Gender Theories

Deborah Tannen gender theories:
STATUS vs SUPPORT- men are more competitive and want to prevent others from dominating them whereas women seek support and are more consensus
INDEPENDENCE vs INTIMACY- women struggle to preserve intimacy unlike men who focus more on independence
ADVICE vs UNDERSTANDING- to a man a complaint is a challenge to find a solution, but to a women its something to be understood and supportive
INFORMATIVE vs FEELINGS - men are usually brief and to the point and women are emotional and talk about less important things like grooming
ORDERS vs PROPOSALS - women suggest things indirectly (e.g. let's or why dont..?) and men use a direct imperative
CONFLICT vs COMPROMISE - women try to prevent conflicts whereas men prefer to be direct
Robin Lakoff's gender theories:
Some of his basic assumptions about what marks the language of women;
-Women use more hedges in their language e.g. phrases like 'sort of' and 'kind of''
- We include more empty phrases in out language through the use of adjectives like 'lovely' and 'adorable'
- Women are more likely to overuse qualifiers
- Include more tag questions
- As well as indirect commands and requests
- Women also use direct quotations whereas men power phrase
- Females have special lexicon
- Use more 'wh' imperatives e.g. "why dont you open the door?"
- We include more intensifiers
- Women apologize more
- We lack a sense of humor as men are more likely to tell jokes and people laugh than females
Jennifer Coates and Deborah Jones gender theory:
They only look at female conversations
- HOUSE TALK: the exchange of information and resorces connected with a female role as an occupation
- SCANDAL: judging of the behavior of others, women in particular, in terms of domestic morality
- BITCHING: anger at their restricted role and inferior status they want only to make their complaints in that environment to be understood and not necessarily acted upon
- CHATTING: the most intimate form of gossip
Bibliography:
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/gender.htm