gender

• Semantic asymmetry

  • Schultz 1975
  • female terms in lexical pairs of words like mistress / master or spinster / bachelor have more negative connotations
  • identifying this as semantic asymmetry
• Diminutive suffixes

  • Suffixes are added to the male term to create the female alternative:
  • Waiter – waitress
  • Actor – actress
  • male term typically connotes more power
• Lexical priming

  • Michael Hoey 2005
  • words and phrases have an undercoat layer of meaning, built from habitual usages in the same contexts
  • e.g mistress and master
• Forms of address

  • gender marking seen in names and titles - patronyms - names that reflect male lines of inheritance e.g 'son'
  • some societies like Nordic can use matronyms
  • 'Ms' - not denoting marital status - adopting ways to create equivalent to 'Mr' - new stigma of being widowed, divorced etc - still not equal and not widely used
• Informal terms of address

  • binary terms of address for women and men
  • cupcake, sugar, honey, sunshine vs mate, pal, mister
  • girls referred to as food and sweet/innocent connotations - reflecting societies expectations and representations of women
• Sapir-Whorf hypothesis

  • language determinism - language constructs our view of the world and it is difficult to think beyond it
  • language reflectionism - language reflects the society that produces it - until society becomes truly equal, representation of marginalised groups with pejorate
• Euphemism treadmill

  • Steven Pinker 2003
  • the process in which words/phrases used to describe stigmatised groups or ideals pejorate and become socially unacceptable - becoming replaced by new ones
  • the cycle repeats - forming a treadmill of language terms
  • links to linguistic reflectionism - society unequal thus language is too
• Semantic reclamation

  • change from below
  • process of taking language with negative connotations and trying to overturn them by using the language in new ways
  • more successful with affordance of social media
  • n word by black community - solidarity
• Folk linguistics


  claims made on perceptions and anecdotes rather than based on quantitative data
• Main theories of language and gender

  • Deficit
  • Dominance
  • Difference
  • Diversity / social constructionist
• Deficit theory


  The notion that women’s speech is deficient in comparison to men’s
• Deficit theorists

  • Otto Jesperson
  • Robin Lakoff
• Otto Jesperson 1920s

  • adult male language is the standard and women's is deficit
  • women don't think before speaking - lack of full sentences
  • smaller vocabulary
  • prefer hidden meanings
  • women shrink from strong and coarse expressions
• Otto Jesperson criticisms

  • largely out-dated - pejorative comments based on patriarchy
  • folk linguistics
  • based work largely on fictional literature
• Robin Lakoff 1973

  • male = norm, women deviate away from it
  • language use contributes to lower societal status
  • hedging e.g 'maybe' or 'sort of'
  • tag questions
  • apologise more
  • speak less frequently
• Candace West 1990

  • study of mitigation - language used by men and women in doctor patient scenarios
  • men favoured use of aggravated imperatives 'take this' whereas women favoured mitigated imperative 'lets try' as well as inclusive pronoun and tag questions
  • patients with female doctors 17% more compliant
  • challenges Lakoff's idea of female weak language as a sign of less confidence but instead holding more emotional intelligence
• Robin Lakoff criticisms

  • lacks stringent methodology
  • based off own social group - Californian middle class white
  • founded upon heteronormative assumptions and a binary model
• Dominance theory

  • Lang is male-centred because females are seen as subordinate group whose difference in style of speech results from male supremacy and also possibly an effect of patriarchy.
  • Males dominate society which is reflected in public and private conversations.
• Dominance theorists

  • Zimmerman and West
  • Pamela Fishman
• Zimmerman and West 1975

  • recordings were white, middle class under 35
  • men are more likely to interrupt that women over a series of 11 conversation - 46 male and 2 women
• Zimmerman and West criticisms

