Gender, politeness and stereotypesArmando Coronado Erendira Quiroz WOMEN´S LANGUAGE AND CONFIDENCE. Some social dialectologists suggested that women were status concious. Robin Lakoff suggested almost the opposite. Women were using language which reinforce their subordinate status. Social dialect research focussed on differences between women´s and men´s speech in the areas of pronunciation and morphology. Lakoff shifted the focus of research on gender differences to syntax, semantics and style. She suggested that women´s subordinate social status in American society is indicated by the language women use. Uh she was even sort of like a mother to me. had the heart been stopped.What was the nature of your acquaintance with the late Mrs. 2.• Example. Lawyer. D.It may leak down depending on the position of the body after death. “A” Uses features of what Lakoff labelled “women´s language”. we were. very close friends.And had the heart not been functioning. in other words. Lawyer. there would have been no blood to have come from that region? • Witness B.Well. uh. But the presence of blood in the alveoli indicates that some active respiratory action had to take place.? • Witness A. while “B” does not. 1. . E. Tag questions. 7. CHARMING. ISN´T SHE? 3.DIVINE. euphemisms. CUTE. 10. Precise colour terms.Indirect requests.YOU KNOW. Rising intonation on declaratives. . Lexical hedges or fillers. SO.IT WAS A BRILLIANT PERFORMANCE.JUST.MAGENTA. “Empty” adjectives. 4. 5. I LIKE HIM SO MUCH. “Superpolite” forms. WELL YOU SEE. SORT OF. 6. Speech was recorded in laboratory conditions with assigned topics.FUDGE. !Hypercorrect” grammar-CONSISTENT USE OF STANDARD VERB FORMS. 9.Emphatic stress.SHE IS VERY NICE.1. MY GOODNESS. Intensifiers. 8.IT´S REALLY GOOD. AQUAMARINE. FEATURES OF WOMEN´S LANGUAGE Most of this initial research was methodologically unsatisfactory. Avoindance of strong swear words. 2. THEY ARE QUESTIONS WHICH ARE SUBORDINATED FOR COMMANDS. • THE FINAL SYNTACTIC CATEGORY IS IMPERATIVE CONSTRUCTONS IN QUESTION FORM. WHICH ARE DEFINED AS ALTERNATIVES TO SIMPLE AND DIRECT WAYS OF ORDERING ACTIONS. No linguist would describe “will you please open the door?” as an imperative constructionn and the expression “imperative construction in question form” confuses form and function. “WILL YOU PLEASE OPEN THE DOOR?” INSTEAD OF “CLOSE THE DOOR”. IS AN EXAMPLE OF AN IMOERATIVE IN QUESTION FORM.• EXAMPLE. (it is an interrogative construction expressing directive function) . there are linguistic devices which may be used for hedging or reducing the force of an utterance. Secondly. .• The internal coherence of the features Lakoff identified can e illustrated by dividing them in to two groups FEATURES WHICH MAY SERVE AS: HEDGING DEVICES. there are features which may boost or intensify a proposition´s force. Firstly. BOOSTING DEVICES. • Lakoff argued that both kinds of modifiers were evidence of an unconfident speaker. • Women use hedging devices to express uncertainty and they use intensifying devices to persuade their addressee to take them seriousl. • Hedging devices explicitly signal lack of confidence. • Women boost the force of their utterances because they think that otherwise they will not be heard or paid attention to. . while boosting devices express the speaker´s anticipation that the addressee may remain unconvinced and therefore supply extra reassurance. The tag question is a syntactic device listed by Lakoff which may express uncertainty.LAKOFF´S LINGUISTIC FEATURES AS POLITENESS DEVICES. Susan is uncertain about the date. and she indicates this with a tag which signals doubt about what she is asserting . Margaret. They may function as faciltative or positive politenes devices.• Tags may also express affective meaning.Andrew. providing an addressee with an easy entree into a conversation. Frank. . this is our new neighbour.Yes i am now a well paid computer programmer instead of a poorly paid teacher. haven´t you? Andrew. Andrew has just changed jobs. A.… you´ll probably find yorself um before the Chief Constable. okay? B. Zoe empaties the shopping basket all over the kitchen floor.Yes sir. don´t you? B. indeed. . Sir. wasn´t it? Tags may also be used as confrontational and coersive devices.• A tag may also soften a directive or criticism. understood. The following tag is used to force feedback from an uncooperative addressee A police superintendent is interviewing a detective constable and is criticising the constable´s performance. yes. ClaireThat was a bit of a daft thing to do. Zoe and her mother Claire have just come home from the supermarket.Now you er fully understand that. A.Yes. yeah. Men.000 word corpus containing equal amounts of female and male speech collected in a range of matched contexts. FUNCTION OF TAG Expressing uncertainty Facilitative WOMEN % 35 59 MEN % 61 26 Softtening Confrontational Total 6 --100 13 --100 Women put more emphasis than men on the polite or affective functions tags.The following tale summarises the patterns found in a 60. on the other hand. . used more tags for the expression of uncertainty. using them as facilitative positive politeness devices. men dominate the talking time. particularly non-private ones such as television. they are never still). staff meetings and conference discussions. In a wide rage of contexts. most of the research evidence points the other way.Despite the widespread stereotype of women as the talkative sex. INTERACTION. interviews. . and proverbs which characterise women as garrulous ( Women´s tongue are like lambs´ tails. where talking may be increase your status. almost all the interruptions were from males. In same gender interactions.INTERRUPTIONS. The results were dramatic. Interruptions % Same-sex interaction Speaker 1 Speaker 2 Cross-sex intercation Women Man 4 96 43 57 . In corss-gender interactions. shops and other public places an a tape recrder carried by one of the researchers. The most widely quoted study on interruptions collected examples of students´ exchanges in coffee bars. interruptions were pretty evenly distributed between speakers. 