Language and Gender Theories
Robin Lakoff wrote a book called 'Language and Women's Place' and found ten characteristics about women's language:
1- Women don't tell JOKES
2- Women are more precise when naming COLOURS
3- Women use more HYPERBOLIC ADJECTIVES (adorable rather than cute)
4- Women use RISING INTONATION when answering questions
5- Women speak in ITALICS (putting stress on certain words)
6- Women avoid SWEAR WORDS
7- Women use TAG QUESTIONS
8- Women often use the INTENSIVE 'so'
9- Women use SUPER-POLITE FORMS ('do you think you could...?')
10- Women use HEDGES to be less direct (kind of, well)
Using the initials of the words in capital letters, I have created a memory aid to remember these ten characteristics.
J . C H R I S T I S H
Criticisms - Pamela Fishman
She argues that the use of hedges and question tags are used with the intent to keep conversations flowing. They could also be used to ensure that the other person is listening and understanding what they are trying to say. In some ways, this could suggest that women dominate the conversation occasionally as they somewhat control aspects of it.
Zimmerman and West - The Dominance Approach (1975)
Zimmerman and West listened to eleven conversations in the University of California in 1975 and discovered that men interrupted 46 times, whereas women only interrupted twice. They concluded this to mean that in mixed-gender conversations, men are more likely to interrupt than women.
Problems and Criticisms
- The research is outdated
- These results were extracted from only eleven conversations
- Those recorded were all white, upper-class people under the age of 35 so the research wasn't very representative of the whole population
Geoffrey Beattie
In 1982, Beattie recorded ten hours of conversation and found that both men and women interrupt at similar amounts, which completely contradicts Zimmerman and West's theory. He also noted that it only takes one man to interrupt heavily in conversation to make their research inaccurate.
Deborah Tannen - The Difference Approach (1990)
Her book 'You Just Don't Understand' claims that there are six main differences between male and female language:
1- Status vs Support - Men see conversation as competitive and want to dominate. Women see it as a way to support ideas.
2- Independence vs Intimacy - Men favour independence, whereas women seek intimacy. Women like to ask their partner before acting on something.
3- Advice vs Understanding - Men seek to find a solution, yet women seek empathy.
4- Information vs Feelings - Men are concerned with facts but women are concerned with emotions. Men communicate with information but women focus on building relationships.
5- Orders vs Proposals - Men are more direct, whereas women tend to suggest things.
6- Conflict vs Compromise - Men are more likely to be involved with confrontation, whereas women tend to resolve disagreements.
Janet Hyde adds to this by saying that she believes there are more similarities than differences between male and female language. The differences could be due to many other factors, such as: age, class, sexuality, ethnicity, occupation, etc.
Using the initials of the first word of each bullet point, I have created a memory aid to remember these six comparisons.
C O I S I A
Problems and Criticisms
- Too general (not all men and women speak this way)
- Outdated
- Focuses on differences, not similarities
Dr Javid
A documentary on the BBC called 'Can Our Kids Go Gender-Free?' (linked above) shows Dr Javid challenging the theory that the genders are different by treating a class of seven year old children completely equal for a whole term. By the end of the term, the children were evidently less focused on gender and saw each other as more equal.
- At the beginning of the documentary, girls focused more on their appearance when they were asked to describe themselves and didn't think as highly of themselves as the boys did. However, by the end of the documentary, the girls gained more self confidence and didn't focus so much on their appearance.
- Boys appeared to become more emotionally educated.
- Dancing was seen as a feminine job to the children at the beginning, but towards the end one of the boys joined a belly dancing class with his mother.
- One girl always got nervous when speaking publicly and would stutter a lot. By the end of this experiment, she spoke in front of the whole school and became evidently more confident in herself and her voice.
- ADD TO THIS
- At the beginning of the documentary, girls focused more on their appearance when they were asked to describe themselves and didn't think as highly of themselves as the boys did. However, by the end of the documentary, the girls gained more self confidence and didn't focus so much on their appearance.
- Boys appeared to become more emotionally educated.
- Dancing was seen as a feminine job to the children at the beginning, but towards the end one of the boys joined a belly dancing class with his mother.
- One girl always got nervous when speaking publicly and would stutter a lot. By the end of this experiment, she spoke in front of the whole school and became evidently more confident in herself and her voice.
- ADD TO THIS
Deborah Cameron - The Dynamic Approach (2008)
Cameron says in her book 'The Myth of Mars and Venus' that the idea that men and women use language in different ways is 'one of the great myths of our time'. She says that language is a performance and that gender is something that we 'do'.
Janet Hyde adds to this by saying that she believes there are more similarities than differences between male and female language. The differences could be due to many other factors, such as: age, class, sexuality, ethnicity, occupation, etc.
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