Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Language and Gender - Paper
2
- Robin Lakoff (1975) - argues that women's
language lacks authority compared to men
- listing assumptions of main features.
- 1 - Hedges, phrases such as 'sort of'.
- 2 - Empty Adjectives, such as
'divine' and 'lovely'.
- 3 - Super Polite, phrases like
'would you mind if..?'
- 4 - Lack of general sense of
humour.
- 5 - Less frequent
speech, avoiding
coarse and expletive
language.
- 6 - Tag questions, such as
'isn't it?' show a lack of
confidence.
- 7 - Use of prestige grammar
and clear articulation.
- 8 - Indirect requests, such
as 'I'm thirsty', looking for
a drink.
- Pamela Fisherman opposed Lakoff's theories.
- Tag questions were used to
start conversations with males.
- Men do not reply to declaratives - hence the
use of tag questions in conversation more
regularly. This gains them conversational power.
- However, Fisherman does admit this is mainly
due to male dominance in conversation
- Zimmerman and West men are much more likely to
interrupt women, than women were men.
- Suggests truth about patriarchy in
language.
- These findings support the dominance model - meaning
men are more dominant in speech
- Beattie disagrees with the
ideas from Z & W.
- Interruptions from males can be
supportive and show good listening skills.
- Jenny Chesire (1982) specifically looked
at the difference between young boys
and girl grammar.
- Overall, boys used non standard forms
much more frequently than girls.