Hello and welcome to our video summarising all you need to know about language and gender

theories. This video is especially useful if you are studying this either for your A levels or for
university and further education as we will delve into the different theories around whether or not
different genders use language in a slightly different way. So firstly, the major question is, is there a
difference in how women and men use language? This is a huge question in linguistics, whether being
female or male affects a person's language or whether it's merely the attitude towards people's gender
that makes us think there is a difference. Researchers have developed theories around this. Now, the
theories tend to sit under two different scopes. You either have the dominance theories or the difference
theories. So going into this a little bit, studies of language and gender often make use of two models or
paradigms, that of dominance and difference. Now, the dominance approach proposes that men are
naturally more dominant than women. This could be through speech patterns or behaviour towards or
around women. This theory also states that women act in a less dominant way around men, meaning
it's not only men who take part in asserting the dominance. Women also play a part by acquiescing,
accepting this dominance. However, the difference approach, so theories that fall under the difference
umbrella, support the idea that male and female individual lifestyles are often presented as being
different. To simply put, in communications and other interactions, men are fundamentally different
from women in their modes of communication. Thus, they use language for different outcomes. Now,
looking specifically at theories, and of course, the first we'll start off with is Otto Jespersen. He
postulated this theory very early on in 1922, and he theorised that women talk a lot and use half-
finished sentences as they speak before they have thought about what they will say. He also believed
that women and their language link sentences with and because they are emotional rather than
grammatical. Women also use adjectives such as pretty and nice very often, and they're often fond of
saying so pretty and so nice, so obviously being an intensifier. From his perspective, women use
adverbs frequently and tend towards hyperbole, so over-exaggerating their expressions. He also
believed that women have a smaller vocabulary than men, the words they use are the indispensable
small change of language according to his own words. And women know their smaller vocabulary so
well that they are more fluent in speaking and less hesitant than men who are searching for the precise
words in their large vocabularies. He also theorised that novels written by women are easier to read as
they use simpler words and terminology. Women often gain spoken mastery of foreign languages more
easily than men, but when put to the test in translating a difficult text, men prove superior. Also,
women by virtue of their gender shrink from coarse and gross expressions according to him. And he
also further added that women had a preference for veiled and indirect expressions, which preclude
them from being as effective as men. And women, from his perspective, had a debilitating, in other
words, a negative effect upon the language. And it was reasonable for men, certainly with great justice,
to object that there is a danger of the language becoming languid and insipid if we are to content
ourselves with women's expressions. In other words, women's language needs to be policed, otherwise
it's going to deteriorate the quality of English. And so, from his perspective, men are responsible for
introducing new words into the language. You don't have to agree with this theory, but you do have to
consider it in any kind of discussion around theoretical approaches to language and gender. Another
really important theorist who really falls, we could argue, under the dominance model is Robin Lakoff,
and her theory was first postulated in 1975. And she argued that language is fundamental to gender
inequality, and it could contribute to the lack of women's power in two areas, language used about
women and the language used by women. And Lakoff claimed that there were certain features of
women's language that gave their impression that women are weaker and less certain than men are.
And she observed the following things. Number one, women speak less frequently. Secondly, they
show they are listening by using minimal responses such as mmm and yeah. They speak more quietly
than men and tend to use the higher pitch range of their voices. They also use hyper-correct grammar
and pronunciation, so standard English and clear enunciation. They use a greater range of intonation
and speak in italics, using so, very, quite.
 She also observed, from her perspective at least, that women use question intonation in
declarative sentences. Women make declarative statements into questions by reading the picture of
their voice at the end of the statement, expressing uncertainties. For example, I think we should do
this. This is a declarative statement. Or, I'm drinking water. Again, a declarative statement, but it ends
with a high intonation. Perhaps, to some degree, implying some form of uncertainty. From Lacoste's
perspective, women also overuse qualifiers. For example, I think that. They hedge using phrases like,
sort of, kind of, it seems like. They use super polite forms, would you mind, I'd appreciate it if, or if
you don't mind. They apologise more, for instance, I'm sorry, but I think that. They use tag questions,
you're going to dinner, aren't you? They have a special lexicon, for example, women use more words
for colours, men more for sports. They also use empty adjectives such as divine, lovely, adorable. And
make more emotional evaluations rather than intellectual evaluations, for example, great, wonderful,
fantastic. They use more intensifiers, especially intensifiers like so and very, for instance. I'm so glad
you came. They also use more adjectives to describe approximate amounts, around, about. And they
use euphemisms more than men. She also found that women use diminutives more than men. They use
reduplicated forms such as itsy bitsy and teeny weeny. They use direct quotations, men paraphrase
more often. They use WH imperatives such as, why don't you open the door? They use modal
constructions such as can, would, should, ought. Should we turn up the heat or would you like to just
pass me that cup? They use indirect commands and requests, for example, my, isn't it cold in here? As
an indirect way of asking to close a window. They avoid slang and coarse language or expletives,
saying oh dear rather than bleep. And they avoid making threats, using aggressive language and
insults. And they lack a sense of humour. Women don't tell jokes well and they don't understand the
punchline of jokes. By the way, if you're finding this video useful, we would really appreciate if you
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found by other students who are seeking similar material. Now going back to some of the other
theorists. Another really, really important pair of theorists are William Obar and Bowman Atkins. Who
put forward a really interesting study. Which actually in some ways falls under the difference model.
