Holmes, J. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. (Harlow: Pearson Education Limited, 2008) third edition [ISBN 9781405821315] Chapter 7: ‘Gender and age’; Chapter 12: ‘Gender, politeness and stereotypes’.
Pichler, P. and S. Preece ‘Language and gender’ (Chapter 5) in Mooney et al. Language, Society and Power: An Introduction. (New York: Routledge, 2010) third edition [ISBN 9780415576598].
Cameron, D. ‘Performing gender identity: young men’s talk and the construction of heterosexual masculinity’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.250–62.
Coates, J. ‘Gossip revisited: language in all-female groups’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp. 236–49.
Coates, J. Women, Men and Language. (London: Longman, 2004) third edition [ISBN 9780582771864].
Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279].
Montgomery, M. An Introduction to Language and Society. (London: Routledge, 2008) Chapter 8: ‘Language and gender'
[ISBN 9780415382748].
Meyerhoff, M. Introducing Sociolinguistics.(Abingdon: Routledge, 2011) second edition [ISBN 0415550068] Chapter 10: ‘Gender’.
Talbot, M. Language and Gender. (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2010) second edition [ISBN 9780745646053].
Bucholtz, M. and K. Hall ‘Theorizing identity in language and sexuality research’, Language in Society, 2004, 33, pp. 469–515.
Cameron, D. (ed.) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. (London: Routledge, 1998) second edition [ISBN 0415164001].
Coates, J. Women Talk: Conversation between Women Friends. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1996) [ISBN 9780631195955].
Coates, J. Men Talk. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) [ISBN 9780631220466].
DeFrancisco, V. ‘The sounds of silence: how men silence women in marital relations’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition
[ISBN 1405191279] pp.153–60.
Eckert, P. ‘Gender and sociolinguistic variation’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.57–66.
Eckert, P. and S. McConnell-Ginet ‘Communities of practice: where language, gender, and power all live’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.573–82.
Edelsky, C. ‘Who’s got the floor?’ in Tannen, Deborah (ed.) Gender and Conversational Interaction.(Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993)
[ISBN 0195081943] pp.189–226.
Fishman, P. ‘Interactional Shitwork’, Heresies, 1980, 2, pp. 99–101.
Fishman, P. ‘Conversational insecurity’ in Cameron, D. (ed.) The Feminist Critique of Language. (London: Routledge, 1988) second edition
[ISBN 0415164001] pp.253–58.
Fishman, P. ‘Interaction: the work that women do’ in Thorne, B. and N. Kramarae Henley (eds) Language, Gender and Society. (Rowley, MA: Newbury House, 1983) [ISBN 088377268X] pp. 89–101.
Gray, J. Men Are from Mars, Women Are from Venus: How to Get What You Want in Your Relationships. (Harper Element, 2002) [ISBN 0007152590].
Goodwin, M.H. ‘Cooperation and Competition across Girls’ Play Activities’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp. 89–111.
Herring, S., D.A. Johnson and T. DiBenedetto ‘Participation in electronic discourse in a “feminist” field’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.171–82.
Holmes, J. ‘Women’s talk in public contexts’, Discourse and Society, 1992, 3 (2), pp.131–50.
Holmes, J. Women, Men and Politeness. (London: Longman, 1995)
[ISBN 0582063612].
Holmes, J. Gendered Talk at Work. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2006)
[ISBN 9781405117593].
Holmes, J. ‘Men, masculinities and leadership: different discourse styles at work’ in Pichler, P. and E. Eppler (eds) Gender and Spoken Interaction. (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009) [ISBN 9780230574021] pp.186–210.
Holmes, J. and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2003) [ISBN 063122503X].
Jespersen, O. ‘The woman’ in Cameron, D. (ed.) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader.( London: Routledge, 1998) [ISBN 0415164001] pp.225–41.
Johnson, S. and U. Meinhof (eds) Language and Masculinity. (Oxford: Blackwell, 1997) [ISBN 0631197680].
Kiesling, S.‘Playing the straight man: displaying and maintaining male heterosexuality in discourse’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.275–86.
Labov, W. The Social Stratification of English in New York City. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011) [ISBN 9780521528054].
