English Language - Genderlect
Key terms
Genderlect - Spoken language style characteristic of a particular gender
Stereotype - Assigning a general set of characteristics to a group as a whole.
Representation - The portrayal of events, people and circumstances through language and other meaning-making resources (eg images and sound) to create a way of seeing the world.
Ideology - A particular set of ideas and beliefs
Hegemony - The process by which we internalise the norms and values of the dominant social order – these values appear ‘natural’ and complete, rather than constructed.
Sex - This refers to the biological differences between males and females.
Gender - Expectations based on heterosexuality
Socialisation - Gender socialisation is the process of learning the social expectations and attitudes associated with one's sex.
Androcentric - centered around men
Generic - general reference to both male/female in a term
Marking - identifying an item as different from the norm
Tautology - producing redundancy in meaning by saying the same thing twice
Vocative - Name you call someone (as if to catch their attention)
Title - Word that comes before a name to mark social/ professional status
Endearment - A vocative which conveys affection
Semantic derogation - Where everyday words (usually related to women or female things) become pejorative
Reappropriation - reclaiming words that have negative associations and seeking to change them to something more positive.
Politically correct (PC) - More inclusive language
Folklinguistics - Ideas about language that circulate in society without serious evidence to support them.
Verbosity (or adjective ‘verbose’) - using more words than are needed, speaking a lot
Important people and research
Baker’s findings on the word “mankind”
Julia Stanley (1973) - claimed that there was a marked inequality in the number of words for sexually promiscuous women (200) compared with those used to describe males (20)
Louann Brizendine
A neuropsychiatrist who published the book “The female brain” in 2006
In it, she asserted that women use 20,000 words a day compared to 7,000 for men
Mark Liberman, Professor of Phonetics at the University of Pennsylvania, could find no hard evidence in the book of this assertion
He said that differences between groups of men and groups of women will be wider than the differences between men and women
Matthias Mehl (2007)
Conducted an American survey
Found that female subjects used 16,215 words a day compared with their male counterparts’ usage of 15,669
Found that women did talk more than men but only slightly (difference was negligible)
Super important
Robin Lakoff (female) (1975)
Published a book titled “Language and a woman’s place” which was heavily criticised
The book was based on her own observations rather than scientific research under controlled conditions
It spearheaded a far-reaching programme of research on language and gender
Suggested that women’s language was more powerless because they had been given a subordinate role in society
Features she observed include:
Specific colour words – ‘mauve’, ‘aquamarine’, ‘crimson’
‘Empty’ adjectives – ‘charming’, ‘divine’, ‘adorable’, ‘lovely’
Weaker expletives and exclamations – ‘oh dear’ or ‘goodness me’, rather than ‘shit’
‘Speaking in italics’, with more emphasis – ‘so good’, ‘such fun’, ‘really great’, ‘very beautiful’
Rising intonation for statements as well as questions, suggesting an uncertainty
Hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation (think about yours / your mum’s ‘telephone voice’)
Indirect requests – ‘I’m so thirsty – really asking for a drink
Super-polite forms - ‘would you mind?’, ‘Is it OK if…?
Lack of precision/vagueness suggested through use of:
tag-questions after statements - ‘You’re going to dinner, aren’t you?’
hedges - ‘sort of’, ‘kind of’, ‘it seems’, ‘I guess’, ‘probably’
approximations - ‘about’, ‘-ish’
O’Barr and Atkins (1980) Women’s Language or Powerless Language?
Analysed the ten ‘women’s language’ (‘WL’) features in a courtroom and found that they were used far more by low-status speakers than high-status speakers, regardless of gender
This study picked out a contextual factor that Lakoff had ignored (power/status) and, examining it, found it to be more influential than gender
Janet Holmes and tag questions (1980s)
Checked if women really use more tag questions
Supported Lakoff (women do use more tag questions 51 vs 39)
but it also provided further insight into the way in which they were used
Males use more referential tag-questions 61% (suggesting it’s them who are ‘uncertain’) and more softening tag-questions 13% (suggest hedging/indirectness)
Females tend to use facilitative more (59%) – more conversationally talented, cooperative….
Highlighted the different types of tag questions
Referential - signalling factual uncertainty (you need the answer because you don’t know it)
Affective - relating to moods, feelings, and attitudes
Facilitative - expressing solidarity/closeness (encouraging a participant to talk)
Softening - softening the potentially threatening nature of a command/criticism (reducing the threat to negative face)
Zimmerman and West (1975)
Focus:
interruptions, overlaps and minimal responses as a measure of how power is handled in conversations
Interruptions = a speaker indicating that they want the floor
Overlap = another speaker giving feedback without the expectation to take the floor
Methodology:
They taped 31 casual but private conversations between student friends on an American university campus (California), in settings like a coffee shop, a drug store and other public places.
10 were men only
10 were women only
11 were cross gender
Findings:
In same sex conversations interruptions were roughly equally distributed
In cross gender conversations, men interrupted women more (96%)
Evaluation:
Small/uneven sample
University in 1975 a male-dominated environment