Gender and Discourse Analysis by Jennifer Coates

Language and gender

The most striking phenomena in language study.

Leads to the foundation of International Gender and Language Association.
And the creation of Gender and Language Journal

Two strands of Language and Gender

Sociolinguistic
 It investigates how gender may influence the use of language among society.
 How men and women use language differently especially in speaking.
Discourse
 Focuses on language as a concrete living totality.
 We view language holistically.
 We focus on what language can do in our social life.
 Contextual meaning of language.

3 main approaches to language and gender

The dominance approaches – this approach interprets the difference between men and women
linguistic usage as reflexes of the dominant-subordinate relationship holding between men and
women.
The difference approaches -
The social constructionist approaches

The Discursive Construction of Dominance

Since early works are inspired by feminist moment, they believe that women are discriminated
by men through talks, usually men interrupt the words of women through conversation by
which show discrimination to women.

Robin Lakoff (1975)

recognized that features of women’s language Reflect women’s inferior social status. Their
language use makes them seem weak.
 As we all know women are carefully selected the words we use when having talks,
speech or conversation to others, while men are bold and mean in the words that they
use weather it is expression or not, according to Lakoff our word selection reflect
our(women) inferior social status.

Don Zimmerman and Candace West (1975)

stated that males interrupt 96% of mixed-sex conversations. This led to the idea that males are
more dominant in male/female talk. Women had restricted linguistic freedom and men sought
to impose their dominant status through applying constraints in conversation – men and women
don’t hold equal conversational rights.
  Zimmerman and West agreed that women and men don’t have equal conversational
rights because women are restricted from using the words that is mean and harsh and
men always hold the conversation.

Discourse patterns in same-sex talk

Women and men had their own theme when they are having conversation with the same sex
circle of friends. Men usually tackled factual information such as sports and work while women
talk about family, friends and problems.

Deborah Tannen (1989)

According to Tannen Deborah, when the men and women grow up in different cultures, belief,
environment and people there is a possibility that they will have conflict in communication as a
result.

Deborah Cameron (1995)

She believed that weather a men or women language can be weak if they are not familiar and
comfortable with the place, people, situation and especially the language of the particular place,
for example is when you go to abroad, you are unfamiliar with their language, of course you feel
nervous and afraid and you become careful of choosing your language that will not offend other
people.

Competing discourses: multiple femininities, multiple masculinities

• Social constructionism - the prevailing paradigm in discourse analysis and sociolinguistics.

• Gender is understood as a social construct rather than a ‘given’ social category, and speakers
are seen as ‘doing’ gender – doing femininity or doing masculinity – in everyday interaction.

Ideologies of gender and discourse

• the role of ideologies is to make the (unequal) relationship between women and men in any
society appear natural, rather than unjust.

• arguing that women’s language skills are no longer seen as deficient, but as superior to mens.

Gender and discourse: the case for strategic essentialism?

• Some are arguing for ‘strategic essentialism’, a phrase coined by the post-colonial theorist
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak (1987) to refer to the careful and temporary use of essentialism
when the main goal is to expose discrimination against subaltern (subordinate) groups.