Theories of Language and
Gender
How do men and women speak differently?
AIMS
To revise some of the theories about men
and women’s use of language
Broadly speaking…
• Language and gender theories, over time,
have moved through several stages:
• The deficit model
• The dominance theory
• The difference theory
The Deficit Model
• This is the idea that there may be
something intrinsically wrong with the
language of a disadvantaged group.
• Theories which fall into the deficit model
analyse language by seeing men’s
language as the norm and women’s
language as deviating from that norm in
various ways.
• Otto Jesperson wrote in these terms…
Otto Jesperson (1922)
• One of the first linguists to write about male and
female language. He had a chapter in his book
entitled ‘The Woman’
• He believed that:
– women had limited vocabularies
– women are delicate and easily offended, so prefer to
avoid ‘coarse and gross expressions’ and use more
‘veiled and indirect expressions.’
– Men invent new terms, while women are naturally
conservative.
– “there is a danger of the language becoming languid
and insipid if we…content ourselves with women’s
expression” while male language adds “vigour and
vividness” to the English language!
The Dominance Theory
• Men dominate and control both interactions with women
and the language system itself.
• Women use language in a way which reflects their
subordinate position in society, and men in a way which
reflects their power.
• Differences in men and women's speech is due to men's
dominance and women's subordination.
• Therefore the language we use is more about power and
status than gender
Dominance Approach
• 1. Lakoff (1975) claimed that the differential use of language
needed to be explained in large part on the basis of women's
subordinate social status and the resulting social insecurity.
• 2. Dale Spender (1980) "It is the men, not women, who control
knowledge, and I believe that this is an understanding we should
never lose sight of”(from "Man Made Language")
• 3. Zimmerman and West (1983) 99% of interruptions are made my
males. They concluded that men's dominance in conversation via
interruption mirrors their dominance in contemporary western
culture. Interruption is "a device for exercising power and control in
conversation" (West & Zimmerman, 1983, p. 103). Men typically
enjoy greater status and power than women in most societies, and
they are more likely than women to assume they are entitled to take
over the conversation.
Robin Lakoff (1975)
Lakoff published a series of basic
assumptions about what she believed to
be typical of women’s language:
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Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems
like”, etc
Use (super)polite forms: “Would you mind...”,“I'd
appreciate it if...”, “...if you don't mind”.
Use tag questions: “You're going to dinner, aren't you?”
Speak in italics: intonational emphasis equal to
underlining words - so, very, quite.
Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, etc
Robin Lakoff (1975)
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Use hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation:
English prestige grammar and clear enunciation.
Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more often.
Have a special lexicon: women use more words for
things like colours, men for sports.
Use question intonation in declarative statements:
women make declarative statements into questions
by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a
statement, expressing uncertainty. For example,
“What school do you attend? Eton College?”
Avoid coarse language or expletives
Lakoff contd…
Lakoff’s theories still have much support, although some
are more difficult to assess, such as women lack a sense
of humour because they do not tell jokes well and often
don't understand the punch line of jokes.
• Another central idea of Lakoff’s was that women were
socialised into sounding like ‘ladies’, which then kept
them in their place because being ladylike is a bar to
being powerful in our culture. If women talked like
‘ladies’ they were seen as powerless and trivial, but if
they talked like men, they were considered unfeminine.
Zimmerman and West (1975)
• Men interrupt more often than women
• Men seek to dominate talk
• In 1975, Don Zimmerman and Candace West
analysed conversations in a college community,
focusing on interruptions.
• An important point about this very famous
research is that it is a fairly old study of a small
sample of conversations. All subjects were
white, middle class and under 35 years of age.
Peter Trudgill (1970s)
• Women use high prestige pronunciation as they
aim for overt prestige (social class)
• Men use low prestige pronunciation seeking
covert prestige by appearing tough or down to
earth
• There is a tendency for men to use more
vernacular forms (common language / dialect of
a specific area)
• An example would be verbs ending in -ing,
where Trudgill wanted to see whether the
speaker dropped the final g and pronounced this
as ‘-in'.
Dale Spender (1980)
• Language itself sustains male power
• Men seek to dominate women through talk
• Men tend to speak in non-standard forms
with covert prestige as a means of social
bonding (carries on from Trudgill’s research)
Dale Spender agrees with and develops
Zimmerman and West’s dominance theory.
Her radical view is that it is difficult to challenge
male-dominated society because our very
language reinforces male power.
Dominance approach
LAWYER: And you saw, you observed what?
WITNESS: Well, after I heard- I can’t really, I can’t
definitely state whether the brakes or the lights came
first, but I rotated my head slightly to the right, and
looked directly behind Mr. Z, and I saw reflections of
lights, and uh, very, very, very instantaneously after that,
I heard a very, very loud explosion – from my standpoint
of view it would have been an implosion because everything
was forced outwards, like this, like a grenade thrown into
a room. And, uh, it was, it was terrifically loud.