Preisler, B. Linguistic Sex Roles in Conversation. (Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter, 1986) [ISBN 0899252257].
Lakoff, R. Extract from ‘Language and woman’s place’ in Cameron, D. (ed.) The Feminist Critique of Language: A Reader. (London: Routledge, 1998) second revised edition [ISBN 0415164001] pp.242–52.
Lakoff, R. Language and Woman’s Place: Text and Commentaries. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004) second revised edition
[ISBN 9780195167573].
Maltz, D.N. and R.A. Borker ‘A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition
[ISBN 1405191279] pp.487–502.
Mendoza-Denton, N. Home Girls: Language and Cultural Practices among Latina Youth Gangs. (London: Wiley-Blackwell, 2008)
[ISBN 9780631234906].
Pichler, P. Talking Young Femininities. (London: Palgrave, 2009)
[ISBN 9780230013285].
Pichler, P. ‘Hybrid or in between cultures: traditions of marriage in a group of British Bangladeshi girls’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.236–49.
Romaine, Suzanne ‘Variation in language and gender’ in Holmes, J. and M. Meyerhoff (eds) The Handbook of Language and Gender. (Oxford: Blackwell, 2003) [ISBN 063122503X] pp.98–118.
Spender, D. Man Made Language. (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1980) [ISBN 9780710006752].
Shaw, S. ‘Governed by the rules? The female voice in parliamentary debates’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.300–14.
Swann, J. ‘Talk control: an illustration from the classroom of problems in analysing male dominance in conversation’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.161–70.
Tannen, D. You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. (London: Virago Press, 1992) [ISBN 1853814717].
Tannen, D. ‘Asymmetries: women and men talking at cross-purposes’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.503–17.
Trudgill, P. ‘Sex and covert prestige’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.20–26.
Trudgill, P. The Social Differentiation of English in Norwich. (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) [ISBN 97800521202647].
West, C. and D.H. Zimmerman ‘Women’s place in everyday talk’ in Coates, J. and P. Pichler (eds) Language and Gender: A Reader. (Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell, 2011) second edition [ISBN 1405191279] pp.143–52.
Zimmerman, D.H. and C. West ‘Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation’ in Thorne, B. and N. Henley (eds) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. (Rowley, MT: Newbury House, 1975)
[ISBN 9780883770436] pp.105–29.
In this chapter, we consider how language interacts with another social variable, that of gender. Researchers have studied language and gender from a number of angles. For example, do women and men speak differently and if they do, how does this manifest itself? And do women and men speak differently in single sex and mixed sex groups? Some researchers look at attitudes to and perceptions of women’s language and men’s language. In other studies the concept of linguistic sexism is explored.
In this chapter we shall begin by thinking about the terms ‘sex’ and ‘gender’ and the differences between them. Next we will go on to consider stereotypes and folklinguistic beliefs about language and gender, before considering empirical research on gender differences in language use and the question of how language use of women and men varies across cultures. Finally, we will outline the theoretical models that researchers have put forward to explain differences in the way women and men speak. There is a section about linguistic sexism in Chapter 7 which deals with language, thought and representation.
Within linguistics ‘gender’ is a grammatical category, but it is also a social category. Gender is socially and culturally constructed; sex is biologically constructed. This quote from Martin Montgomery highlights the distinction:
Arriving at any social gathering we identify those already present in various ways – as strangers or friends, as young or old, and as male and female. We make these judgements continuously, if unconsciously, in most social settings. We may typify others...as male and female partly on the basis of physiological and anatomical cues (e.g. this person looks pregnant, that person has a beard); but our typifications are primarily informed by our tacit knowledge of the codes of social behaviour appropriate to the sexes – particularly the codes of dress and demeanour…The genetic code may determine our sex; but social codes provide us with a repertoire of behaviour which defines our gender.
(Montgomery, 2008, pp.173–74)
Activity
Think of a film which features a man pretending to be a woman or a woman pretending to be a man. For example, you could do some research on the internet on Dustin Hoffman’s role in the 1980s film Tootsie. Then consider which social cues, including dress code, behaviour patterns and linguistic features these actors use for their (stereotypical) performance of gender.
