Research On Gender

Deborah Cameron's Discursive model

• Men and women do not use language differently in any significant way
• It is the idea that you perform your gender: 'doing gender'
• "Your genes don't determine your jeans"

Dale Spender and Pamela Fishman
Dale Spender:

• Feminist scholar that wrote the book 'Man Made Language'
• "male superiority is a myth". "It is because males have had power that they have been in a position to construct the myth of male superiority and have it accepted."
• "language is our means of classifying and ordering the world: our means of manipulating reality"
• Does not agree with the semantic rule in language that male is the norm

Pamela Fishman:

• Focused on some of the features of women's language considered by Lakoff:

- Tag Questions : questions do not signal uncertainty or powerlessness, but are instead used by women as a means of keeping conversation going.

- Women use tag questions to gain conversational power; it is required when speaking to men as they often respond minimally.

- Experimented by recording conversations between American male-female couples. She found that women used tag questions when following a thought of suggestion.

• Differences in male and female language is explained in terms of expectations; men are more dominant because it is what is expected of them by society.
• Women have to do more of the 'conversational shitwork' because men are less concerned to do so.

O'Barr and Atkin's challenge to the deficit theory (1980)

• Suggested that there is no real difference in male and female language, but the situations that they were in result in different ways of which they use language.
• "Women's language or a Powerless Language" was the title of the book that they wrote.
• They studied the language of a courtroom and found women's language to be both powerful and assertive.
• Witnesses of both sexes used the features of Lakoff's 'female language'.
•  Their conclusion : "these traits are actually a 'powerless language' rather than the 'female language".

Mary Beard

• "Part of growing up as a man is learning to take control of public utterance and silence the female..."
• "The woman will speak and then wait for a response relevant to her argument. Then a man will intervene with 'what I was saying was...', with no relevance to what she has just said. It is as though the woman does not exist; men ignore her, dehumanize and silence her".
• "If a female takes on the stereotypes of 'male language', they are accused of 'barking' or 'yapping' (being 'bossy'). It is considered freakish as it is 'not of a woman's nature'".

Beattie

• Found that men and women interrupted more or less equally (men 34.1 average, women 33.8 average) - so men did interrupt more, but by a margin so slight that it was not significant.
• "The problem with this is that you might simply have one very voluble man in the study which has a disproportionate effect on the total".
• "Why do interruptions necessarily reflect dominance? Can interruptions not arise from other sources? Do some interruptions not reflect interest and involvement?"

John Gray

• The most common relationship problems between men and women are a result of fundamental psychological differences between the two sexes.
• Each sex is acclimated to it's own 'planet's' society and customs, but not to the others.
• Each sex can be understood in terms of distinct ways in which they respond to stress:

- Men 'retreat to their cave' to avoid the problem and forget about it,

- Women prefer to talk to someone and seek advice; even if it does not provide a solution.

• This can create conflict, as men retreat whereas women want to feel closer to someone.
• "Men are motivated when they feel needed while women are motivated when they feel cherished"
• "We are unique individuals with unique experiences"

Bibliography in notes.