Language and Gender - Research

Morning all,

Today you will be conducting some research and using/interpreting data to help you plan a response to a language and gender question. Please read everything carefully; it may seem like really complex work, but if you know the theories we looked at on Monday, you'll have no real issues.

Click here to access the PowerPoint from Monday, and use your booklets to remind yourself of Robin Lakoff's work.

Task 1

Click here to research Pamela Fishman's response to Robin Lakoff's Deficit Model, and Jenny Cheshire's study, and make notes. There is space in your booklet to do this.

Task 2

Use the data below to write 6 statements. This is your interpretation and analysis of the raw data.

I.e. 'on average men have more terms per meeting than women' or 'Woman D has more turns than Man D.'

Task 3

How can each of the theorists we have looked at be applied to this data, or the statement? Does the data prove or disprove that particular theorist?

• O'Barr & Atkins
• Geoffrey Beattie
• Zimmerman & West
• Pamela Fishman
• Robin Lakoff
• Dale Spender

Task 4:

Which 3 theorists would be most relevant when talking about this below. Explain why.

Challenge Task
This may seem like complex work, however it is really easy to use theories in a language essay and apply them to linguistic analysis. You will always get a text or question which has really obvious links to gender and identifies some sort of stereotype. You can discuss the theories when there is a stereotype, and also when there is a challenge to stereotype. Read the paragraph below which is taken from a gender essay about this data. Use this paragraph to write your own:

"When looking at the data in Table 1, it is clear to see that there are some differences between the men and women at the meeting in terms of how many and how long their turns are. This would certainly fit with Lakoffs ideas about difference between the sexes. However, there are also interesting figures that suggest that it’s not as simple as saying that all men get more and longer turns than women. For example, Woman D gets 20.5 average turns per meeting which is more than two of the men. Also, while Woman D is clearly interrupted most in the data, Men F,G and H are interrupted frequently too, suggesting that it might not just be gender that is a factor here. The Dominance theory focuses more on men’s speech rather than women’s and how they are different. The dominance model found that men interrupted and dominated conversations more than women and this is a sign of dominance over women. However looking at the results in the table, the figures may prove otherwise. Given that the men did the most interrupting helps to support the dominance theory, but when we see that the men were also most interrupted on average then it seems as though the men are just interrupting each other rather than interrupting the women and showing dominance over them."


Lots of work to do today, so if you have any questions, let me know!