Gender

• Otto Jespersen's ideas about women's language


  Women talk a lot, use half-finished sentences, link sentences with 'and', use too many adjectives like 'pretty' and 'nice', use too many adverbs and tend towards hyperbole, have a smaller vocabulary than men, are more fluent in speaking, gain spoken mastery of foreign languages more easily, use veiled and indirect expressions, have a debilitating effect on the language
• Robin Lakoff's claims about women's language


  Speak less frequently, show they are listening with minimal responses, speak more quietly and in a higher pitch range, use hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation, use a greater range of intonation, use question intonation in declarative statements, overuse qualifiers and hedges, use super-polite forms, apologise more, use tag questions, have a special lexicon, use empty adjectives and more intensifiers, use euphemisms and diminutives more, use direct quotation, use wh- imperatives and modal constructions, avoid slang and coarse language, lack a sense of humour
• Dominance model


  Men are more likely to interrupt women in mixed-sex conversations, suggesting they are dominating or attempting to do so
• Difference model


  Differences in how men and women use language are not due to dominance, but because they have different conversational styles and goals
• Pamela Fishman's view


  Conversation between the sexes sometimes fails not because of anything inherent in how women talk, but because of how men respond or don't respond. Women do 'conversational shitwork' to keep conversations going
• Coates found that men will often reject topics introduced by women, while women accept topics introduced by men, and men discuss more 'male' topics like business, sport, politics, economics
• Hedges


  Linguistic devices that make statements less forceful or assertive
• Patriarchy


  A social system in which power is held by men, through cultural norms and social institutions
• Matriarchy


  A social system in which power is held by women, through cultural norms and social institutions
• Tag Questions


  Questions added to the end of a statement, seeking confirmation or agreement
• Verbal Hygiene


  The policing of language to maintain social norms and power structures
• Heteronormativity


  The assumption that heterosexuality is the normal or preferred sexual orientation
• Representation


  The way in which something or someone is portrayed or depicted
• Anthropomorphism


  The attribution of human traits or characteristics to non-human entities
• Social group


  A collection of people who interact with one another, share similar characteristics, and collectively have a sense of unity
• Marking


  The use of linguistic devices to indicate social identity or group membership
• Tautology


  A statement that is true by virtue of its logical form alone
• Lexical Priming


  The tendency for words to be interpreted in relation to other words that have been recently encountered
• Trudgill


  women more likely to use prestigious pronunciation then men
• Lakoff


  female language seen as different to 'established male norm' ; female language less assertive
• Zimmerman & West


  men interrupt more than women in mixed sex convo (but men don't interrupt each other); men assert topic control/conversational power
• Spender


  men dominant in convo because dominant in society; social conditioning makes women polite & respectful towards men; their behaviour is less confident and assertive because they occupy a less powerful place in society; women framed negatively in language
• Fishman


  convo between men and women sometimes fails because of how men respond/don't respond; men speak twice as long in mixed convo; challenges Lakoff: women use questions as a power tool in order to continue convo
• Cameron


  women have been taught proper ways to speak; verbal hygiene
• Tannen


  women and men have different speech cultures; report talk vs rapport talk
• Channell


  vague language; allows speakers to sound relaxed and informal
• O'Barr & Atkins


  language differs on situation specific authority or power NOT gender; women who use low freq. of women's lang traits have higher status; hesitancy is about power
• Holmes


  women more polite than men; women are more likely to compliment one another than men
• Pilkington


  women talk to affirm solidarity and maintain relationships; they focus on feelings, personal anecdotes & relationships; agree frequently; men find long pauses or thinking time acceptable; frequently disagree and challenge one another - verbal sparring
• Coates


  all female convo falls into 4 categories: housetalk; scandal; bitching; chatting - builds on Tannen's ideas
• Miller & Swift


  practical ways of improving gender equality - use of pronoun 'them' instead of 'he' or 'she' to replace gender bias; replacing marked terms such as job titles with neutral replacements
• Fairclough


  political correctness is not enough - the need to change society and what it thinks of minority groups; stop arguing about how 'chairman' is sexist and instead understand the issue is that women are underrepresented in parliament
• Stanley


  220 terms to describe promiscuous female whereas only 20 to describe men (most of which feminise men); insults for men are less taboo and less sexually insulting