  • Small sample
  • One particularly voluble male could heavily skew results - - Not wholly reliable
  • Geoffrey Beattie (1982) - recorded 10 hours of tutorial discussion and found no significant differences - concluded that one very voluble man in could have a disproportionate effect on results.
  • Interruptions can be interest enthusiasm or involvement in a conversation - context must be taken into account.
• Pamela Fishman

  • 52 hours of convos between young American couples - white, well-educated age 25-35
  • intersex conversation often fails as men don't respond
  • men speak on average twice as long as women
  • men control the topic
  • women do the "conversational shitwork" - ask questions to elicit a response, men in their dominant role do not need to keep conversation up
  • male dominance reflected in conversation
• both deficit and dominance models focus upon gender as the defining principle of language use
• Difference theory

  an approach of equality

  differentiating men and women as belonging to different 'sub-cultures‘ with different communicative styles
• Difference theorists

  • Deborah Tannen
  • John Locke
  • Jane Pilklington
• Deborah Tannen

  • not better or worse - just different
  • male and female cultures with own rules and meanings
  • men use a 'report style' to communicate factual info and women use more of a 'rapport style' to build and maintain relationships
  • based on anecdotal evidence
• Tannen's categories of language use

  • Status vs Support - men build status, women seek support
  • Information vs feelings - information orientates vs building relationships
  • orders vs proposals - men use direct imperatives and women use hidden imperatives and super polite forms
• John Locke 2011 - Duels vs Duets

  • evolutionary position of men as competitive beings - men engage in 'duelling' for status
  • women sounds more like a verbal 'duet' - harmonious way of achieving goals by sharing intimate thoughts and feelings
  • linguistic sub-cultures - difference in socialisation leads to internalisation of different gendered cultural norms, reflected in language use
• Jane Pilkington

  • bakery over a period of nine months
  • women talk to affirm solidarity and maintain social relationships - focus on feelings
  • women agree frequently
  • men frequently disagree and challenge each other's points - competitive and take part in verbal sparring
  • men are less complimentary
  • in a bakery - context missing such as region, family owned.
• Diversity/social constructionist theory

  • Gender alone is not the reason for language differences, but also a variety of extraneous variables:
  • there can be as many differences between two women as between a man and a woman.
  • less binary
• diversity theorists

  • Judith Butler
  • O'barr and Atkins
  • Deborah Cameron
  • Unni Berland
• Judith Butler - gender trouble

  • Gender is not biological/innate, but culturally constructed.
  • Gender is performative - performance of what is seen to be appropriate gendered behaviour creates gender.
  • explores way in which we trouble gender when we do anything out of the ordinary in terms of language use.
  • gender is a social construct - fluid and dynamic which changes with context
• O'Barr and Atkins

  • testing Lakoff's assumptions
  • typically female features like hedging and tag questions were viewed as weak - but were used by lower class males and less by middle, class high status women
  • features linked to lack of power and social class - 'powerless language' rather than gendered
  • may explain why is it typically associated with female language through deficit model - but accepts intersectionality
• Unni Berland

  • study of teenager's use of conversational tags 'innit' , 'yeah' and 'right' (discourse markers to convey agreement)- very little difference between genders
  • social class more influencing factor - innit more common amongst working class and yeah by middle class
  • may also hold aspects of regional variation
• Deborah Cameron

  • Verbal hygiene” describes the tendency humans have to “clean up” or monitor our language
  • set standards to talk in terms of what is “correct” and “incorrect” - teach grammar in schools
  • sit in judgement on other people’s language
  • define what is politically correct
  • in most cultures - we impose expectations of how women, in particular should speak and to instruct them - men less overtly

     
• linguistic identity is unstable and that speakers continually reshape that language identity depending on a whole host of variables.  
• a difference in how the connection between language and gender identity is understood - language is now seen as constructing gender and identity - as individuals, we may have multiple language identities
• the more compelling view of language use, in a modern context is ....
• • the statement focuses, exclusively, upon the impact of...
  • ... would align with the notion that ...