• TASK – Which is male, which is female – why?
TASK
From Mullaray (2003). Steve – manager running a meeting. He is
trying to get his subordinates to run their own induction day.)
Steve : Do you feel that (-) we need to do perhaps something like (-)
the sales department did?
Mike: Set a date to sort it out
Steve : Cos as Sue’s quite rightly pointed out, all it’s all been done for
us and the things etc. why don’t we just take advantage of that? (.)
Sue’s offered her support with perhaps John? (-) Err you know
perhaps to run that (-) why don’t we just set a date now?
Matt : Yeah
Steve: And say right okay let’s do it
Sue : Just get everybody in
Matt : Yeah
TASK
• What aspects of Steve’s language are stereotypically female?
• Why is he using these features?
Difference Approach
• Difference – sees men and women
belonging to different sub-cultures, who
because they are socialised differently
from childhood, have different ways of
communicating with each other.
e.g. women are more supportive in
conversation, because they’re brought up
to be facilitators (Fishman, 1983)
Language and Gender:
Language in use
Difference approach:
Gimme the ball!
Now!!
Let’s go
downstairs and
get some
pizza..?
Deborah Tannen (1992): Difference
Approach: six contrasts
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Status vs. support
Independence vs. intimacy
Advice vs. understanding
Information vs. feelings
Orders vs. proposals
Conflict vs. compromise
In each case, the male characteristic (that is, the one that is
judged to be more typically male) comes first.
Status versus support
• Men grow up in a world in which conversation is
competitive - they seek to achieve the upper hand or to
prevent others from dominating them.
• For women, talking is often a way to gain confirmation
and support for their ideas.
• Men see the world as a place where people try to gain
status and keep it.
• Women see the world as “a network of connections
seeking support and consensus”.
Independence versus intimacy
• Women often think in terms of closeness and support, and struggle
to preserve intimacy.
• Men, concerned with status, tend to focus more on independence.
These traits can lead women and men to starkly different views of
the same situation.
• Professor Tannen gives the example of a woman who would check
with her husband before inviting a guest to stay - because she likes
telling friends that she has to check with him.
• The man, meanwhile, invites a friend without asking his wife first,
because to tell the friend he must check amounts to a loss of status.
• (Often, of course, the relationship is such that an annoyed wife will
rebuke him later).
Advice versus understanding
• Deborah Tannen claims that, to many men a
complaint is a challenge to find a solution:
• “When my mother tells my father she doesn't
feel well, he invariably offers to take her to the
doctor. Invariably, she is disappointed with his
reaction. Like many men, he is focused on what
he can do, whereas she wants sympathy.”
Information versus feelings
• A young man makes a brief phone call. His mother overhears it as a
series of grunts. Later she asks him about it - it emerges that he has
arranged to go to a specific place, where he will play football with
various people and he has to take the ball.
• Men focus on conveying information as quickly as possible
• A young woman makes a phone call - it lasts half an hour or more.
The mother asks about it - it emerges that she has been talking “you
know” “about stuff”. The conversation has been mostly groomingtalk and comment on feelings.
• Women focus on sharing emotions and elaborating on details
• Historically, men's concerns were seen as more important than
those of women, but today this situation may be reversed so that the
giving of information and brevity of speech are considered of less
value than sharing of emotions and elaboration.
Orders versus proposals
• Women often suggest that people do things in
indirect ways - “let's”, “why don't we?” or
“wouldn't it be good, if we...?”
• Men may use, and prefer to hear, a direct
imperative – ‘We’ll go to the Red Lion first then
get last orders in the Railway’
Conflict versus compromise
• “In trying to prevent fights,” writes Professor Tannen
“some women refuse to oppose the will of others openly.
But sometimes it's far more effective for a woman to
assert herself, even at the risk of conflict. ”
• This situation is easily observed in work-situations where
a management decision seems unattractive - men will
often resist it vocally, while women may appear to agree,
but go off and complain subsequently.
• Of course, this is a broad generalization - and for every
one of Deborah Tannen's oppositions, we will know of
men and women who are exceptions to the norm.
Jennifer Coates (1998)
• Sees women’s simultaneous talk as
supportive and cooperative
• Women use tag questions to interact
sensitively in conversations
Coates sees many features of women’s talk,
such as tag questions, as a means of
communicating sensitively and
appropriately, respecting the face needs of
the listener.
Language and Gender:
Language in use
Critiquing the difference and dominance
approaches
• Are all men and women ultimately the same? They’re
presented by the research as homogenous
categories – is this really true?
• Do men always have power in society? Don’t some
women have power too?
• Do boys and girls always socialise in single-sex
groups only? What happens when they interact?
• The research seems to find evidence for popular
stereotypes of men and women – is there anything
wrong with this? What other stereotypes might be
proved – or disproved?