English Language - Gender

Androcentric

Focused or centered on men

Feminism

Movement of equality between genders; dismantling gender stereotypes

Intersectionality

The idea that multiple aspects of a person's identity affect their lived experiences

Sex

Biological anatomy

Gender

Social concepts of that identity

Otto Jespersen, 1922 Language Book, Chapter 13 “The Woman” (The Deficit Model)

-Women talk a lot

-Women use half-finished sentences because they speak before they think about what they will say

-Women join sentences with ‘and’ (emotionally rather than ‘grammatical’)

-Women use adjectives such as ‘pretty’ and ‘nice’

-Women use adverbs too much and tend towards hyperbole

-Women have a smaller vocabulary than men. The words they use are the ‘induspensable small change of a language’

-Women don’t swear

-Men are responsible for introducing new words into a language

-Women have a debilitating effect on language and it is reasonable for men to be concerned

Deficit

A deficiency in amount of quality

Robin Lakoff

American feminist linguist

Robin Lakoff, 1973 - Language and Woman's Place (The Deficit Model) - Summary

-her work was a response to Jespersen’s ideas of “The Woman”

-found many differences in the way her female and and subjects spoke

Robin Lakoff, 1973 - Language and Woman's Place (The Deficit Model) - Data and Methodology

Data: men and women’s speech (her friends)

Methodology: observations (no robust methodology applied to reduce variables)

Robin Lakoff, 1973 - Language and Woman's Place (The Deficit Model) - Analysis

Woman use:

-hedge more to make their language less assertive

-tag questions

-empty adjectives

-hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation

-indirect commands and requests

-super polite forms

-more apologies

-more intensifiers

-direct quotation (men paraphrase more)

-modal constructions

-”wh-” imperatives

-more qualifiers

-more tone and infliction (italics)

They:

-speak less frequently

-don’t have a sense of humour

Don't use:

-coarse language or expletives

Robin Lakoff, 1973 - Language and Woman's Place (The Deficit Model) - Conclusions

-society conditions women to speak in this way as it's seen to be more feminine and they are forced to be submissive

-men’s language is the standard and women’s language is deficit

-”If a little girl ‘talks rough’ like a boy, she will be ostracised, scolded or make fun of.”

Robin Lakoff, 1973 - Language and Woman's Place (The Deficit Model) - Criticisms

-based her ideas off observations of her white middle class friends

-used generalised stereotyping (assuming women spoke femininly)

-used personal “introspection” which renders her work more social commentary than factual analysis

-”I do feel that the majority of claims I make will hold for the majority of speakers of English”

O’Barr and Atkins (1980) (The Deficit Model)

-tested Lakoff’s theory in their own study

-collected data from language used in courtrooms and compared it to Lakoff’s anaylsis

Methodology:

-mostly mixed gender witnesses

-mostly male lawyers

-10 weeks of trials

-Different length of sessions (hours)

-Different cases

Conclusion: Lakoff’s woman’s language features are actually more closely linked to power, social status and social class and not gender.

Eisenhauer and Fought, 2016, The Princess Problem - Objective

-to understand how language interacts with gender in Disney Princess films

-how linguistics have evolved over time

-to access any ideological consequences and links to feminine performance

Eisenhauer and Fought, 2016, The Princess Problem - Reason for Study

Disney Princess Films are often scrutinized for their messages and representation of women so Eisenhauer and Fought wanted to bring some factual data into the conversation

Eisenhauer and Fought, 2016, The Princess Problem - Methodology

-Chose 12 Disney Princess Films

-Dialogue in the films was logged, analysed, divided into linguistic categories and qualitatively coded according to several criteria, including character gender

Eisenhauer and Fought, 2016, The Princess Problem - Results

-Before The Little Mermaid, there were more female word counts than male ones, but after that, there were way more male word counts

→ most likely due to the expanded cast which where mostly gendered as male due to androcentricity (male as default)

→ In Frozen, a story about two sister princess, the word count for women is around 40% compared to men’s around 60%

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Classic Disney Princess Films:

55% of compliments given to women are about appearance

11% of compliments given to women are about skill

Renaissance:

38% of compliments given to women are about appearance

22% compliments given to women are about skill

New Age:

22% compliments given to women are about appearance

40% compliments given to women are about skill

Zimmerman and West, 1975 (The Dominance Model) - Data

Mixed sex conversations

Zimmerman and West, 1975 (The Dominance Model) - Methodology

-Eleven conversations recorded with white, middle class participants under the age of 35

-31 segments of conversations recorded

Zimmerman and West, 1975 (The Dominance Model) - Analysis

-Men interrupted 46 times

-Women interrupted twice

Zimmerman and West, 1975 (The Dominance Model) - Conclusions

By interrupting more, men dominate conversations

Zimmerman and West, 1975 (The Dominance Model) - Criticisms - Methodology

-Lack of participant diversity

-Lack of data recorded/small collection of data

-Only mixed sex conversations (didn't explore whether men also interrupt other men regularly)

Zimmerman and West, 1975 (The Dominance Model) - Criticisms - Conclusions

-men interrupting more could also suggest they are less polite

-men interrupting more could also suggest they have less dominance over the conversation as they have to force themselves to have the floor (not allowed to speak?)

