Gender theorists
Deborah Tannen
Robin Lakoff
1975 - 'Language and Women's Place', in a related article ' Women's Language' which included basic assumptions about what makes language female- Including:
Hedges, Super-polite forms, Tag questions, Empty adjectives, apologies, indirect commands, lack of sense of humour, hesitancy/ uncertainty, need for approval
CRITICS OF THIS THEORY ARGUE THAT THESE ARE SIMPLY FEATURES OF 'POWERLESS LANGUAGE', AND NOT NECESSARILY RELATED TO GENDER
Critics also suggest that some of these suggestions are easier to qualify than others, eg it is easy to count the amount of modal verbs or super polite forms, and less easy to qualify a lack of a sense of humour.
Argued that male language is seen as the 'norm' and female language is therefore inferior and deficient. She argued that female language reflects their subordinate role in society.
'You Just Don't Understand' - 1990
Sometimes seen as an exponent of difference theory
Zimmerman & West
1975- Associated with Dominance theory - Men dominate in mixed sex conversations (96% interruptions)
Difference is down to social status and context, not gender.
Small sample size used
And the big question is do interruptions=dominance?
Dale Spender
Julia Stanley
Women exist in a "Negative semantic space" - eg the C word
1975, analysis of terms for sexually promiscuous men (20) and women (220). There are many more taboo lexical terms relating to women.
Man-Made Language 1980 associated with Dominance theory.
"Language is a shaper of ideas" and sustains patriarchal power.
The language that we use has been shaped by the values of men - influence of sapir-whorf hypothesis.
Refers to the "colonization of our minds"
If language is really "Man-made", then how can Spender use language to attack this system?
Is Spender's version of how language works far too simplistic?
Language use between men and women is not a question of superiority or inferiority, but is different because they belong to different groups with different norms and expectations.
"Report talk" (exchanging info) and "Rapport talk" (interacting and building relationships
Status v Support Advice v Understanding Information v Feeling
Orders v Proposals
Conflict v Compromise
Independence v intimacy
Bit simplistic? Men and Women don't live in segregated societies
Is this way of looking at things blind to the role of power inequality?
Peter Trudgill
Female Speech shows a desire for "Overt prestige" (prestige arising from socially desirable behaviour/ linguistically; using standard forms.) This could suggest that women are more conscious of social status.
Male speech shows a desire for "Covert prestige" (Prestige arising from behaviour that goes against social expectations/ linguistically; referring to the use of non-standard forms.) This could suggest that men are less concerned/ bound by social conventions.
Deborah Cameron
'The Myth of Mars and Venus' 2007 There is as much variation within each gender as there is between men and women.
She challenges any attempts at binary classification and argues that we need to start thinking about gender in more complex ways.
Whatever style of speech, women are judged by different standards- higher standards of what she calls "Verbal Hygiene"
Janet Hyde
Exponent of what is sometimes called the "gender similarities hypothesis"2005
Meta-analysis of lots of different studies into language and gender
Concludes that there are actually very few differences between how men and women use language