Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Gender and Language
- Robin Lakoff
1960's-1970's
- Women's language features
- Lexical hedges, Tag questions,
Rising intonation on
declaratives, Empty Adjectives,
Precise colour terms,
Intensifiers, Hypocorrect
grammar, Superpolite forms,
Avoidance of strong swear
words, Emphatic stress.
- Lakoff says people who use
these features will seem weak,
unassertive, un-confident and
unauthoriative.
- Vicious circle that creates and
reproduces gender inequalities.
- Women's language reflects their lack of
power and authority in society.
- Learn these features through interaction, socialisation and
social expectations of how a woman should behave.
- Tag questions don't have a simple single
function. Don't always express tentativeness
and lack of confidence. Creates form and
function problem.
- Modal Meaning - degree of
certainty
- Affective meaning - Facilitative tags builds up
positive face. 'You've done that well haven't you?'
Softening tags tries to soften the force of a face
threatening act 'That was pretty daft wasn't it?'
- Men use them just as much as women
- Cameron, McAlinden & O'Leary
- They were concerned gender wasn't the only
factor affecting the use of tag questions. Like
O'Barr & Atkins they point out women are not a
homogenous group.
- Individual women carry different
status in relation to each other and to
men
- Tag questions needs to be
considered with the external
factors of the conversation topic
and the conversational role.
- Women did use more tag
questions than men overall
- Men use more modal tag questions. Might reflect
tentativeness or a desire to force other people to accept
their views.
- Men used more softening tags
- Women used more facilitative tags - help conversation be
positive and supportive of other participants
- More modal tags were used by
powerless people
- O'Barr & Atkins
- They tested Lakoff's women's language
hypothesis
- Analysed how frequently WL features were used in the courtroom
testimony of witnesses.
- Many scenarios to consider; Social class, age, race,
culture. Language use cant be defined just by gender
- Findings
- Men were more polite when addressing people.
- Women use more quotes which
shows they are uncertain of what
they're saying and need evidence to
back up their statements
- Women were hesitant when speaking.
- Gender was not the sole determinant of
people's interactional language and
behaviour
- Gender was a powerful determinant of people's
interactional language and behaviour
- Being female often correlated with lower
social status and power than being male
- Renamed Lakoff's idea of
women's language as
Powerless Language
- Criticisms
- Criticised Lakoff's hypothesis because of the way it viewed
women in a simplistic way - Inferior
- Reflectionism
- How society's views affect the
language women use.
- Her research is outdated and could be argued as no longer valid.
Only contains data from people within the same sociolect
- Collected data from her friends so there's not an
equal representation of women.
- Not reliable as she made up conversations that
she used for evidence and TV shows
- Raises the issues as to whether
her research has any real
validation and relevance
- Criticisms
- Dominance Approach
- Believes women are the socially
subordinate group. it sees
women's and men's interactional
styles as a reflection of their
different social status.
- Women's powerless language is a contributor to the maintenance of
women's social position as they're more likely to be easily dominated by
men who have a powerful style.
- Deborah Tannen
- Men use language to maintain independence &
hierachy as they like being centre stage.
- Women always speak as if they are in
private
- Men are more comfortable speaking in public.
Better at speaking in groups.
- Women criticise peers who
try to stand out
- Difference Approach
- Not down to social status but instead how they
are brought up
- Women's language is supportive and co-operative. It works to
develop and foster good relationships. The difference approach
treats men and women as belonging to two distinct sub cultures
with their own norms and expectations. Although which valuing
women's language as different, linguists have admitted that when
women and men interact, men often dominate.
- Researchers acknowledge that there are
times when a men's style is appropriate
for a particular situation.
- Treats women's language as
positive and important
- Rapport and Report Talk - Women use'
Rapport', for socialising and building
relationships. Men use 'Report' to relay
information.
- Zimmerman &
West
- Investigated whether there was any difference in
women's and men's turn taking in interaction
- Taped 2 participant conversations.
Examined when smooth speaker
switches did and didn't happen
- Overlaps - this is a feature of
co-operative conversations. Shows
interest and enthusiasm. - Think they
have finished speaking but they
haven't.
- Interruptions- this is a feature of
competitive conversation - know the
speaker hasn't finished but
interrupt anyway.
- Findings
- Same sex pairs appear to be more
comfortable and conversation flows
without many interruptions
- Men interrupt more in conversations than
women and they have more overlaps
- Men are more dominant in conversations and feel they
have the authority
- Criticisms
- Don't know if the participants know eachother.
- Not aware of the topics discussed.
- Doesn't state the ages between the pairs
- Men gave less back channel noises
and that it was often delayed
- more dominant so have less
reason to agree with
covnersations
- Women hold back & more polite when speakng
- Turn Taking & Topic Control
- Janet Holmes
1986
- Difference Approach
- Holmes based her research on Brown and Levinson's
idea of positive and negative face. she says that
women use more positively orientated politeness
and that men use more negatively orientated
politeness.
- Men use language as a tool to give and
obtain information
- Women use language as a means of
keeping in touch - Social Function
- Hypothesis that women use compliments to
build connections. while men use
compliments to make evaluative
judgements.
- Jennifer Coates
- Investigated 'gossip'. the taped
conversations held between groups of
women who met for social purposes.
(weekly meeting in their homes)
- She gained their permission - potentially
observers paradox?
- Difference Approach
- She refuses to see it as weak language. she puts
emphasis on the positive qualities and contrasts these
with the undesirable aspects of male talk.
- She argues that men and women have
different expectations about the way that
conversations should work.
- Clash of styles and it's possible that this leads to
the ignoring or silencing of women in
conversation.
- Progressive and collaborative topic
development- Men often have far more
abrupt topic breaks
- Use of minimal responses - back channel to support
speakers (Zimmerman & West found the same)
- Rare use of interruptions -
Simultaneous speech was frequent
but support. (overlapped)
- Frequent use of language forms to protect the face of other participants.
(Modal auxiliaries and tag questions) helps to maintain social relationships
and avoid conflict.
- Coates found 4 characteristics
that separated women's talk from
men's.
- Women tnd to see conversation as an
opportunity to discuss problems, share
experiences and offer reassurance and
advice
- Co-operative women and Competitive Men