Gender and Language

Language Use

do men and women have different goals in using language

Different Cultures hypothesis - women

establish/maintain relationships, show support, matching/mirroring experiences, conversation maintenance, tentative speech

Different Cultures hypothesis - men

exert control and preserve independence, enhance status, display knowledge, avoid disclosing personal info, avoid vulnerability, conversational dominance, forceful/authoritative speech

Tentative Speech Types

tag questions, disclaimers, hedges, intensifiers

Tag Questions

a short phrase added to a sentence, interpreted as uncertainty in women but self-confidence and men; can also be for encouraging communication

Disclaimers

“i may be wrong, but”

Hedges

phrases such as “sort of” that weaken or soften a statement

Intensifiers

adverbs such as “very, really, vastly” that are seen as reducing strength of a statement, what you are saying needs to be boosted

Different Cultures Hypothesis - evidence

Very small effect sizes for tentative speech, larger for same-gender groups rather than mixed-groups, not supportive

Affiliative vs Assertive Speech

examining gender differences in the goals of speech, alternative to Different Cultures Hypothesis

Affiliative

aims to establish a connection to the listener, including praise, agreement, support, and acknowledgement

Assertive Speech

aims to influence the listener, including providing instructions, suggestions, criticism, disagreement, information

Evidence for Assertive vs Affiliative

Small effect sizes for children and adults, not supported by empirical evidence

Why is Different Cultures Hypothesis popular?

we like to hear that there are gender differences, we filter out information that is inconsistent with gender schemas

Interruptions

men interrupt women much more than women interrupt men, and each gender interrupts their own gender roughly the same amount

Explaining Interruptions

power and dominance over women VS request for clarification, express agreement/support, disagreement, subject change

Intrusive interruptions

small to moderate effect size

Gender-Linked Language Effect

women use more socially intelligent and aesthetically pleasing language, men use more aggressive/dynamic language

Transcript Study

could not discern from a transcript which gender was speaking unless trained to do so, found that gender influences how we view speech

Written Language

men made more references to quantity, women made more references to emotion, no other differences

individuals can imitate gender stereotypes in speech, but don’t actually portray them

Email Study

women expressed more emotions, disclosed more personal information, used more hedges and intensifiers

did not use more apologies, compliments, opinions, or questions

Untrained raters could guess » more used to reading emails than speech

Netpal Study

female-style vs male-style language, participants adapted to the style regardless of gender, people’s language style is flexible

Emojis

women use more emojis, “communion” was more linked to emoji use than gender was

Texting

men and women text at similar rates, women see it as a way to connect or escape the environment while men’s texting is more cold and aggressive

Sexting

men more likely to engage, women describe experience as more negative, more likely to receive unsolicited/nonconsensual sexts

Interpersonal Distance

men prefer larger interpersonal space than women do, Western phenomenon

Approach

women approach others more than men, others approach women more than men

Space Violation

women are more likely to have their space violated than men

Gaze/Eye Contact

females look at conversational partners more than males, people look at females more than men, females make more eye contact

Posture

men use expansive posture, women use contractive posture

Expansive Posture

wider stance, relaxed, sitting back » feel more powerful, some small hormonal changes

Contractive Posture

legs underneath body, cross legs/ankles, arms and hands near body

Androcentrism

male forms as generic, females as the exception phenomenon

Parallel Words

have different connotations, found in slang words

Infantilizing Language

treating people as if they were children or babies, suggesting immaturity and dependency, “girl, baby, babe, chick, doll, honey”

Masculine Generic

“he/him” brings male characters to mind, occupation titles create expectations about gender roles

Grammatical Gender

some languages assign gender to objects/sentence structures, completely arbitrary

Whorfian Hypothesis

the language we learn influences how we think

Linguistic Determinism

more intense theory, has been disregarded