Folklinguistic beliefs describe stereotypical or popular views about language. These are a little like proverbs, or sayings and beliefs we acquire from our community or culture. They are based on anecdotal evidence and many people believe them to be true. An example might be the belief or idea that women gossip more than men, or that men swear more than women. To begin with we can travel as far back as 1922, to consider the work of Otto Jespersen, a Danish professor of English Language. He wrote a chapter called: ‘The Woman’ in his book, Language: Its Nature, Development and Origin, in which he describes women and the language that they use in what we would now consider to be a sexist and outdated way.
Deborah Cameron (1998, p.216), who included Jespersen’s chapter in her collection The Feminist Critique of Language, states in her introduction to this chapter that Jespersen is cited by many early feminists in their discussions to ‘stand[..] for a whole discussion of patronizing and sexist commentary by male linguists before [the advent of] feminism’. We list below some of the features and views that Jespersen discussed:
For a critical discussion of this list as well as of other stereotypes and folklinguistic beliefs about language and gender, read Coates (2004, Chapter 2) and Talbot (2010, Chapter 3).
If we now fast-forward around 50 years or so, to 1975, we can consider a paper written by Robin Lakoff, entitled Language and Woman´s place in which she listed a range of features she described as typical of the language women used. Her approach to women’s language has often been described as the deficit approach because the language that women use (or that they supposedly use) is seen as weak. As Coates (2004, p.6) says, this type of approach implies that there is something wrong with the way women speak and they should speak more like men to be taken seriously; it presents a view of women’s language as powerless language.
The other major point about Robin Lakoff’s work is that it was not informed by any empirical evidence; that is, by actual research that she carried out. Instead her claims about ‘women’s language’ are based on her own observations and intuitions. Nevertheless, her work remains highly important as she pioneered sociolinguistic interest in language and gender, and as Lakoff, as a feminist, was actually concerned about what she saw as the powerlessness of women. Lakoff triggered a wide range of empirical research that set out to investigate her claims, usually with the help of recorded and transcribed conversations. Here are some features, which according to Lakoff, are part of the way women speak (see Lakoff 2004, 2011):
If you would like to read more about Lakoff’s claims, see Holmes (2008, Chapter 12), Talbot (2010, Chapter 3), or Coates (2004, Chapter 2).
Lakoff believed that these differences arose because of the way women and men were socialised from childhood and the resulting consequence was that women had no access to power.
[.. .] the overall effect of ‘women’s language’ […] is this: it submerges a woman’s personal identity, by denying her the means of expressing herself strongly, on the one hand, and encouraging expressions that suggest triviality in subject matter and uncertainty about it […] The ultimate effect of these discrepancies is that women are systematically denied access to power.
(Lakoff, 1975, pp.243–44 in Cameron, 1998)
Activity
Think about the characteristics attributed to women’s speech by Jespersen and Lakoff. How is women’s speech portrayed by these scholars? What does this portrayal tell us about attitudes to women’s way of speaking (and perhaps attitudes to women themselves)? Are these attitudes still prevalent in the society in which you live? If so, which ones and (why) does it matter?
A criticism of Lakoff’s work is that she assumes a given language feature will have only one function. This is not the case. For example, tag questions, such as ‘isn’t it’, ‘don’t you’ can be used for a variety of reasons and do not always signal tentativeness and uncertainty. Tag questions are structures where one or more than one word is tagged onto a sentence or utterance to turn it into a question. Often the tag reverses the polarity of the main clause, as the examples below demonstrate. Although some aspects of Lakoff’s work suggest that she is aware of the ‘multi-functionality’ of tag questions, she nevertheless expresses a concern that women use tags more than men and that this suggests to others that women are less sure of themselves. Subsequent language and gender research has demonstrated that it is important to differentiate between the different functions of linguistic devices such as tag questions.
For example, Holmes (1984) distinguishes between modal tags, i.e. those which show the speakers' (lack of) certainty towards what they are expressing, and affective tags, which can be facilitative, and tags which soften the force of something. Here are some examples (see Holmes, 1984, in Coates, 2004, p.54 for further reading):
Modal tag:
It’s your auntie’s birthday tomorrow, isn’t it? (husband to wife)
Facilitative tag:
The cow likes to eat grass, doesn’t she? (teacher to pupil)
Softening tag:
You did not want to hurt your sister, did you? (mother to child)
Activity
Consider the different functions of the above examples of tag questions. In which of the above examples is the speaker unsure of him/herself because he/she is missing information? In which other ways are tag questions used in the other examples? Is there any other information that would be necessary to determine the function of these tag questions?
