
• In Germany, 'Fraulein' is falling out of fashion in favour of 'Frau', which is similar in status to 'Herr'.

  'Madame' is also replacing 'Madamoiselle' since it is of equal authority to 'monsieur'
• Hoey (2005) - Used the expression 'Lexical Priming' to describe the way in which words and phrases come with a kind of undercoat layer, built from constant use in the same context.
• Robin Lakoff (1975) - Language and a Woman's Place. Lakoff concluded that women adopt language features that made them sound unconfident.

  She suggested women use Tag Questions like 'isn't it', empty adjectives like 'lovely' and hedging like 'sort of'.
• Susan Gal & Judith Krolokke (1986) - Women's talk as gossip. They found that men used more direct speech than women. Men were less likely to use tag questions or fillers such as 'um' and 'ah'.
• Judith Butler (1990) - Gender Trouble. She argued that gender was not fixed but rather performed through everyday actions. This means that people are constantly performing their gender identity.
• Zimmerman and West (1975) - Found that men were far more likely to interrupt women in conversations (46 - 2)

  Proves the dominance model.

  There are issues, as the group chosen were all white and middle class under the age of 35 so diversity was non existent.
• Cameron (1997) - The Myth of Mars and Venus. Cameron argues that there is no biological basis for differences between male and female communication styles. Instead she suggests that these differences have been created by society.
• Ellen Bialystock (1994) - Talking Difference. Bialystock believes that girls develop better communicative skills because they spend more time talking to others. Boys tend to play games where they don't need to communicate much.
• Kramsch (1993) - Language and Identity. He argues that we can identify ourselves through our choice of language. For example, if someone speaks with an accent they may be identified as being from another country.
• Miller and Swift (1980) - 'Handbook of Non-Sexist Writing'.

  
  

  Made some think about their sexist language use and how it can be done in a gender neutral way.
• Brown and Levinson (1987) - Politeness Theory. They argue that politeness is achieved when speakers avoid causing offence or embarrassment to other speakers. There are two types of face; positive face which refers to how we want to see ourselves and negative face which refers to how we want to be seen by others
• Deborah Tannen (1990) - Difference Model

  Orders vs Proposals

  Status vs Support

  Information vs Feeling

  Conflict vs Compromise

  Independence vs Intimacy

  Fundamentally, Tannen implies that men use language as a functional tool to gain or assert power and status over others. Women use language as a tool to connect and engage with others, avoiding any kind of conflict where possible.
• Pamela Fishman (1977) - Conversational Shitwork

  This theory implied that the 'heavy lifting' in a conversation is done by women, not by men, in whatever they are talking about.
• Janet Hyde (2005) - Gender similarity hypothesis.

  She claimed that male and female language shared far more similarities than differences. She argued there were other factors to blame most of the time, such as age, class, ethnicity, education, occupation, sexuality, politics etc.
• Hoey (2005) - Lexical Priming

  • The way in which some words appear to be ready-made for certain meanings, as a result of their habitual use in the same contexts.
• Hultgren (2008) - Study of British and Danish call centres showed stereotypical female 'script', which didn't differ much from Lakoff's initial ideas.

  Cameron disputes ideas as it places women in a submissive position which opens them to workplace abuse.
• Jennifer Pilkington - Conversation dynamics are different in same sex conversation'