Gender

• Spender 


  Introduced the idea of "male as norm" - women are extension of men e.g Mr and Mrs
• Parker et al 


  commenting and women's sexual behaviours is designed to damage her social status and cause negative psychological effects
• Stanley 


  There are 220 negative terms to describe promiscuous women but only 20 to describe men. Gender disparity in society between men and women's behaviour
• Holmes 


  Women are often referred to as food and animals e.g cow+sugar
• O'barr and Atkins 


  identified that men use deficit language that Lakoff coined and identified. This proves it is not just gender that defines language it is also context and topic which are driving force.
• Jesperson 


  women's language is littered with non-fluency features because they speak before thinking. But this is only based on public perception and is not proven.
• ESRC


  Found that women use the word "fuck" 50 times more than they did before 1990s - this shows limitations put on women have changed over time. Therefore they can adopt "male assumed" language without reprise.
• Who made the deficit model?


  Lakoff
• What is the deficit model?

  • suggest women's language is weaker
  • women's language reflects women's subordinate position in society
  • Their language makes them inherently weak
• What makes women language disadvantaged according to Lakoff?


  Lack of assertiveness, hesitation, tag questions
• weak adjectives 


  'nice' women do not use strong and bold adjectives when describing
• affective adjectives 


  adjectives that describe feelings or emotional responses to things, for example 'a charming house'
• back changeling 


  women passively agree and support conversation when talking -'yeah' and 'ummhum'
• emphatic stress 


  using explicit, exaggerated pitch or volume
• hedges 


  Phrases such as 'you know' or 'sort of' that can be seen to make an utterance most tentative
• precise colour terms 


  a greater range of hyponyms within a particular colour e.g scarlet, vermillion, burgundy
• rising intonation

  adding a rise in pitch at the end of a utterance making its effect more like a question
• super polite forms

  the use of euphemisms and lack of words considered to be swearing or taboo
• tag question

  the addition of short phrases like 'do you' to the end of a sentence
• intensifier/degree modifiers 


  use the words 'so', 'very', 'really'. Using so to add strength to a word 'so weird'
• Vocabulary or women's work language 


  used to describe typically carried out by women
• weakness of deficit

  • creating a dichotomy between men and women's language.
  • using men's language as the benchmark to compare women's language against
  • men's language is powerful to the detriment of women
  • men's language suppresses women's language
• when was the deficit model made?

  1975
• who made the dominance model?

  zimmerman and west
• what is suggested in the dominance model?

  • men are always more dominant in conversations
• what happens in the dominance model?

  • men interrupted 96%
  • women interrupted 4%
  • overlapping and interruptions happening
• overlap


  this is when the listener interrupts the speaker during a conversation but the speaker continues to speak. Resulting in two speakers talking at the same time, meaning there are only speakers not listeners.
• competitive overlap 


  hinders conversation by disrupting turn taking and cause a fight for dominance
• cooperative overlap 


  listener becomes a speaker to show interest and agreement/support. The overlapping shows they are listening
• interruption 


  listener breaks in to interjects while a speaking. The speaker then stops talking.
• competitive interruption


  listener forcefully interjects and continues talking. ( disregards for the other speakers turn)
• cooperative interruption 


  helpgul remarks or to add (questions/reassurance/remarks)
• what is semantic derogation?

  • Semantic derogation is the process by which a word's meaning becomes more negative over time.
  • This is normally refers to language when women are prejudiced against
  • primary creators of most of them are men
• How does age play into semantic degradation?

  • older women = unattractive and have a bad temper
  • words about women that are not hot = clingy and overweight
  • overweight = old, worn out, useless animal
  • animals = horses and cows = old women
• what is demographic levelling?

  • least offensive form from a high rank to coo
  • words have changed from high rank to common standing
  • This may not be offensive or abusive but women are not seen as fit to hold positions of power
• what is feminism?

  the advocacy of women's rights on the basis of equality of equality of the sexes
• how does power dynamic effect language?

  • men has power in every conversation
• Muriel Schulz

  • negative meaning/connatation that some lexical items have.
  • e.g have had nice/ good meanings towards women, have now turned to rude and slanderous
• Judith butler (1990)

  • language is used to project on identity rather than reinforce gender stereotypes
  • we conform to norm as it is not biologically constructed
  • your gender is constructed through repetitive performances of gender
  • gender identity is fluid and we identify beyond gender
• Janet Hyde (2005)

  • males and females are more alike than not with personality ability, and leadership
  • differences is the context that it is measured in
  • males and females are more a like than not but not all psychological variables
  • no scientific data