0 2.2 7.0 7.0 3.7 6.5 3.1 13. Average “did interrupt” per meeting one which laboratory. but there was no men were still doing most of the interrupting.6 30. to 75 per doubt that Average “was interrupted” per meeting.0 1.6 4.3 4.0 6.This researchers followed up this study with recorded interactions in sound-proof booths in a The percentage of male interruptions decreased cent in this less natural setting.5 0.8 8.3 32.5 5.5 . Of seconds per turn.5 2.3 32.5 17.0 2.0 20.5 11.5 16.0 2. Woman A Woman B Woman C Woman D Man E Man F Man G Man H Man I 5.6 6.2 10.8 10.0 8.0 8.7 15.2 17.0 3.3 5.8 0. Speaker Average turns per meeting Average no.0 3. Research on conversational interctions reveals women as cooperative conversationalts.Another aspect of the picture of women as cooperaqtive conversationalists is the evidence that women provide more encouraging feedback to their conversational partners than men do. whereas men tend to be more competitive and less supportive of others. . On New Zeland study which examined the distribution of positive feedback (noises such as ntm and mhm) in casual relaxed interaction between young people found that women geve over four times as much of this type of supportive feedback as men. Why are women´s patterns of interaction different from men´s? Is it because they are subordinate in status to men in most communities so that they must strive to plase? Or are there other explanations? . the norms for male ineraction seem to be those of public referentially-oriented interaction. By contrast. Agreement is sought and disagreement is avoided.EXPLANATIONS The norms for women´s talk may be the norms for small group interaction in private contexts. where the goals of the interaction are solidarity stressing-maintaining good social relations. where contradiction and disagreement is more likely than agreement and confirmation of the statements of others. . The public model is an adversarial one. Personal relationships. Women´s gossip focusses on : Personal experiences.GOSSIP Relaxed in. Personal problems feelings Western Society: “idletalk” and .group talk that goes on between people in informal situations. Linguistic Features: Prepositions which express feelings. .Study: women Recordings of women´s group over 9 months. Facilitative tags Women complete each other utterances. Mock – insults. .Study: men Men tend to focus on things and activities . frequently Change topic abruptly. rather than personal experiences and feelings. Responses disagreed with. Linguistic Features: Long pauses. Men: speech is circumlocutionary. . their speech is more direct than men´s.Malagasy community Women : take more confrontational roles. they hold the position of power. really. o Ed: he´s I mean he´s like a real artsy fartsy fag he´s like … he´s so gay he´s got this like really high voice and wire rim glasses.The construction of gender. . • Uses of features associated with more feminine speech style: Frequent use of like. Hedges such : I mean Intensifiers such as real. so. Approaching gender identity • One way to adopt gender identity is for instance when women adopt masculine context and men adopt feminine by using features. . • • Example: • Men: clothing shops Women: police force • A second way is through narratives of personal experience. .Sexist language Is concerned with the way that language express negative and positive stereotypes of women and men. .Sexist language • Dwight Bolinger: variety of ways in which the English language provides categories and ways of encoding experiences. • He also consider the idea of language sexist • Sexist language is one example of the way a culture or society conveys its values. • English language discriminate women.Can a language be sexist? • Sexism involves behavior. • In the semantic area metaphors are available to describe women in derogatory images. Animal Imagery Food Imagery . .There are an extraordinary high number of derogatory images for women… …compare with the ones used for men. • Many words reinforce a view of women as a deviant. . Lion.actress Hero. abnormal or subordinate group.lioness Actor. Authoress Poetess.heroine. • it has been suggested that suffixes –ess and –ette trivialize and diminish women. EXAMPLES OF MALE ORIENTED WORDS • Chairman • Newsman • Policeman • Salesman • Doctor • Professor • Engineer • Lawyer • Congressman • Reporter PROFESSIONAL . .Generic Generic provide evidence to support that English language marginalize women and treats them as abnormal. • He and man can be said to render women invisible. • English does not posses a third person singular pronoun which is gender neutral . EXAMPLES • All men are mortal. • Only men? Both sex? . Julia is mortal” (?) • We want to hire the best men we can get for the job. • “Julia is a man” (?) • “Therefore.