Paragraphs on Gender Theories

Tannen

Tannen’s ‘difference theory’ differs from Lakoff’s theory in a few was but has a lot of similar ideas, I would agree with many of her ideas such as ‘advice versus understanding’ however I would strongly challenge ‘status versus support’. ‘Advice versus understanding’ relates to the idea that men see complaints as a challenge however; women would prefer to just give sympathy. I would strongly agree with this point. However, my view might be affected by the fact that I am a male so would naturally be better suited to advice from another male whereas a female would only be able to give sympathy. The idea I disagree with is ‘status versus support’ I actually don’t agree with either of the sides of this argument; I think the idea of male dominance is out of date and therefore it solely depends on the personality of the participants even with stereotypes taken into account. The word ‘support’ (despite perhaps having more female connotations attached to it) does not apply in my opinion in the context in which Tannen describes it. She says that women look for a type of confirmation that what they’re saying is correct. Again this statement is extremely general and in my opinion untrue as a female who is confident in what they are saying would not seek support. It could be argued that it is in fact down to more dispositional factors.

Lakoff

Lakoff’s ‘deficit theory’ states many things that women do that men don’t (or do less of). Things such as the idea that women hedge more correlate with Tannen’s idea ‘order versus proposals’ as they both interpret the idea that women are not as direct as men. The idea that women have a special lexicon for colour is interesting and in my opinion, true. Women are stereotypically more creative and arty from birth and personally I think this is why they have a special lexicon for colour. Lakoff continues to say that women generally speak less. I don’t believe this to be true and I think she only found this because of the size, ethnicity and time at which she took her sample. If she did a bigger sample nowadays I believe this would not be the case. This is because now, women are looked at as being more equal than they once were.