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Language Diversity: Gender - Coggle Diagram

- - - - However, her research is based purely on her own observations and not any linguistically rigorous testing.
      - Her study is supported by Kira Hall, who found that phone sex workers often use Lakoff’s features to appear more feminine.
      - It has also been challenged in 2017, where research published by Economic and Social Research Council discovered that there had been a 500% increase in the use of “fuck” by women since the 1990s.
- - - - Overall, boys used the non-standard forms more frequently than girls and girls tended more than boys to alter their language to a prestige form when speaking to their teacher. She argued key factors in some girls using more non-standard forms was the degree to which they felt affiliated to the local youth subculture of appearing tough. Some individual differences emerged and of 12 girls, ⅓ did not associate themselves so much with the other girls and criticised their language and behaviours. Cheshire found that this group of ‘good’ girls used far fewer non-standard forms than the other girls - 26% compared with 58% average of the rest of the girls. Cheshire concluded that ‘variation is controlled by both social and linguistic factors. In boys’ speech, variation is governed by norms that are central to the vernacular culture (popular language), and are transmitted through the peer group. Variation in the girls’ speech appears to be a more personal process, and less rigidly controlled by vernacular norms’.
        
        Links to the work of Labov and Trudgill can be seen in more recent studies that apply Lesley Milroy’s social network theory (1980). In Milroy’s theory, particular informal and formal relationships create what Milroy calls a ‘web of ties’ (2002: 550). Patterns of language use evolve as linguistic variation characterises the speech behaviour of groups.
    - - Lave and Wenger’s community of practice model (1991) describes how people come together for a particular purpose to establish ways of doing things and ways of interacting to achieve their shared purpose. Wenger (1998) separates CoP into three crucial areas of mutual engagement, a joint negotiated enterprise and a shared repertoire.
- - - - Holmes’ (1997) research looked into the way women are referred to in affectionate nominatives (names) and she noted that the nominatives used for women were predominantly from the semantic fields of food and animals (eg. women being called “sugar”, “honey”, “bitch” and “cow”).
      - In 2015, Tyger Drew-Honey asked people on the street how they would describe a woman who had slept with 30 men and how they would describe a man who had slept with 30 women. Both men and women described the women as a “slag” and “slut” whereas the man was labelled a “lad”.
    - - Fishman viewed the hard ‘work’ that women do in conversations as a result of their inferior social status. Women do interactional or “conversational shitwork” where they initiate a conversation and keep it going. Fishman accepts that this is due to male dominance - males are reluctant to do this ‘shitwork’ because of what they perceive to be their dominant role.
        
        Her findings are supported by Coates (1980s), who studied the issue of topic management and topic shifts. She found that men will often reject a topic of conversation introduced by women while women will accept the topics introduced by men, men discuss ‘male’ topics e.g. business, sport, politics, economics, and women are more likely to initiate conversation than men, but less likely to make the conversation succeed.
    - - Supported by Schulz and Lakoff (1975) conducted research into the terms in which women and men are referred to and looked at terms which are marked in a way to identify them as different. The research details that the suffix -ess marks out a feminine equivalent (actress). Semantic degradation is where words have gained negative connotations as time has progressed, for example, master’s female equivalent is mistress, which has connotations of prostitution.
        
        Gender neutral words: there has been recent backlash against the term “history” (his story) as an attempt to claim that history is the story of men. All of this has caused a reshuffling and reclaiming of words for more gender neutral words (eg. headteacher instead of headmaster and headmistress). Greer has tried to linguistically reclaim the word “cunt” in an attempt to remove the negative connotations attached to female genitals.
    - - Evaluation: they examined a small sample size of subjects, all were white, middle class men under the age of 35 thus this is not a representative sample and therefore, their research is flawed and not necessarily investigating what they think they are. It is possible that the research shows traits typical of middle class conversation but this may be atypical of all other conversations.
        
        Zimmerman and West later carried out a study of interactions between parents and children, and concluded that parents interrupted and assumed power in those interactions in the same way that men had done in mixed talk. (power dynamics). Esther Greif (1980) adds that both parents interrupt daughters more than sons and fathers interrupt more than mothers.
      - Beattie (1982) was critical of the Zimmerman and West findings and commented on their lack of representation with their sample size and questioned the meaning of interruptions as it doesn’t necessarily reflect dominance but could be due to other sources such as interest and involvement. Beattie recorded some 10 hours of discussion and found 557 interruptions (compared with 55 recorded by Zimmerman and West). Beattie’s research considered over 10 times the corpus of Zimmerman and West and discovered there was an equal number of interruptions by men and women alike. More likely to be more accurate compared to Zimmerman and West’s study.
- - - - Tannen (1990) argued that male-female conversation could be viewed as a form of miscommunication where women were naturally inclined to be cooperative in conversation, and men more competitive. Tannen proposed the difference model, defining six clear continuums of difference between the genders:
        
        Advice vs Understanding: Men are more likely to offer solutions to a problem through their language choices rather than understand; women will show empathy and understanding to a given situation
        
        Information vs Feelings: Similar to Tannen’s Advice vs Understanding concept, men are far more likely to be factual in their language choices; women, in contrast, will use language choices that are less factual and stem from a more emotional viewpoint.
        
        Orders vs Proposals: In conversations, men are far more likely to be direct in their language using imperatives to command others; women will avoid such a commanding tone, be more suggestive in their language choices and ameliorated requests and use nice language (for example, a man may say “Close that window it’s cold” whereas the woman is more likely to say “Isn’t it cold in here?” suggesting the window needs to be closed).
        
        Conflict vs Compromise: Men are more likely to use language to argue a point; women will use language to avoid such conflict and are far more likely to negotiate with others to try and find a solution or compromise.
        
        Independence vs Intimacy: Men will use language to show they do not need to rely on others and focus more on being independent; women will prefer to use language as a way of connecting with others, maintaining closeness and prefer the intimacy of the situation.
        
        Status vs Support: Men use language to show power and dominance in conversations; women are more likely to use language choices that support and agree with others, overall, male conversations are characterised by a constant desire to be in control and women prefer to be supported.
    - - Kuiper (1991) found that in all-male talk amongst members of a rugby team, men were likely to pay less attention to the need to save face and instead used insults as a way of expressing solidarity. Similar findings on all-male talk have also highlighted this difference in cooperation against all-male groups. They also found that men use more expletives and swearing.
        
        Jones (1980) looked what makes up the conversation between all-female and all-male groups and she researched gossiping amongst women and calls this “house-talk”, which comes in 3 parts: scandal, where women discuss the behaviour of others (usually women), bitching, where anger is expressed not because they want to do something but just as relief, and chatting, which is an intimate form of gossiping where women mutually self-disclose and nurturing takes place. Her work is built on by Deborah Cameron, who says that girls bitch because covertly dominant behaviour is more acceptable for women.
        
        Pilkington (1992) found that women in same sex conversations were collaborative and used positive politeness strategies. She found that men in same sex talk were a lot less collaborative, less complimentary and less supportive than women.
        Pilkington also researches the way locker-room banter is created within all-male groups and found that insults were part of this culture and created bonds.
        
        Millett’s research states that the tone and ethos of male house cultures are sadistic, power-orientated, and latently homosexual, frequently narcisstic in its energy and its motives.
- - - - He concluded, like Lakoff, that women (of all social classes) are more likely to use the perceived correct term or the pronunciation with more social status attached to it. He also found that women often use hypercorrection (the over application of a perceived grammatical rule e.g. saying ‘between you and I’ instead of ‘between you and me’. He also believes that women used this in order to gain what he called overt prestige, or respect from others for using the correct form.