Zimmerman and West, 1975 (The Dominance Model) - Criticisms - Geoff Beattie

-might have one very “voluble” (Geoff’s wording) man in the study (disproportionate effort on the total)

-interuptions might of been happening for other reasons (like interest or involvement)

-some of the interruptions might have been back-channel

Geoff Beattie, 1982 (The Dominance Model) - Data

Mixed sex conversations

Geoff Beattie, 1982 (The Dominance Model) - Methodology

10 hours of conversation with 557 interruptions recorded

Geoff Beattie, 1982 (The Dominance Model) - Analysis

Men and women interrupted with more or less equal frequency

Geoff Beattie, 1982 (The Dominance Model) - Conclusions

The validity of Zimmerman and West’s research needs to be questioned

Validity

How far can we trust the result

Internal validity

Within the experiment, is it valid?

External validity

Can you say that a general social trend has been found/Can it relate to the outside world?

Pamela Fishman, 1983 (The Dominance Model) - Beliefs

-agrees that men use language to dominate conversations as a result of the patriarchal society

Pamela Fishman, 1983 (The Dominance Model) - Data

Mixed sex conversations between 3 young American couples

Pamela Fishman, 1983 (The Dominance Model) - Methodology

52 hours of recorded conversations

Pamela Fishman, 1983 (The Dominance Model) - Analysis

Women:

-asked more questions

-used four times more tag questions

-used more back-channeling

Pamela Fishman, 1983 (The Dominance Model) - Conclusions

-The features found in women's language encourage the flow of conversation

-She states that this is because of male dominance in conversation

-She concludes that women must do the “conversational shitwork” because men don't

Pamela Fishman, 1983 (The Dominance Model) - Criticism

-Lack of participants

-Not externally valid (internally valid however) but doesn't admit that

Janet Holmes, 1984 (The Difference Model) - Summary

-Not strictly a Difference Model theorist but her conclusions paved way for it to be developed

-Questioned Lakoff’s conclusions about WHY women use tag questions (Holmes believed it was to show care and concern rather than weakness)

Janet Holmes, 1984 (The Difference Model) - Data

-Mixed sex conversations

Janet Holmes, 1984 (The Difference Model) - Methodology

9 hours of recorded, unscripted talk from 3 radio/TV broadcasts where male and female talk were equally represented and the power dynamics between the participants were equally represented across the sexes

Janet Holmes, 1984 (The Difference Model) - Analysis

Identified 3 types of tag questions

Referential tags - signal factual uncertainity (isn’t it?)

Affective facilitative tags - to establish relationships/solidarity (agreed?/aren't we?)

Affective softening tags - to weaken a command or criticism (okay?/wouldn't you?)

Janet Holmes, 1984 (The Difference Model) - Conclusions

-Men and women use similar amounts of tag questions

-Men use referential tags more

-Women use affective facilitative tags more

-Both men and women use similar amounts of softening tags

Deborah Cameron - What language barrier? - Myth

-”The idea that men and women differ fundamentally in the way they use language to communicate is a myth”

Deborah Cameron - What language barrier? - Matching expectations

-People will often pay more attention to things that match their expectations and make reality fit their preconceptions and often fail to register counter examples

e.g. books that “recognise” generalisations about the way men and women speak often only do so because these generalisations fit with already familiar stereotpyes

→ if a book says one thing that men do that women' don't, it often prompts readers to think of examples that match that criteria, and if they do think of any counter examples (which is rare), they often put that under exceptions

Deborah Tannen, 1990 (The Difference Model) - Summary

-wrote a book called “You Just Don't Understand: Men and Women in conversation”

-states that men and women are from different sub-cultures and that male-female speech is “cross-cultural communication”

-argued this because society encourages men and women to form different sub-cultures based on sex

Deborah Tannen, 1990 (The Difference Model) - Data

Mixed sex conversations

Deborah Tannen, 1990 (The Difference Model) - Methodology

Used data from past studies and videotapes of mixed-sex communications of pairs asked to speak on tape

Deborah Tannen, 1990 (The Difference Model) - Analysis

Identified six distinct categories for the sub-cultures of men and women

Deborah Tannen, 1990 (The Difference Model) - Conclusions

Men and women are conditioned by society to speak differently because society puts men and women into different sub-cultures → this led people to believe the “difference” is biological