Many of the stereotypical views people have about women’s and men’s ways of using language refer to their conversational practices; for example, to the use of tag questions and modal verbs, to the amount of talk, levels of politeness and (in)directness. However, a couple of the features cited by Jespersen and Lakoff hint at stereotypes about gendered use of grammatical and pronunciation features. Before we turn to consider the findings of empirical research on conversational features, which constitute the main focus of this guide as well as of subsequent language and gender research, we will briefly consider some of the findings on women’s and men’s use of syntactical, morphological and phonological features, which are at the core of variationist studies.
In this section we will consider so-called variationist sociolinguistic research which investigates the relationship between specific grammatical and pronunciation features of language and social ‘variables’ such as social class or gender. Traditional variationist studies show that the use of standard grammar and pronunciation does not only vary according to social class and the formality of a speech situation, but also according to gender, or ‘sex’, as this was the term used at the time (Labov, 2011; Trudgill, 1974, 2011). Moreover, several of these variables interact with one another. For example, Peter Trudgill (1974) showed that speakers who were most likely to use non-standard pronunciation (for example, ‘walkin’, ‘laughin’) were working class men, whereas women from middle class backgrounds were most likely to use standard pronunciation (‘walking’, ‘laughing’).
Activity
In order to gain a more in-depth and extensive understanding of variationist studies of language and gender read Chapters 4 and 5 in Coates (2004) and/or Chapter 2 in Talbot (2010). For further reading you can also turn to Chapter 10 in Meyerhoff (2011). What evidence is there in these chapters to confirm or challenge the claim that women tend to use more standard grammatical or pronunciation features than men?
There are various explanations that tend to be offered for women’s more frequent use of standard features of grammar and pronunciation. One explanation is that women are more status-conscious and because of this they tend to use the more prestigious varieties. Many women still do not have the same status as men so the use of standard language becomes an important means to acquire status. According to another explanation many women aim for overt prestige in the form of standard language as this allows them to present themselves as traditionally feminine, and many men for so-called covert prestige in the form of vernacular or non-standard language forms as this allows them to index toughness and masculinity. A third explanation points to women’s social roles as caregivers in society; as mothers, they model how children should speak and behave.
Activity
Read the section on ‘Explanations of women’s linguistic behaviour’ in Holmes (2008, pp. 164–73) (see Essential reading) and carefully consider the explanations offered for the linguistic behaviour of women. Do you find some of these explanations more convincing than others, and if so, why?
Newer variationist studies have often reiterated the finding that women use more standard forms (e.g. Nordberg and Sundgreen, 1999 in Romaine, 2003), although others have pointed out that the picture is more complex and that we have to look at other factors that interact with gender, depending on the type of ‘networks’ (Milroy, 1980) or ‘Communities of Practice’ (Eckert, 2011; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 2011) that speakers belong to. For example, Penelope Eckert’s now famous study of two US high school Communities of Practice (CofPs) shows that linguistic choices made by students are not only due to gender. The Jocks, who identify with school values and orient to middle classness, and the Burnouts, who resist school and middle-class norms, use both linguistic and non-linguistic resources to signal their group membership, with the former group frequently orienting to more standard forms than the latter. Interestingly, however, Eckert shows that Burnout girls can even outdo Burnout boys in their use of non-standard features, as the girls have to rely on the symbolic capital of their language choices to signal their toughness, whereas the boys can and do rely on actual physical displays of toughness such as street fighting. So gender here interacts with the local identities of Jocks and Burnouts. This, more flexible view of gender as something being constructed in specific local contexts (such as US high schools) will be discussed in more detail in the final section of this chapter.
Lakoff’s and Jesperson’s lists which we discussed above capture many claims about the differences between how women and men are said to conduct conversations. But these have, in recent decades, been the targets of research by scholars interested in discovering what women and men actually do when they speak to one another, either in same-sex groups or in mixed-sex groups.
