Language and Gender

Male and female speech
paper 2

language varieties
- with gender you will be given data- this could be a trascript, table of turn lengths, chart etc...
- respond to the data and tell all you know about the topic. This is a discursive essay.

Moving on...

Lakoff's deficit theory

In 1975 Robin Lakoff- a white, middle class woman a sample. Because of her ethnicity and social class and because of the time it was written, this was a very small sample so cannot apply to that many people. Lakoff came up with the deficit theory, this theory said a lot about the way women speak (from her small sample).

Lakoff said:
- women hedge more
- they are more polite
- they use more tag questions 'don't they?'
- they 'speak in italics'
- use empty adjectives such as 'cute' and 'adorable'
- they use more hypercorrect grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and clear enunciatiation
- they use more direct quotation 
- They have a special lexicon- women use words for colours, men for sport
- Women use intonation in declaritive statements to make things sound like a question
- They use 'wh' imperatives eg 'would you open the window'
- women generally speak less frequently
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