But equally, it doesn't squarely fit very comfortably into the dominance and difference model. When
you're considering how men and women use language. So Obar and Atkins are known for developing
the idea that language differences are more situation specific. Relying on who has the authority and
power in the conversation rather than the gender of the people involved. Their theory really challenged
Lakoff's ideas that variance in speech were due to gender. What they did is they studied courtroom
cases for 30 months. Observing a broad spectrum of witnesses and examining them for 10 basic speech
differences between men and women that Lakoff proposed. These differences or women's language
components consisted of things like hedges, empty adjectives, super polite forms, apologising more,
speaking less frequently, avoiding coarse language or expletives. Tag questions, hyper correct
grammar, punctuation, indirect requests and using tone to emphasise certain words. And they found
that Lakoff's proposed differences were actually not the result of being a woman. But actually they
reflected more the powerlessness of the speaker. Now going into how they found this, they used a set
of three men and three women to prove this, who they studied. The first man and first woman, the pair,
both spoke with a high frequency of what we would call women's language components. So things like
empty adjectives, hedges and so on. The woman was a 68 year old housewife and the man drove an
ambulance, suggesting perhaps stereotypically that power and control would perhaps be lacking from
their lives. The other pair that they studied was a doctor and a policeman who both testified as expert
witnesses in the case at hand. Suggesting that the power they experienced in their jobs and lives meant
that they had less components of women and women's language. Another pair that they looked at, a
man and a woman, fell really between the first two pairs and the frequency of hedges and tag questions
in the speech. What Lakoff saw as women's language components. And from this study they made
some really, really important and interesting discoveries. And they essentially concluded that the
speech patterns were neither good nor bad.
 characteristic of all women, nor limited to them. So what Lakov essentially noted from our
previous slides, whereby women have these specific things that you find more according to their
gender, actually Obara and Atkins found men of a certain class or a certain status also exhibited the
same speech patterns but also conversely, women who are very powerful in a very high social status
did not necessarily exhibit all the different components within the language that Lakov said all women
do. So according to the researchers, the women who use the lowest frequency of women's language
traits had an unusually high status. They were really well-educated professionals with middle-class
backgrounds and a corresponding pattern was noted among the men who spoke with low frequency of
women's language traits. In other words, of course, these men were also quite powerful, very high-
flying individuals. So Obara and Atkins tried to emphasize that a powerful position may derive from
either social standing in larger society and or status accorded by the court. So really it's not gender that
changes one's communication patterns, it's more the social status and the power that they have within
society that determines how they communicate. Zimmerman and West who put forward a theory in
1975 is they essentially fall into squarely the dominance model idea. This is a theory that in mixed sex
conversations, women are more likely to interrupt men, in other words, sorry, are more likely to
interrupt conversations than women. Zimmerman and West used a fairly small sample of conversations
which they recorded at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California in 1975. The students
or rather the subjects of the recording were white, middle-class and under 35. So of course already you
can see some limitations in the applicability of how these people that they studied use language and
whether this really represents a wider demographic of people that they are describing. So Zimmerman
and West produced as evidence, 31 segments of conversation and they reported that in 11
conversations between men and women, men use 46 interruptions but women only two. And from this
small sample, they concluded that since men interrupt more often, then they are dominant. Esther Grief
is another theorist you need to be aware of and she put forward her theory in 1980. She examined
gender differences in the use of two conversational management techniques, interruptions and
simultaneous speech during conversations between parents and preschool children. So these are
children who are between the ages of zero months all the way up to let's say between four to five years
old. Participants were 16 children ages two to five and both the parents. Each parent child pair engaged
in fairly semi-structured play for about 30 minutes and Grief observed them. What she found is that
there were no significant differences between boys and girls in the use of these two conversational
techniques. However, she found that fathers interrupted more and spoke simultaneously more than
mothers did. And both parents were more likely to interrupt the daughters and to speak simultaneously
with the daughters. Results were discussed in relation to the power differences between men and
women and her study has been used to support the dominance model. In other words, what this study
might show is very early on in children's lives, women are socialized into speaking less and accepting
being interrupted more whilst obviously the opposite is true for men. Geoffrey Beatty in 1982 himself
claims to have recorded around 10 hours of tutorial discussion between men and women and he noted
557 interruptions compared with 55 recorded by Zimmerman and West. Beatty found that men and
women interrupted with more or less equal frequency. So from what he found in his study, men
interrupted 34.1 times and women 33.8 times. So men did interrupt more but by a margin so slight as
not to be statistically significant. So in many ways this study by Beatty actually does refute
Zimmerman and West's finding and also it's significant that Beatty had a much larger sample group.
