Neve's Language Blog: Gender Research in Halla's absence

John Grey's popular book 'Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus'

This book covers the idea that men and women diverge in the way they use language when communicating.

Most versions of the mars and venus myth cover these points:

Language and communication matters more to women than it does to men.

Women have better verbal skills than men.

The goals using language of men tend to be about getting things done. However women's are more about making connections to other people.

Men talk about facts and material things. Whereas women talk about feelings, people and relationships.

Men have a competitive use of language and women have a cooperative use of language.

Men and women tend to miscommunicate because of these differences in their use of language.

The book 'Man are from mars and women are from venus' comes across as patronising to men making them seem like emotionless bullies. This book seems to mostly cover old fashioned views of both sexes which can be proven wrong easily in this day and age.

O'Barr and Atkins's challenge to deficit theory

Known for developing the theory that language differences are situation-specific,William O’Barr and Bowman Atkins said that rather than gender the way people speak relies on who has the authority and power in a conversation.O’Barr and Atkins studied courtroom cases for 30 months, examining a broad spectrum of witnesses for the ten basic speech differences between men and women that Lakoff proposed.

The 'women’s language' according to Lakoff consisted of; super-polite forms, apologising more, avoiding coarse language or expletives, speaking less frequently, hedges, empty adjectives, tag questions, hyper-correct grammar and punctuation, indirect requests and using tone to emphasise some words (usually at the end of a statement).

However when O'Barr and Atkins carried out a study of three men and three women they concluded that the speech patterns were “neither characteristic of all women, nor limited to only women”, proving Lakoff's theory wrong and supporting theirs.

The effect of written and computer-mediated forms on gendered language

This topic discusses gender differences in the use of computer-mediated communication (CMC) and written forms. In this study it was confirmed that gender related stereotypical patterns do exist in virtual environments as they do in face-to-face environments.

Overall 321 independent effects were taken from 50 studies involving a total of 63889 users investigating gender differences in the use of computer-mediated communication. On average, female users had a much higher frequency of collaborative situations using computer mediated communication than males. And men used more authoritative statements, supporting Lakoff's theories on gender influencing language.

Beattie's challenge to Zimmerman and West

Geoffrey Beattie claims to have recorded 557 interruptions in around 10 hours of discussion (compared with Zimmerman and West recording 55). Beattie found that women and men interrupted

an equal ammount (men 34.1, women 33.8) – showing men did interrupt more, but not a statistically significant amount to back up Zimmerman and West's theories.

Dale Spender and Pamela Fishman challenge theories

Dale Spender advocates a reforming view of language ideas that sustain male power. She refers to the theories of Zimmerman and West, the view of the male as norm, she gives her own viewpoint on their work. She claims that it is especially difficult to challenge this power system, since the way that we think of the world reinforces the idea of male power.

Pamela Fishman argues in 'Interaction: the Work Women Do' (1983) that conversation between the opposite sexes sometimes fails, not because of differences in the way women talk, but because of how men respond in conversation, or don’t respond.
Also Fishman questions Robin Lakoff’s theories. 'In Conversational Insecurity (1990)' Lakoff suggests that asking questions shows insecurity and hesitancy in the way women communicate, Fishman however says that Women ask questions because of the power of using them as they are an attribute of interactions. Fishman also claims that men speak on average for twice as long as women in mixed-sex language interactions, dismissing Lakoff's theories.

Mary Beard's ideas about women's voices not being valued

Mary Beard discusses how women aren't perceived to be as powerful as men because of the way we have always valued men's opinions more throughout generations. She said ''as listeners we hear a female voice, we don't hear a voice that connotes authority; or rather we haven't learned how to hear authority in it''. She speaks about how we can not move away from this old fashioned way of thinking until people begin to realise that we see the female voice this way because of our history and the views passed down. Beard mentioned in an interview that if women aim to work in/ talk about a traditionally male role abuse will soon come and it's not what the woman would have said it's the fact that she said it.