Term
| Robin Lakoff (central thesis was the "language of women" which involved 9 distinct features) |
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Definition
| Pioneered language and gender studies, found several distinctive features in women's speech: a number of words that men don't use (mauve, lovely), making statements that sound like questions (rising intonations), end questions with tag questions like "you know?" Use emphatic modifiers like "so, very, such," use a distinct intonation with lots of emphasis. Women also used lots of hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation, and made hyperpolite requests. Women were also thought to not use taboo expressions. |
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| explains the difference between men and women's language; gender reflects attitudes toward language varieties. |
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| Dichotomy of Status and Solidarity |
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Definition
| Those who strive for more correct language want status, while those who seek solidarity may often value relationships more than correctness. (Women may be more concerned with status in language than men are.) |
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| associated with Lakoff and her followers: sees the differences in men's and women's languages as developing from or reflecting the power differential between men and women in society. |
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| sees men and women coming from two distinct cultures with different rules of speaking (associated with Deborah Tannen) |
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| Community of Practice Approach |
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Definition
| criticizes dominance and difference approaches; says that when a community of people share participation in an activity they also share certain beliefs and ways of behaving/talking. When people join this community they change the way they mark their linguistic identity (i.e: pronouncing their words a certain way). *Community of practice approach says that people do not speak in a given way because they are born male/female, but that they construct their identities through talk. |
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| a facilitating aspect of conversations, like when good friends finish each others' sentences. (Speaking at the same time as your partner, but in a friendly, helpful way. |
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| a rude way to speak when your partner has the floor, violation of good conversational practice. |
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| Overlap vs. Interruption Findings |
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Definition
| Same-sex conversation pairs overlap three times as much as they interrupt. But in mixed-sex pairs, there were 5 times as many interruptions as overlaps. (Overlaps were all by men, and all but 2 of the interruptions were by men). While men rarely interrupt each other, they frequently interrupt women. |
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| "you know" (used by women 5 times as much as men), hedges can be of several different kinds. "You know" can be confident, or tentative when said with a rising intonation. Here is evidence for the difference approach; men and women are using the same form to mean different things. |
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| another aspect of language, can be a form of conversational dominance in Western culture. It breaks Western conversational rules. |
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| Characteristics of Women's Discourse |
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Definition
| women tend to build on each others conversations more than men do; they tend to talk more about people/relationships and not things; they use a lot of backchannel devices, giving more feedback to their partners; a lot of overlapping but little interruption in women's speech; hedges are used in conversation to respect the face needs of others, and tag and other questions are used to bring people into conversation |
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| Lakoff's notion was that women's speech was powerless... |
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Definition
| This notion has been tested, and studies prove that "women's language" was not characteristic of all women. Women's speech was also not restricted to just women. Perhaps what we have is a continuum, with more women speaking in "powerless" language than men but with social status and experience being important factors. |
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| Gender Roles in Playgrounds/Classrooms |
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Definition
| Gender roles emerge in elementary school; boys form friendships based on activity while girls value talk-based friendships. But some scholars say setting up gender-based oppositions is not helpful because it erases individuality. |
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| Studies have focused on construction of male identity within society, looking at the ways that boys and young men learn to talk "like a man" while showing that there are many ways to talk like a man. We need to look at factors like race, class, and sexuality in combination with gender. |
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| Gay and Lesbian Language Use |
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| Research has attempted to compare the conversational styles of gays and lesbians with findings from language and gender studies, but no solid findings have emerged. |
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| The gay/lesbian lexicon has been the subject of several books/dictionaries. (A community can differentiate itself from larger society by constructing new words and giving new meanings to existing words to better define their experiences.) One aspect: the debate over labels; whether "gay" is an appropriate label. Queer also presents a controversy. |
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| Found in naming conventions (women taking the men's last name at marriage), and in terms of address (women get called by their first names at work more). The removal of sexist language as an option in publishing is one example of successful nongovernmetnal language planning (books have to defend their use of "he" as an all-purpose pronoun). Occupational titles have also changed in the U.S; like actresses being called actors, waitresses being called servers, and stewardesses being called flight attendants. |
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