And so this led Beatty to become very critical of Zimmerman and West's findings. And Beatty stated
that the problem is that you might study, is what you might study, might have one very voluble man, so
in other words a very vocal man in the study, which has a disproportionate effect on the total. So in
other words Beatty was saying the sample was so small that it just takes a very few number of men
within this sample that Zimmerman and West looked at to be exceptionally interruptive when it comes
to conversations as to make it appear that men generally interrupted more but actually it's a
representative of a tiny group of men within that sample. Dell Spender is another important theorist
you need to be aware of. And Spender advocates a radical view of language.
 radical view of languages embodying structures that sustain male power. So her work has a very
strong feminist aspect and she refers to the work of Zimmerman and West to the view that which views
male as the norm and to her own idea of the patriarchal order. She claims that it's difficult to challenge
this power system since the way we think of the world is part of and reinforces this male power. In Del
Spender's words she states that the crux of our difficulties lie in being able to identify and transform
the rules which govern our behaviour and which bring patriarchal order into existence. Yet the tools we
have for doing this are part of that patriarchal order. While we can modify we must nonetheless use the
only language which is at our disposal for that very language and the conditions for its use in turn
structure a patriarchal order. Pamela Fishman argued that conversation between the sexes sometimes
fails not because of anything inherent in the way women talk but because of how men respond or don't
respond. So her memorable phrase for the work that women do to keep a conversation going is I won't
read it but you can certainly use it in your writing. And Fishman questions Lacoste's view that asking
questions shows women's insecurity and hesitancy in communication. Fishman looks at questions as an
attribute of interactions. Women are asked questions because of the power of these not because of the
personality weaknesses and Fishman also claims that in mixed sex language interactions men speak on
average for twice as long as women. Jennifer Coates leans more in support of the difference model and
she theorises that girls and boys develop different styles of speaking due to the largely different
interactions in their all boys or all girl friendship groups. On the one hand she believes that girls and
boys tend to belong to the same sex groups where they will sit apart from one another and generally
avoid confrontation and when which is required it is often antagonistic. It's been observed that the peer
group of a child is directly influential upon their sociolinguistic development and gender is the main
principle with girls being encouraged to be typical girls and boys being encouraged to be typical boys.
So Coates acknowledges the tendency of girls to stick to playing in smaller groups maybe with just
one or two other girls where the relationship is based predominantly on talk whereas boys will adhere
to play in larger hierarchical groups which are based on joint activity for example sports where there's
often an undisputed boss. Two other theorists whom Coates mentions in her own theory are Daniel
Marx and Ruth Berker who put forward the idea that boys and girls both acquire different purposes of
speaking. They theorise that girls learn to do the following three things firstly create and maintain
relationships of closeness and equality, secondly criticise others in acceptable ways and thirdly
interpret accurately the speech of other girls. Boys on the other hand are more inclined to do the
following three things when speaking. Number one to set a position of dominance, number two to
attract to maintain an audience and number three to assert themselves when another speaker has the
floor. Deborah Tannen is perhaps most famous and most prevalent difference theorist. She postulated
her theory in 1990 and she believes the difference between how women and men talk and
communicate starts in childhood where parents use more words about feelings to girls and use more
verbs to boys. So men and women belong to different subcultures and thus speak differently and she
said that there are six main differences between the ways men and women use language. So firstly it's
status versus support so whilst men see language as a means of a certain dominance women see as a
way of confirming or supporting their ideas. Number two independence versus intimacy men rather go
it alone whilst women seek support. Number three advice versus understanding so men see language as
a problem as problem-solving whilst women see it as a means of empathy. Number four information
versus feelings so men are concerned with the facts whilst women with emotions. Number five orders
versus proposals so men use imperatives female use hidden directives and number six conflict versus
compromise so men will argue while women will try to find a middle ground. Tannen also said of
women and men that on the one hand women talk too much, speak in private context, build relations,
overlap and speak symmetrically, whilst men get more air time, speak in public, negotiate status and
avoid failure, speak one at a time and speak asymmetrically. Janet Holmes also argued that tag
questions rather than showing uncertainty could function as a device to help maintain discussions or to
be polite and include others into a conversation and she argued against lack of theory that hedges and
fillers, which are used for a variety of functions, don't simply show indecision or a lack of power. Jane
Pilkington found that women in same-sex talk were more collaborative than men were in all-male talk
and she concluded that women aimed for more positive politeness strategies and conversations with
other women but men tended to be less complimentary and supportive and of course Pilkington really
served to support Deborah Tannen. So that's it, thank you so much for watching, I hope you found this
useful and of course do visit our website www.firstrate-tutors.com where from time to time we do tend
to have useful model answers. Thank you so much for listening.