Let’s first consider the claim that women talk more (verbosity). Victoria DeFrancisco (2011) studied married couples at home. She asked seven married couples to record themselves at home and subsequently interviewed each partner on their own. She found that women did talk more. However, this was not because they were more dominant or because they were simply chatting away aimlessly. Often, they tried to introduce new topics to keep the conversation going but they were not always successful in getting these goals realised. This showed that women were doing a lot of what Pamela Fishman (1980; see also 1983) had called ‘interactional shitwork’. So on the one hand, we can say, yes they did talk more, but their partner’s non-cooperative strategies meant the men achieved conversational dominance.
In public or institutional contexts, such as during school lessons, staff meetings, television panel discussions and mock jury deliberations the situation appears to be reversed and men have frequently been found to talk more (see also Coates, 2004, p.117 for a summary). For example, Joan Swann (2011) found that boys take more turns than girls in the classroom. In a task that was set up involving a pendulum, the boys chipped in more than the girls. Boys were also selected to talk by the teacher more often than girls because the teacher was looking more often towards the boys when asking a question. This showed that the conversational dominance (see below) was co-constructed by boys and the teachers alike. In other research, Dale Spender (1980) found that at academic seminars, women took the floor only 30 per cent of the time (see also Holmes, 1992). Spender’s research, however, was published in 1980 and it would be interesting to see if women take the floor more substantially in these contexts some thirty years later. In a more recent study, conducted in the brave new world of electronic communication, Susan Herring and her colleagues (2011) undertook an investigation of a small, more woman-friendly email discussion list, to see whether patterns of interaction were symmetrical or not; that is, to see if women and men made an equal number of contributions. But they found that women still only contributed 30 per cent of the discussion. However, during the five weeks of discussion chosen for analysis, there were two days when women’s contributions exceeded men’s. As Coates and Pichler (2011, p.140) describe it: ‘The resulting disruption, with men claiming they were being ‘silenced’ and threatening to ‘unsubscribe’ from the network, suggests that there is an underlying cultural assumption that women and men do not have equal rights to speak’.
Another conversational feature that is discussed frequently in language and gender research, particularly in studies investigating mixed-sex interaction, is interruptions. The most famous and now classic studies on interruptions were conducted by Zimmerman and West (1975) and West and Zimmerman (2011). They studied both acquainted and unacquainted students in coffee bars, shops and other public places. In same-sex interactions, the interruption rates were similar, but in mixed sex interactions, the interruption rates were far higher. It was men who interrupted the majority of the time, which led Zimmerman and West to conclude that men exert conversational dominance.
When conducting research on whether people wait their turn in conversations or whether they don’t it is important to differentiate between real interruptions (intended to disrupt and/or take over from the previous speaker before he or she has finished) and simultaneous talk which is intended to support the flow of the current speaker. For example, in same-sex talk, research by Coates (1996; 2011) has found that women produce a lot of highly supportive simultaneous talk which cannot be classified as an interruption. This includes minimal responses such as ‘mhm’, and ‘yes’ (see below) as well as longer instances of simultaneous speech during which women are looking for the same word together or make comments or ask questions which show their interest in what the speaker has to say without wanting to take over. This type of simultaneous speech is not an interruption but it is a way of showing cooperation and collaboration between speakers. There is some evidence that women are more happy with this type of non-disruptive simultaneous speech than men (see Coates, 2004; Edelsky, 1993). For examples of interruptions as well as collaborative simultaneous talk see Pichler and Preece (2011, section 3.1.2 ‘Turn taking and interruptions’).
Another conversational feature that has been discussed frequently, particularly by researchers interested in the conversational work that is done by speakers, is minimal responses. There is plenty of evidence that minimal responses are used more by women than by men (Fishman, 1983; DeFrancisco, 1991; Holmes, 1995; Preisler, 1986). This research shows that women use minimal responses as a type of support work to encourage their interlocutor’s development of topics. As we explained above, Fishman refers to the work that women do in this respect as ‘interactional shitwork’, it describes the division of labour in conversation which supports women and men’s power and powerlessness (Coates, 2004, p.88). Some scholars have argued that when men use minimal responses they frequently delay them or they use them to signal agreement with what the speaker is saying rather than simply signalling attentive listening (DeFrancisco, 1991; Maltz and Borker, 1982; Tannen, 1992). However, Reid-Thomas (1993, cited in Cameron, 2001, p.118) finds no such gender difference in the use and interpretation of minimal responses in her own data, suggesting that minimal responses serve different functions, depending on the context in which they are used.
