Studied men and women's social
class accents- found that women
used more Recieved pronounciation
in order to gain an overt prestige
Cheshire 1982
Studied the speech of
adolescent girls- found
that boys used more
non-standard
grammatical forms such
as "aint" than girls,
seeking an overt prestige
Lakoff 1975
Identified features she felt were charecteristic of female language
Hedges, fillers, apologetic questions,
tag questions, indirect requests
Fewer expletives than men used and
more intensifiers
Argued that women's
language reflected women's
inferior social status- made it
worse by making them seem
indecisive and needy; stated
that women's language is
"weak" compared to men's,
preventing them from being
taken seriously- DEFICIT
MODEL
O'Barr and Atkins 1980
Suggested
alternative
explanation to
Lakoff's Deficit
Model
Analysed transcripts of american courtroom
trials, finding that male and female witnesses
of a low social status showed linguistic
features that Lakoff labelled "female"-
suggested that it's more to do with a person
feeling powerless rather than generic social
clashing
Holmes 1984
Suggested that "women's language" is desired
to cooperate rather than show weakness
Zimmerman and West 1975
Studied recordings of
male-female conversations-
found that 96% of interruptions
made were by males; suggests
Male dominance in male-female
conversations, reflecting male
dominance in society-
DOMINANCE MODEL
Tannen 1990
Described male and female conversational styles in terms of differance
Men are concerned with
status and
independance, give
direct orders, don't mind
conflict, and are
interested in gaining
factual information and
finding solutions to
problems
Women are more interested in
forming bonds(talk less and agree
more with men), give polite
indirect requests, try to avoid
conflict, and aim to show
understanding by comprimising
and offer support rather than
solutions
DIFFERENCE MODEL
Beattie 1982
Qustioned
Zimmerman and
West's idea that
men interrupting
women was a sign
of dominance
Suggested that interruptions can be supportive-
responses such as "yes", "mmm" and repeating what
the other conversational speaker says can show that
you're listening
Cameron 2007
Argues that a lot of research is biased-
there's been more focus on differences
between male and female conversational
styles rather than the similarites
Fishman 1980
Noted that women use hedges such as
"you know" 5 times more than men-
shows that women seek to give
conversational help to the other partner
rather than inferiority
Chomsky 1965
Argued that a child's
ability to acquire
language is innate- came
up with LAD
Piaget
Cognitive- child needs
to have developed
certain mental abilities
before being able to
acquire particular
aspects of language
Bruner 1983
Social interactionist-
came up with LASS
Vygotsky
1978
Social interactionist- Zone of
Proximal Development (ZPD) and
private speech
Skinner 1957
Imitation
theory- copy
caregivers
language,
rewarded with
praise