GENDER - english lang

Miss murray's class - gender and power theories

What are marked terms?

where an implication of the person is created through the language - e.g. working mother

What are un-marked terms?

When there is no implication of the person is created through the language - e.g. actor can be used for both genders

What is political correctness?

using language that doesn’t demean minority groups

What is language and sexism?

language used to degrade a person or reveal prejudice on account of gender

What is language and sex?

it is a truism(almost certain) that men and women use language differently

What theory did Geoffrey Leech come up with in 1968?

Trivialising Suffixes - argued adding feminine endings made the female seem like the secondary variation compared to the male version

What was Sapir-Whorf’s hypothesis in 1929?

believed thoughts and behaviour are influenced by language.

What is linguistic relativity?

as people think differently, our language is used differently, could be due to culture

What is linguistic determinism?

when our language is determined by language - so if our language favours men, it reflects that society favours men OR has forced us to favour men in society

What was Julia Stanley’s theory in 1997?

thought women occupy negative semantic space because of the amount of marked terms that exist to describe female equivalents of male roles

What was Muriel Schulz’s theory?

semantic derogation - the asymmetry of marked terms for women which carry largely negative connotations compared to men

What was Deborah Tannen’s theory?

argues there is a genderlect by which women have to change how they speak to match the male standard

What was Pamela Fishman’s theory?

argued conversations fail due to men’s lack of response, says women have to do the ‘shit-work’ in conversation to keep it going. this links to the dominance theory.

What was the theory of Eakins and Eakins in 1976?

suggested that men dominate mix-gendered interactions to maintain power

What was Herring’s theory in 1992?

theorised if the internet creates equal participation for all genders. Found women participate less in negative debates + men dominate debates online

what was Robin Lakoff’s theory ?

claimed women hedge more, use empty adj and apologise more. believed women’s speech could be distinguished in certain features.

What was Edelsky’s theory in 1981 which was developed by Tracy and Eisenburg in 1990?

found power is linked to control. found 2 types of ‘the floor’. 1st floor - single speaker. 2nd floor - shared floor with overlapping speech.

What was Dale Spender’s theory in 1980?

He difines words, language, and social constructs of it - such as patriarchy and male supremacy. concludes language is ‘man-made’ and made to support men.

What was Holmes’ theory in 2005?

Women use just as much humour as men, and are more supportive and collaborative. says gender is ‘omni-relevant’ to language

What was Christine Christie’s theory?

MP’s in Parliament flout transactional and interactional discourse norms, such as Grice’s Maxims

What was Peter Trudgill’s theory?

investigated how social class and gender may vary a persons speech. women more likely to use standard pronunciation compared to men

What was O’Barr and Atkins’ theory in 1980?

questioned if language and gender are linked. found that language correlates to power, confidence and status

What was Janet Holmes’ theory?

argued language variation is linked to societal contexts, identities and power dynamics. found men and women use different language in the workplace

What was Coates and Jones’ theory?

looked at female conversations and built on the idea of ‘genderlects’. also put gossip into 4 categories (house talk, scandal, bitching, chatting).