As we already pointed out above, it is important to remember that the conversational features that have been studied by language and gender scholars, such as simultaneous talk, minimal responses or hedges (such as ‘well’, ‘sort of’, ‘perhaps’, ‘I think’) or tag questions such as ‘isn’t it’, ‘aren’t we’ (see above), can perform multiple functions. It is therefore problematic to claim that people who speak at the same times as others are always dominant or that people who use hedges or tag questions are always uncertain of what they are saying. For example, Coates' (2004, pp.88–92) summary of language and gender research shows that hedges are used by women more to negotiate sensitive topics and to encourage others to join in and that women use tag questions more in their facilitative function, which is also intended to encourage contributions by others.
Activity
There are many other conversational features that have been studied by language and gender scholars. These include questions, commands and directives, swearing and taboo language, compliments and other politeness features. Some of the findings confirmed stereotypical views of women and men’s conversational practice, but many others either contradict stereotypes or offer a much more complex picture. Consult your essential and further reading to find out more about these features and if (or in what way) they are used differently by women and men.
There are several ways of explaining gender differences in language use, and studies of language and gender make use of three main theories to explain these differences. One is the dominance model, which argues that conversation reflects and reinforces social power asymmetry between the sexes. Research aligning itself with this model shows that male speakers more than women tend to draw on a range of non-cooperative strategies to control conversation: no-response, interruption, inadequate or delayed response, and silence (see Coates, 2004). This manifests itself in the marital home, at work, in meetings, in the classroom and even in Parliament (see, for example, Zimmerman and West, 1975; DeFrancisco, 2011; Holmes, 1995; Swann, 2011; Shaw, 2011). For example, when Zimmerman and West (1975) observe that women are interrupted systematically by their partners in mixed-sex interaction they argue that this is due to the fact that men dominate women in these private interactions just as much as in society at large. Although few researchers have explicitly aligned themselves with the dominance model since the 1980s, considerations about male conversational/societal dominance remain highly relevant, as for example Sylvia Shaw’s 2011 study of Parliamentary Debates in the British House of Commons shows (see further reading).
The difference model does not present men as oppressors and women as victims of their inferior social position, which is why many popular books are attracted to this model. It suggests that boys and girls are socialised into different verbal and non-verbal behaviours as they tend to interact with one another mainly in same-sex groups in childhood. Whereas boys are said to interact more in hierarchical groups which require competitive (verbal) behaviour, girls are said to interact more in egalitarian groups which require more collaboration. Women’s and men’s informal conversational behaviour is attributed to these early socialisation processes. Consequently they are supposed to use language differently; for example, make their requests more bluntly in the case of men, or in a more mitigated way in the case of women. These gender differences in conversational style are also said to be the reason for conversational misunderstandings between women and men. For example, Maltz and Borker (2011) argue that for women minimal responses indicate they are following the conversation; for males they indicate that they agree with what is being said (but see previous section on minimal responses for counter-evidence). All explanatory models have been critiqued in some ways, but the most popular accounts of the difference model, including John Gray’s infamous Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus, as well as linguist Deborah Tannen’s popular You Just Don’t Understand (1992; see also Tannen, 2011), have received particularly fierce criticism, mainly because they gloss over issues of power and status which many feminist linguists consider to remain highly relevant for mixed-sex interaction. However, another consequence of the difference approach was a move away from research into mixed-sex interaction and a surge in interest in research on all-female and all-male talk (see for example Coates, 1996, 2003, 2011; Pichler, 2009; Johnson and Meinhof, 1997; Kiesling, 2011). Note, however, that many of these more recent publications would not align themselves with the ‘difference paradigm’ but instead with the social constructionist approach which we shall turn to next.
The social constructionist approach to language and gender has dominated research and theory, particularly in the last couple of decades.
