Paper 4, English Language and Self Identity, Language and Gender Flashcards

N.B. Zimerman and West's Study is not included in these as I dont't intend to use it

Speech style (Tannen’s Genderlect Theory)

Women’s language is based on the societal expectations of many women to build relationships whereas men are set up for monologues - idea of rapport (women) vs report (men)

Status vs Support (Genderlect Theory)

Men see the world as a place where people try to gain status and keep it, while women see the world as a “network of connections seeking support and consensus”.

Independence vs Intimacy (Genderlect Theory)

Women often think in terms of closeness and support, and struggle to preserve intimacy whereas men concerned with status tend to focus more on independence

Advice vs Understanding (Genderlect Theory)

Men often see a complaint as a challenge to find a solution whereas women see it as an opportunity to show sympathy.

Information vs Feelings (Genderlect Theory)

Men tend to prioritise information and brevity of speech in conversation whereas women tend to prioritise sharing emotions and elaboration

Orders vs Proposals (Genderlect Theory)

Women often suggest that people do things in indirect ways whereas men use and prefer to hear a direct imperative

Conflict vs Compromise (Genderlect Theory)

Men oppose the wills of others vocally much more often than women

Cooperative Overlap

Interrupting to show support

Competitive overlap

Interrupting to gain control

High-involvement (Tannen)

A conversational style, which, reflecting enthusiasm and interest, is characterized by such features as rapidity, relatively short pauses, abrupt topic shifting, faster turn-taking, and a tendency to speak without necessarily waiting for others to finish their turns

View of high-involvement (Tannen)

Tannen noted that a high-involvement style of speaking is evaluated positively by other users of this style but is seen as dominating by those who do not

Standpoint Theory

A theoretical framework that argues that knowledge is socially situated and influenced by one's social group or perspective. It emphasizes that marginalized groups can offer unique and valuable insights.

Social Location (Standpoint Theory)

People at the top of the societal hierarchy are the ones privileged to define what it means to be something in a given culture.

Local Knowedge (Standpoint Theory)

Knowledge situated in time, place, experience and relative power, as opposed to knowledge from nowhere that’s supposedly value-free.

Marginalised Perspective (Standpoint Theory)

Marginalised people have more motivation to understand the perspective of the powerful than the other way around, as well as little reason to defend the status quo.

Muted Group Theory (Edwin and Shirley Ardener)

A theory that suggests that language serves to limit the expression of certain groups, particularly women, by reflecting the perspectives and experiences of dominant groups.

Marginalised Group (Definition) (Edwin and Shirley Ardener)

A group of people who have been relegated to the lower echelons or outer edges of society based on certain characteristics.

Patois

A particular variety of speech which may be regarded as having a low status

Code switching (Teenage language)

The majority of teenagers are able to code switch between more standard English used in formal education and informal language or slang used in social settings.

Criticism of Teenage Language (Teenage Language)

Teenagers’ language may be unclear or incomprehensible to those outside their group and is criticised for reducing their language from their lexis learnt in childhood.

Tajfel’s Social Identity Theory

A theory that posits that a person's sense of who they are is based on their group memberships, influencing their behavior and attitudes toward in-group and out-group individuals.

In-group and Out-group (Social Identity theory)

By grouping things together, people tend to exaggerate the differences between groups and the similarities of things in the same group.

Central hypothesis of Social Identity theory (Tajfel)

Group members of an in-group will seek to find negative aspects of an out-group, thus enhancing their self-image

Categorisation (Social Identity Theory)

The process of classifying individuals into social groups based on shared characteristics, in order to understand the social environment.

Social Identification (Social Identity Theory)

The identity of the group to which an individual has categorised themselves as belonging to is adopted, which then influences the behaviour of the individual.

Social Comparison (Social Identity Theory)

A process in which individuals evaluate their own group's worth by comparing it to others, often leading to biased perceptions that favor the in-group.