Hall, Kira. “Exceptional Speakers: Contested and Problematized Gender Identities.” The Handbook of
Language and Gender. Eds. Janet Holmes and Miriam Meyerhoff. Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2003.
353-380.
Introduction
• “linguistic deviant” = fails to follow normative expectations of how men and women should speak (353)
• dominance model = women’s divergent speech patterns as a byproduct of male dominance
• difference/two-cultures model = children are socialized into divergent interactional patterns within singlesex playgroups
• concept of the deviant “ethnic”
• queer linguistics
• thesis = “the concept of non-normative gender … is nevertheless foundational to the major theoretical
perspectives that have developed within the field of language and gender.” (354)
Chapter 2: Footnote Effeminates and Feminists:
• “footnote deviance” = don’t play by the linguistic rules (355)
• concept of “women’s language” and “men’s language” as two separate languages  creates a linguistic
divide
• “linguistic exoticism” as a result of different languages  rigid gender roles defined.
• “sex-exclusive languages” – impression and rigidity and coercion
• “sex-preferential languages” involves fluidity and choice.
• language as a “tool of sex dominance” (Furfey – 357)  oppressive nature of gender
• connection between effeminacy and powerlessness (357)
• social damage as a result of misusing language (357)
• representation of “the woman” as the linguistic Other (358)
• height of linguistic evolution = educated feminist  equality between the sexes (359)
Chapter 3
Two Types of Women’s language being deviant
• The idea that there is a man’s language and a woman’s language seen as the “norm” and “expected.”
• Two different types of language = men’s language is normative, the “unmarked” whereas women’s
language is deviant, the “marked.”
• The term “peculiar” becomes the most common descriptor for women’s speech in the literature of this
period (1920’s)
• Assumes male readership and supports the notion of women as a problematic gender
• A womans language can either be derivational and reductive meaning it came from a man’s language
• Conservative and archaic meaning it came before mans language
• The archaic language is not regarded as the foundation, as though men came along and said “well this
isn’t good enough we have to make it better” it’s regarded as “primitive”
Chapter 4: Hippies, Historians, and Homosexual
Dominance Model – focuses on how women’s speech patterns are trivialized or otherwise marginalized in a
male dominated society (362) ex:
• Women in Madagascar: women have a “preference for a more direct and confrontational speaking style
rather than the discursive strategies for avoiding direct confrontation.” (362)
• Men = norm-makers, women = norm-breakers
Although this study argues that women still adhere to the norm: “Their expected participation in more direct
forms of information finding, bargaining, and child scolding speaks to the strength and persistence of that
very norm.”  but the study argues the norm is deemed inferior to male norms.
Women have much in common with hippies, homosexuals, and academics because they are all
suppressed by institutionalized male power
Masculine workplace – men as the hunter, women as the gather, women excluded from workplace built on
“present-day reflexes of male-bonding”
Men are more likely to embrace Lackoff’s 3rd rule of politeness  camaraderie
The language patterns of hippies, homosexuals, and academics resemble American housewives
Power – the dominance hierarchy is based on this power – “They reinterpret their discussion of power as
being more about job status then about access to male work environments (or institutionalized masculinity),
opposing her claim with the finding that there is no difference in the speech of high-status male police
officers and low-status male police clerks” (365)
Section 5: Sissies and Tomboys:
 Compared Boys and Girls playgroups
 People shunned sissies and tomboys
 “The fact that girls do not enact sanctions against tomboy behavior in the same way that boys enact
sanctions against sissy behavior illustrates that boys’ groups are more cohesive, more conforming, more
gender-exclusionary: “clearly, an essential element in becoming masculine is becoming not-feminine,
white girls can be feminine without having to prove that they are not masculine” (1992: 52).
 Tomboy begins in the womb? – Biological factor as well as socialization factor.
 Linking gender identity and sexuality with one another.
 Used lesbian couples to demonstrate women’s discomfort with self-assertion.
 Gays and lesbians are subject to study, therefore have no opinion.
Section 6: Queers and the Rest of Us
In the last section of this chapter, Hall describes how “queer linguistics” go against the norms
heterosexuality has produced and perpetuated, and tries to bring them down to a smaller scale. She says
that what marks transgender speech as “distinctive” is the “mismatch” between performance and biology.
When a man perfroms as a woman, it is shocking to us because it goes against our biological make up
(physical). And what really stands out is the fact that it’s about the people who go against the norm, not
those who “affirm their biology.”
She then goes on to talk about how queer linguistics is not to make distinct the differences between men’s
and women’s language differs, or how queer and straight language differ, but to show how great humans
capacity for developing langauge in “particular contexts.” These gendered linguistics only appear in
interaction between different people and different contexts. Halls says that this is the way the studies need
to continue; the only way to progress is to look at linguistics in a way that separates them and differentiates
them according to context.