Language and gender

Men and women use language differently
1. Trudgill 1983
  1. Found women's social class accents closer to RP than mens
2. Cheshire 1982
  1. Studied adolescent girls and boys, boys tended to use more non-standard grammatical forms
3. Using standard English and RP gives person overt prestige, women tend to seek
Possible explanations for women using more prestigious forms than men
1. Less secure in terms of social status
2. Society expects higher standards of behaviour from women
3. Men already have higher social status than women
4. Non-standard language associated with working class men
  1. Tough, down to earth qualities
Women's politeness
1. Robin Lakoff features characteristic of women's language 1975
  1. Hedges and fillers
  2. Apologetic requests
  3. Tag questions
    1. In their data men more tag questions than women - Dubois and Crouch 1975
  4. Indirect requests
Approaches to difference in language use
1. Other explanations
  1. Courtroom trials - O'Barr and Atkins 1980
    1. Low social status or inexperienced aspects Lakoff called women's
  2. Women's language not weakness but desire to cooperate - Holmes 1984
  3. Few differences, situation affects more than gender - Cameron 2007
  4. Interrupting is dominant? - Beattie 1982
2. Deficit - Robin Lakoff 1975
  1. Women speak less than men
  2. Women less expletives
  3. More intensifiers
  4. Features of women's language reflect inferior social status
  5. Women's language weaker and prevents women being taken seriously
3. Dominance - Zimmerman and West 1975
  1. Recorded interruptions, 96% men
    1. Men dominant in male-female convos reflects men's dominance in society
4. Difference - Tannen 1990
  1. Men concerned with
    1. Status and independence
    2. Direct orders and don't mind conflict
    3. Facts and problem solving
  2. Women concerned with
    1. Forming bonds
    2. Avoiding conflict through politeness
    3. Understanding through compromising
    4. Supporting
Represented differently
1. Marked terms
2. Generic terms
3. Lexical asymmetry
4. Patronising terms
Sexism
1. 3rd person masculine pronoun 'he' or 'his' refers to both sexes
2. More insults for women
  1. Animal theme
  2. Lots for promiscuity
    1. Sara Mills list 1995
  3. Positive connotations for men promiscuity
3. Views on avoiding sexist language
  1. Can be frustrating or pointless
4. Sexist language avoiding and changing
  1. Sex discrimination act 1975

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Language and gender

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