An evaluate-style essay on whether men and women use different varieties of English. Includes the four models of gender theory so ideal for revising these in the gender and language topic of paper 2 (Language Diversity and Change) for AQA English Language.
Evaluate the idea that women and men speak different varieties of English
For centuries, language and gender has been studied, with men’s language being seen as the
standard language and with women’s linguistic differences being seen as deviating from the norm of
men’s language. This research suggests bias towards men as we live in a patriarchy, in which men
hold the power and, seemingly, the linguistic influence and power. The linguist Otto Jespersen
declared in 1922 that “there is a danger of the language becoming vague and insipid if we are to
content ourselves with women’s expressions”. However, more recently, it has been debated
whether women’s language is in fact weaker, or whether society perceives it as weak because of
their view of women.
Otto Jespersen’s idea that women’s language is deficient was supported by Robin Lakoff (1975). Her
article “Woman’s language” set out her basic assumptions about women’s language and why the
features she mentions makes it weaker. She claimed women use more hedges such as “sort of” and
tag questions which lack certainty and hence create a sense of weakness. Other features of women’s
language that she wrote about were hypercorrect grammar, empty adjectives such as “divine”,
indirect requests and more intensifiers than men use such as “so” and “very”. Criticisms of this
“Deficit model” would say that the research is not only outdated but also based on one woman’s
assumptions and stereotypes of women. Also, research conducted by O’Barr and Atkins in
courtroom cases found that weak “women’s” language was used by both sexes, depending on the
level of power and courtroom experience, arguing these language traits are actually “powerless
language” rather than “female language”. The idea that “divine” is an empty adjective in contrast to
“cool” and “neat” which were used by men could also suggest that the model sees women’s
language as weak purely because women use it, as this vocabulary is arguably more advanced than
“cool”. In addition, whilst some research agreed that women use more tag questions, for example,
the reason behind it was not that women are deficient or weak. Pamela Fishman 1980 recorded 52
hours of conversation between young American couples and found women used three times as
many tag questions as men, however for a different reason. She suggests tag questions were not
used out of uncertainty but as a way to keep the conversation going, known as the “conversational
shitwork”. Ultimately the features of language Lakoff suggested women use are not backed by any
real evidence when she came to her conclusions, and times have changed in terms of women’s place
in society so her theory could be considered less relevant.
Another theory about differences in men and women’s language is the “Dominance model” which
blames the patriarchy for women’s linguistic differences and focuses on men’s dominance in speech
due to a sexist view of the world. One of the features of men’s dominant language is interruptions
during mix-sexed conversations, and Zimmerman and West conducted a study on this in 1975, in
which the subjects were white, middle class and under 35. They found that in 11 conversations, men
used 46 interruptions and women used just 2. They concluded that the more prominent use of
interruptions were men attempting to dominate in conversation. In support of this was Pamela
Fishman who partially agreed with Lakoff over the prominence of tag questions in women’s
language but suggested that men’s reluctance to do the aforementioned “conversational shitwork”
is due to their perceived dominant role. On the other hand, Zimmerman and West’s study has been
criticised as outdated and potentially unrepresentative due to the small, limited sample size. Other
factors weren’t considered such as Beattie’s (1982) point: “the problem with this is that you might
simply have one very voluble man in the study which has a disproportionate effect on the total”. In
fact, his research showed that women and men interrupted with similar frequency however people
do not quote his findings as much, so perhaps people are looking for differences between men and
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