eng

• Theorists


  • Naomi Wolf
  • Deborah Cameron
  • Jennifer Coates and Deborah Jones
  • Peter Trudgill
  • Deborah Tannen
  • Dale Spender
  • Pamela Fishman
  • William O'Barr and Bowman Atkins
  • Robin Lakoff
  • George Keith and John Shuttleworth
  • William Labov
  • Peter Trudgill
• Uptalk


  A rising intonation pattern
• Vocal fry

  A specific sound quality caused by the movement of the vocal folds, with the vocal folds shortened and slack so they close together completely and pop back open, with a little jitter, as the air comes through
• Unlike uptalk, vocal fry is not a general grab bag of linguistic features, including vocabulary
• Verbal hygiene


  The acceptance of a "proper" speech style, as women have been instructed in the proper ways of talking just as they have been instructed in the proper ways of dressing, in the use of cosmetics, and in other "feminine" kinds of behaviour
• Deborah Cameron does not condemn verbal hygiene as misguided, but finds specific examples of it in the regulation of style by editors, the teaching of English grammar in schools, politically correct language and the advice to women on how they can speak more effectively
• Deborah Cameron claims that verbal hygiene is a way to make sense of language, and that it also represents a symbolic attempt to impose order on the social world
• Kate Burridge argues that political correctness is not simply a positive expression for tabooed terms, but deliberately highlights certain aspects of a group's identity, and is itself a form of public action that forces us to sit up and take notice
• House Talk


  The exchange of information and resources connected with the female role as an occupation
• Scandal


  A considered judging of the behaviour of others, and women in particular, usually made in terms of domestic morality, of which women have been appointed guardians
• Bitching


  The overt expression of women's anger at their restricted role and inferior status, expressed in private and to other women only, without expectation of change
• Chatting


  The most intimate form of gossip, a mutual self-disclosure, a transaction where women use to their own advantage the skills they have learned as part of their job of nurturing others
• Jennifer Coates sees women's simultaneous talk as supportive and cooperative
• Coates says that 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
• Women use lexical items such as perhaps, I think, sort of, probably as well as certain prosodic and paralinguistic features to express epistemic modality and mitigate the force of an utterance in order to respect addressees' face needs
• Peter Trudgill's research showed that men were less likely and women more likely to use the prestige pronunciation of certain speech sounds, with women tending towards hypercorrectness and men often using a low prestige pronunciation to seek covert prestige
• Deborah Tannen's contrasts between male and female language use


  • Status vs. support
  • Independence vs. intimacy
  • Advice vs. understanding
  • Information vs. feelings
  • Orders vs. proposals
  • Conflict vs. compromise
• Dale Spender advocates a radical view of language as embodying structures that sustain male power, and claims it is difficult to challenge this power system as the way we think of the world is part of and reinforces this male power
• Geoffrey Beattie's findings that women and men interrupted with more or less equal frequency are not quoted as often as those of Zimmerman and West, which show men interrupting more, because they do not fit what someone wanted to show
• Pamela Fishman argues that conversation between the sexes sometimes fails not because of anything inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond, or don't respond
• Fishman claims that in mixed-sex language interactions, men speak on average for twice as long as women
• Christine Christie has shown gender differences in the pragmatics of public discourse, looking at how men and women manage politeness in the public context of UK parliamentary speaking
• Robin Lakoff's claims about what marks out the language of women


  • Hedge
  • Use (super)polite forms
  • Use tag questions
  • Speak in italics
  • Use empty adjectives
  • Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation
  • Use direct quotation
  • Have a special lexicon
  • Use question intonation in declarative statements
  • Use "wh-" imperatives
  • Speak less frequently
  • Overuse qualifiers
  • Apologise more
  • Use modal constructions
  • Avoid coarse language or expletives
  • Use indirect commands and requests
  • Use more intensifiers
  • Lack a sense of humour
• Suggestions about differences between women's and men's language use

  • Women - talk more than men, talk too much, are more polite, are indecisive/hesitant, complain and nag, ask more questions, support each other, are more co-operative

  Men - swear more, don't talk about emotions, talk about sport more, talk about women and machines in the same way, insult each other frequently, are competitive in conversation, dominate conversation, speak with more authority, give more commands, interrupt more
• William Labov's theory of language change suggests that a small part of a population begins to pronounce certain words differently, and this difference in pronunciation then becomes a signal for social and cultural identity, leading to a regular linguistic sound change
• Peter Trudgill's study in Norwich, England found that the higher the socioeconomic status of the speaker, the more frequently they used the standard variant of the (ng) variable
• Labov's theory of language change


  Sounds much more plausible than other previous theories, and it is the latest theory
• Humans are, after all, social animals, and we rarely do things without a social reason
• Humans are deeply bitten with the idea of superiority and power
• Labov's social theory of language change - and no doubt others that will follow, do seem to make the most sense
• Peter Trudgill's Norwich study


  • Investigated the speech of residents of Norwich, England
  • Interested in the pronunciation of particular variables in different socioeconomic status groups and different speech styles
  • One variable was (ng) with its standard and prestigious velar variant [ɪŋ] and the non-standard variant [ən] in Norwich
  • The higher the socioeconomic status of the speaker, the more frequently (s)he used the standard variant
  • Style stratification existed in England, as well. All socioeconomic groups used more standard variants with increasing formality of the speech style
• Restricted code


  A way of using language with a looser syntax, more words of simple coordination like "and" and "but", more clichés, and more implicit reference so there are a greater number of pronouns than the elaborated code
• Elaborated code


  A way of using language with a more formally correct syntax, having more subordinate clauses and fewer unfinished sentences, more logical connectives like "if" and "unless", as well as more originality and more explicit reference
• The codes should not be confused with social dialects because there is nothing in a dialect to inhibit explicit statements of individual feeling or opinion
• Elaborated code


  Arises where there is a gap or boundary between speaker and listener which can only be crossed by explicit speech
• Restricted code


  Arises when speech is exchanged against a background of shared experience and shared definitions of that experience; it realises meanings that are already shared rather than newly created, communal rather than individual
• Elaborated code


  Used to convey facts and abstract ideas
• Restricted code


  Used to convey attitude and feeling
• Descriptions of events by a working-class and a middle-class 5-year-old

  • Working-class: They're playing football and he kicks it and it goes through there it breaks the window and they're looking at it and he comes out and shouts at them because they've broken it so they run away and then she looks out and she tells them off
  • Middle-class: Three boys are playing football and one boy kicks the ball and it goes through the window and the bail breaks the window and the boys are looking at it and a man comes out and shouts at them because they've broken the window so they run away and then that lady looks out of her window and she tells the boys off
• Bernstein later modified his viewpoint to say that even working-class children might sometimes use the elaborated code; the difference between the classes is said to lie rather in the occasions on which they can use the codes