Deficit
Lakoff, 1975
Main features of women's language
-Hedges and fillers 'sort of' 'kind of'
-Empty adjectives 'divine' 'adorable'
-Super-polite forms 'would you mind'
-Apologise more
-Speak less frequently
-Avoid coarse language
-Tag questions
-Hyper correct grammar and pronunciation (women perceive language to be inspirational)
-Indirect requests : 'I'm so thirsty' - asking for a drink. (pragmatics)
-Speak in italics (use tone of voice to emphasis certain words)
Criticisms of Lakoff
-Since her work there has been a lot of changes between the genders.
- Her work lacks statistics
Jenny Chesire, 1983
(supports Lakoff's idea of 'hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation)
looked at certain grammatical variations in the speech of young children and found that boys used more non-standard English than girls.
Difference
(idea that women and men speak differently)
Deborah Tannen , 1990
-Identifies gender differences in terms of competitiveness (male) and co-operative (female).
"There are gender difference in ways of speaking and we need to identify and understand them"
Contrasts to differences
Status vs Support - men use language and dominance. Women are likely to support and agree.
Independence vs Intimacy - Men use language to show they don't need to rely on others. Women can connect with others.
Advice vs understanding
Information vs feelings
Orders vs Proposals
Conflict vs Compromise
