lOMoARcPSD|8230253

Language and Gender - Lecture notes 4

Sociolinguistics (Oxford Brookes University)

StuDocu is not sponsored or endorsed by any college or university

Downloaded by farabi nawar (faraobon@gmail.com)
 lOMoARcPSD|8230253

Language and Gender

Do Women and Men Speak Differently? (Homes, 1992; Lakoff
1975; Romaine 2000)

Women Men
Japanese (water) ohiya mizu
Common Structures Hedging Commands
Tag questions Joking/Storytelling
High rising tone
Typical Styles Polite/Unprecise Rough/Objective
Standard forms Slang
Innovation v. Swear Words
Maintenance
Patterns of Verbal Create v. Maintain Assert dominance
Interaction Cohesiveness Attract/Maintain
Group Terms audience
Conversation Respect turn taking Stress own points
Management Details Interrupt
Topic development Minimal responses

Theories in Linguistic Gender Research

1. Deficiency Model – early studies

(Lakoff, 1975)
2. Dominance Model – second phase
(Ochs, 1992)
3. Gender Socialisation (Difference) Model
(Tannen, 1991)
4. Social Constructivist Approaches
(Uchida, 1992)
1 – The Deficiency Approach
- Early research - Men’s speech as a reference
- “Woman’s Language” - Quantitative

Lakoff argues that women’s language is characterised by a number of features:

(Mooney & Evans, 2015)
- Avoidance of swear words
- Use of hedges or fillers (‘you know’ and ‘sort of’)
- Tag questions
- Empty adjecives

Downloaded by farabi nawar (faraobon@gmail.com)

 lOMoARcPSD|8230253

- Intensifiers
- Specific colour terms
- More standard syntax
- Rising intonation on declaratives
- High levels of politeness
Lakoff’s features provide us with an account of what people expect from women in their
language use. An important feature of the concept ‘women’s language’ is not that there
actually is a way that men and women use language differently but that society expects them
to do so without questioning this expectation. (Mooney & Evans, 2015)

CRITICISM: Subsequent research on what women actually do linguistically doesn’t always

match up with Lakoff’s claims

2 – The Dominance Model

Studies in: (a) marital home; “The underlying issue here is likely to be
(b) at work/business meeting; hierarchy, not simply gender. Socially-
(c) classroom structured power relations are reproduced
Some of the findings: and actively maintained in our everyday
(1) Men systematically interrupt women interactions. Women’s conversational
(Zimmerman and West, 1975) troubles reflect not their inferior social
(2) Women do ‘interactional shitwork’ training but their inferior social
(Fishman, 1980) position.” (Fishman, 1980)

3 – Gender Socialisation (Difference) Approaches

Boys and girls grow up in different (same sex) groups/ “subcultures”; socialised into different
behaviours as children in single-sex groups. (Maltz and Borker, 1982)
- ‘competitive vs. collaborative style’ (Tannen, 1991)
Different group dynamics of all-female/all-male groups lead to different styles
- re-evaluation of women’s style
- women’s cooperative style (Coates, 1996)

4 – The Constructionist Approach

 The way we talk is influenced by our memberships in various ‘communities of
practice’
 We use language to present ourselves in specific ways
 Language/discourse as a resource/toolkit for ‘construction of identity’
 We constantly adopt new ways of being a woman/being a man

Downloaded by farabi nawar (faraobon@gmail.com)