The social constructionist model to language and gender:
This approach, which can also be referred to as ‘postmodern’, ‘performative’ or ‘dynamic’, opposes essentialist approaches to language and gender; that is, claims that all women speak in one way and men in another. It challenges the dichotomy of women’s speech as collaborative and men’s as competitive, pointing to many examples which show that women can use competitive language strategies, and men can use linguistic features usually associated with women. For example, Deborah Cameron (2011) shows that men can gossip, and that they can also use features of conversational support. Marjorie Goodwin (2011) shows that although girls do use more mitigated ways of directing others to do something for them, they can also use very bold directives, the way boys do, whenever the context requires them to. Nevertheless, gender norms remain important for this approach – it argues that women and men speak the way they do not because they are women and men (biologically) but because they use language as a resource to present themselves as masculine and feminine. Thus, when a woman seeks to present herself as traditionally feminine she will avoid swearing, perhaps use more standard features of pronunciation and grammar and engage in a collaborative, mitigated conversational style. However, women can also present themselves in opposition to these gender norms, as for example the Burnout girls in Penelope Eckert’s (1995, 2011) research, who use many features of non-standard pronunciation to help them to construct themselves as tough and cool.
Postmodern theories on ‘identity’ are important to this approach not only because they highlight the agency (as well as dominant constraints on this agency) of speakers in accomplishing their identities in everyday interaction. That is, they say that we are not pre-determined to speak in a specific way because we are either men or women. Moreover, they also see that gender is only part of speakers’ identities, and other aspects of socio-cultural identity interact with gender, including the regional, cultural and social background of the speaker, their ethnicity, nationality, religion, age, sexual orientation and sexual identity (Bucholtz and Hall, 2004; Eckert and McConnell-Ginet, 1992; Pichler, 2009, 2011).
Situational roles and contextual identities are also important, as a woman may choose different linguistic strategies to present her identity differently depending on whether she is speaking as, or to, the boss at her workplace or to her partner, friends or children in a private context. It is, however, not all down to the individual. Not only because gender norms restrain this ‘choice’ as we have argued in the previous paragraph, but also because individuals are usually part of groups, or Communities of Practice, such as the Jocks and Burnouts in Eckert’s research, or such as the sports, music, reading, friendship or family groups that you would be a member of. Language and gender research in the last decades has investigated a wide range of context and Communities of Practice in which gender is being performed. These include British Members of Parliament (Shaw, 2011), teenage girls from a range of ethnic and social class backgrounds (Mendoza-Denton, 2008; Pichler, 2009) as well as US fraternity men groups (Kiesling, 2011) or male and female business leaders in New Zealand (Holmes, 2006, 2009).
These studies are not only interested in the grammatical, phonological and conversational features that we have discussed so far. They are also interested in discourses; that is, ways of using language that reflect and maintain ideologies. Some of these discourses are more traditional, but others draw on alternative or resistant ideologies, such as feminist discourses. The discourses speakers draw on and negotiate in their talk also constitute important resources for their construction of (gender) identities. For example, although Deborah Cameron’s (2011) study on male college students in the US found that men’s conversational strategies can be quite similar to women’s, she also found that the discourses they used; that is, the derogative ways they spoke about women and ‘gay’ men, allowed these college students to construct gender identities as red-blooded heterosexual males for themselves. A different example is provided by Pichler (2011), who investigates the talk of a group of British Bangladeshi girls and finds that they negotiate discourses of romantic love, sexual experience and arranged marriage in a way that their gender identities emerge as both British and Bangladeshi. These last examples by Cameron and Pichler also show how language and gender studies have been interested in the relationship between gender and sexuality in the last decade.
The social constructionist approach therefore highlights the multiplicity and heterogeneity of gender identities. As Jennifer Coates puts it:
...there is no single unified way of doing femininity, of being a woman. In the contemporary developed world, many different versions of femininity are available to us. More mainstream discourses position us in more conventional ways, while more radical or subversive discourses offer us alternative ways of being, alternative ways of doing femininity. We are unwittingly involved in the ceaseless struggle to define gender...
(1996, p.261)
After working through this chapter, and having done a substantial amount of reading on the topic as well as the activities, you should: