Gender essay plan

Evaluate the notion that male language is superior and more authoritative when compared to female language. (30 marks)

Introduction:

Agree that male language is more authorative, supported by Lakoff, Tannen, Fishman. On the other hand, Janet Hyde and O'barr and atkins believe that gender isnt the main factor that determines our language, instead contextual factors such as age and social class.

  Para 1:

Zimmerman and West

·         Dominance theory. They were investigating the presence of uncooperative interactive features, such as interruptions, in conversation. They wanted to find out whether the gender of conversation participants affected the use of these features. they found male language dominated female language. Hilton

Para 2:

Pamela Fishman
·         She believes that women use hedges, polite forums and question tags to help continue a conversation and get everyone involved. She calls this “conversational shitwork” to hold the conversation together and keep it flowing.

Para 3:

Robin Lakoff

·         Her research (1975) is known as the `deficit approach`, this explains that male language is stronger, prestigious and more desirable than a woman’s. It also informs you that men speak more than women.

Para 4:

O'Barr and Atkin's 
Disputed Lakoff, said that it was males and females low of social status who used these linguistic features.

Para 5:
Janet Hyde: 
Believed that there was more similarties between male and female language. differences may come down to contextual factors such as age, social group, or occupation etc.


Conclusion:
Many theorists would support the view that male language is supierior and more authorative. however it is also clear that the most modern theorist Janet Hyde does suggest it isnt no longer the case and perhaps it is changing. Yet no one can ignore the fact that when Margaret Thatcher was prime minister in the 1980s, she took lessons in language to sound less "like a female".

Types of nouns

There are several different types of noun, as follows:

Common noun

A common noun is a noun that refers to people or things in general, e.g. boy, country, bridge, city, birth, day, happiness.

Proper noun

A proper noun is a name that identifies a particular person, place, or thing, e.g. Steven, Africa, London, Monday. In written English, proper nouns begin with capital letters.

Concrete noun

A concrete noun is a noun which refers to people and to things that exist physically and can be seen, touched, smelled, heard, or tasted. Examples include dog, building, coffee, tree, rain, beach, tune.

Abstract noun

An abstract noun is a noun which refers to ideas, qualities, and conditions - things that cannot be seen or touched and things which have no physical reality, e.g. truth, danger, happiness, time, friendship, humour.

Collective nouns

Collective nouns refer to groups of people or things, e.g. audience, family, government, team, jury. In American English, most collective nouns are treated as singular, with a singular verb:

The whole family was at the table.

In British English, the preceding sentence would be correct, but it would also be correct to treat the collective noun as a plural, with a plural verb:

The whole family were at the table.

 For more information about this, see matching verbs to collective nouns.

 A noun may belong to more than one category. For example, happiness is both a common noun and an abstract noun, while Mount Everest is both a concrete noun and a proper noun.

Count and mass nouns

Nouns can be either countable or uncountable. Countable nouns (or count nouns) are those that refer to something that can be counted. Uncountable nouns (or mass nouns) do not typically refer to things that can be counted and so they do not regularly have a plural form

https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/09/investing-jobs-women-gender-pay-gap

Her name is as big as the title, shes just as important, shes a public figure.
Links to over sites, features of online articles
n opinion piece with the sub heading gender, probably more aimed at middle class women, as sandi is fanour for being on middle class shows such as the great briting bake off, her fans might be reading.

The gender pay gap isn't the half of it: our economy runs on women's unpaid work

The title is a compound sentence, two mains causes with a colon. Colloquial use of the phrase ‘isnt the half of it’. Adds to an informal register. Humour. Shes an enntertainer, First clause demonstrates this. Second clause, present simple tense, serious seems more factual. 

I call it our ‘grossly undervalued domestic product’: the caring, support and childcare women do without seeing a penny. It’s time we recognised it

First person pronoun ‘i call it’ which distances herself from the audience. Establishes it as an opinion pievce. Field specific lexis “grossly undervalued fomestic product” her own phrase. Shes representing the unpayed childcare done by women in a negative light. 

Mention graphological features such as the photo graph, clearlry talking about britain as the currency of the money is sterling

Irecently delivered the annual Adam Smith lecture in Kirkcaldy, Fife. It was the first time a woman had been trusted to give this economics lecture all by herself. As a marvellous bagpiper led the way, it struck me that this might be my glass cliff moment. Because, let’s face it, I’m not an obvious choice for such a task. But with men now making up two-thirds of economics students, all but one of the Nobel prizewinners for economics having been a man and every single British chancellor of the exchequer somehow having been required to be a boy, then finding a woman might have been tricky.

Use of the first person “I” in large writing myane to show how her opinion is important. Mentions her “Adam Smith lecture” giving herself instrumental power, link to the lecture if you dont know what it is. The verb “trusted” is to show how women arent trusted and maybe is looking back to previous experiences. “All by herself” patronising tone, similar to when a child manages to do somthimg by itself. “Glass cliff moment” extended metaphor. Mix of opinion and fact, no female chamcellor of the exchequer is a fact. Uses features of spoken language “lets face it”. Mixes a formal and informal register as well as high frequency and low frequency lexis and fact and opinion without it being too obvious. 

By happy coincidence, I chose as the subject of my lecture women’s exclusion from the formal economy. Or as I like to call it, our grossly undervalued domestic product (GUDP). Never, as it happens, has this been more relevant than now, as the full horror of the gender pay gap is revealed. I have so enjoyed watching the debate unfold. Highlights include accusing women of conflating pay discrimination with the gender pay gap – silly women! – though nobody benefits more from this apparent “confusion” than the companies evading legal action.

Uses the acronym “GUDP” as she already used this phrase. Pre modified Noun “horror” gives a clear representation that its serious and her opinion of it is highly negative. Adobts the voice of the patreorical society, exclamative syntax  “silly women! For humour and irony. The phrase “apparent “confusion””, meaning its not confusing atall all and she believes the answer is obvious. 

Better still are those bemoaning the lack of explanatory data, while dogmatically concluding that the gender pay gap has nothing to do with discrimination in hiring or promotion decisions. And my absolute favourite – let’s not forget the pro-choicers. These are the three women on this planet whose privilege and adoration of unfettered capitalism leads them to infer that women simply choose to work for less, and guarantees them a slot on every talkshow “in the interest of balance”.

Uses the adverb “dogmatically” to state how the counter arguments ideologically driven. present simple “women simply choose to work for less” is an opinion disguised as a fact. No opinion about gender inequality, she states how its true. 

But the pay gap isn’t the choice of women. It is both a cause and consequence of gender inequality. In many respects it is more important than pay discrimination because it shines a light on the deep structural inequalities in every part of our society and economy.

Metaphor “shines a light” to show how it needs to be heard and everyone needs to be aware.

On my way to the lecture, I stopped in at the Cottage Family Centre in Kirkcaldy. This wonderful community service was set up by a group of local parents in 1987 and provides a lifeline to poor families in the area. In 2016 its Christmas appeal provided food and presents to 300 children. By last year as many as 800 children and families needed its help. When they recently learned that they had lost one of their funding streams, the extraordinary women who work there offered to take a pay cut so that their community wouldn’t suffer.

Uses the adjective “wonderful” to describe the community service. Sandi states how the women are extradinary as they take a pay cut to help better people, represents these women as heros. 

The Cottage is a stark reminder that poverty is gendered. Most of the people it serves are women and children who have been first in the line of fire for austerity. Because, as Sophie Walker, leader of the Women’s Equality party, has repeatedly pointed out, “while tax cuts are benefiting men, benefit cuts are harming women”. Research carried out by the House of Commons library in 2017 revealed that it is women who have borne 86% of the burden of austerity since 2010. The brilliant staff who work at the Cottage are overwhelmingly female, no doubt encouraged by an education system that says caring jobs are for women, and the scarcity of flexible working in other sectors.

Instrumental power, shes sophie is the leader of the womens equality party. Adverb “repeatedly” , informal verb phrase “pointed out” shows how no one listens and they have to keep saying it. House of commons library 2017, very relevent and powerful. Semantic field of instrumental power. Opinion pieces uses evidence to add authoroity with stats.

Articles to summarise

Summarise

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/apr/09/young-people-cheated-skills-jobs-brexit-education

 https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/apr/09/about-the-boys-tim-winton-on-how-toxic-masculinity-is-shackling-men-to-misogyny

Word of mouth to listen to

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09yddxh

The 3 Different Degrees of Adjectives:


The three degrees of an adjective are positive, comparative and superlative. When you use them depends on how many things you’re talking about:

• A positive adjective is a normal adjective that’s used to describe, not compare. For example: “This is good soup” and “I am funny.”

• A comparative adjective is an adjective that’s used to compare two things (and is often followed by the word than). For example: “This soup is better than that salad” or “I am funnier than her.”

• A superlative adjective is an adjective that’s used to compare three or more things, or to state that something is the most. For example: “This is the best soup in the whole world” or “I am the funniest out of all the other bloggers.”

7 Types of English Adjectives That Every English Language Student Must Know:

1. A descriptive adjective is probably what you think of when you hear the word “adjective.” Descriptive adjectives are used to describe nouns and pronouns.

e.g. beautiful, silly, tall, annoying, loud and nice


https://www.fluentu.com/blog/english/english-adjectives/

definite/indefinite articles

Articles
There are only three articles in the English language: a, an and the. Articles can be difficult for English learners to use correctly because many languages don’t have them (or don’t use them in the same way).
Although articles are their own part of speech, they’re technically also adjectives! Articles are used to describe which noun you’re referring to. Maybe thinking of them as adjectives will help you learn which one to use:

• A — A singular, general item.
• An — A singular, general item. Use this before words that start with a vowel.
• The — A singular or plural, specific item.

Simply put, when you’re talking about something general, use a and an. When you’re speaking about something specific, use the. “A cat” can be used to refer to any cat in the world. “The cat” is used to refer to the cat that just walked by.

Jean Aitchison: The Language Web: 1996

Jean Aitchison on Language Change

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p00gmvwx

Language Change

Jean Aitchison

Damp Spoon Syndrome

• This theory suggests that language change is caused by sloppiness and laziness. It is often linked to teenagers.
• However it is difficult to find evidence to state that language change is down to laziness.
• An example of laziness is the glottal stop.

Crumbling Castle 

• Sees that the English language as a beautiful building which needs to be preserved. This view states that a rigid system is better than a flexible system.

Infectious Disease

• This theory suggests that we catch change from the people around us. 
• Social contact is a big force to cause language change.

Printing press - https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/rafangel.wordpress.com/2005/04/23/meet-my-divas/amp/

Standardisation - the process of making something conform to a standard. Its a process of directing and controlling language.

Effects of the printing press:
English recieved influences from other languages such as: spanish, french, latin, and greek, hence new lexis.
The presence of the printing press caused illiteracy to become evident in Britain as not everyone understood this new written form of English.
As standardisation  needed to be conveyed for everyone to understand the language, the english language underwent a standardisation homogenization process that had a sulminant effect on spelling, vocabulary, and grammar. As well as other dialects becoming more accepted.
The influence of the increased education in order to battle the illiteracy levels, led in more new young scholars in literacy. The influence if literacy wanted to create new ways if writing, therefore new words were used bringing with them more meaning etc.

Summary:
The printing press helped spread information more easily, and introduced with it new words and ways of recording the english language. It also pointed out the high illiteratcy levels wleading to better wducation. 

Ted talk - Anne kerzon

Vera Reegan’s Ted Talk link, summary, and sociolect theory.

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jAGgKE82034

Vera Regan studies the way we use language. At TEDxDublin, the sociolinguist shares her research into a few global linguistic tics — including the many ways we “like” in English.

It turns out that how people use filler words like “like” reveals interesting details about how they see and interact with the world, Regan says. She and her team at University College Dublin studied the use of “like” by Polish transnationals in Ireland — people who had relocated to Ireland from Poland — noting that the non-standard use of “like” in English has two popular forms: one, the Irish like, which tacks like to the end or the beginning of a sentence (“I was there, like.” “Like, they came, too.”) and two, the global like, which places “like” in the middle of sentences or as a tag for speech (“I was, like, really tired.” “She was like, ‘Yeah.’”) and is commonly used by American, Canadian, Australian and British English speakers.

The team that found that those who learned English in Poland and then moved to Ireland were often using the Irish like, picking up the patterns of native speakers, despite neither being taught in standard English courses and no word-equivalence existing in Polish. Further, many were using the global like, as well. Why? Regan’s team was determined to find out. “We dug down,” she says, “we did qualitative analysis; we listened to their stories; and we discovered that those people who were using [the global like] were more likely to have their eyes fixed on global worlds. They wanted, perhaps, to move to another [place], an English-speaking country outside, while the [Irish like] users were those who strongly identified with Irish people. They were local-focused, and had long-term plans to stay in Ireland.” “In either case, whichever they used,” Regan says, “language was reflecting their aspirations, their stances, their attitudes.”

Child Language Development theorists

Noam Chomsky

·         Chomsky's nativist theory suggests that children are born with a Language Acquisition Device (LAD) which gives them the ability to acquire language.

·         This theory could suggest why children make virtuous errors such as overgeneralisation.

·         To further support Chomsky's theory is recent research known as Fox P-2.  It is a gene which plays a major role in how we learn language and shows that we are born with the ability to learn how to talk without interaction with people.

·         Provides an alternative view to Skinner.

Jean Berko-Gleason

·         Berko-Gleason uses her idea the Wug Test to see if children are able to learn a language that doesn`t exist.

·         She presents the children with a creature that looks like a bird called a "Wug", she then showed them a picture of two Wugs and questioned "two..?" The children who said "two Wugs"means that they understand how to make a word plural.

B.F Skinner

·         Skinner`s behaviourist theory states that children are born a "blank slate" and have to learn language through interaction and imitation of caregivers.

·         His idea of Operant conditioning is to modify behaviour through positive and negative reinforcement. This will help the child correct their errors or do the same again if they`ve said it correctly.

Jerome Bruner

·         Bruner’s theory suggests that every child needs a Language Acquisition Support System (LASS). This highlights that children need to be encouraged to use language and help them become an active participant in the conversation.

Deb Roy

·         His Speech Home Project was created to film his son’s language from the day his was born until he was 3 years old. They particularly focused on how he used the sound "ga ga" to ask for "water". He knew that this would get him a drink which emphasises the point that children know more than they can say.

Vygotsky

·         Part of his theory is known as Zone of proximal development which states that you need caregivers support to help them acquire language.

·         Children need scaffolding to help them is social and cultural situations on their own.

Piaget

·         His Cognitive theory says that he believes that children construct an understanding of the world around them. He looked at how children develop intellectually throughout the course of childhood through biological maturation and interaction with the environment. 
https://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/chomsky/

https://quizlet.com/23965396/child-language-acquisition-theorists-flash-cards/

Language and Sociolect theorists

William La Bov

·         1966 New York Study- individual speech patterns are “part of a highly systematic structure of social and stylistic stratification”

·         He did a comparison of 3 department stores them being Saks 5th avenue (high end), Macys (middle of the road) and Klein’s (lower end). He used them to test the pronunciation of the `post-vocalic seeing how people would emphasise it at the end of a word. He used the words fourth and floor.

·         The results: Saks 62% Macys 51% Klein’s 20%

Martha’s Vineyard Study

·         It is an island off the East-coast of the USA with over 40,000 visitors each summer.

·         The local population are known as the "islanders."

·         Mainly a fishing industry where fisherman are seen as the desirable social group who everyone would want to be like.

Vera Regan

·         https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=jAGgKE82034

·         Worked under La Bov

·         Studied polish transnationals. Looked at the use of the colloquial "like" and the global "like".

·         She came to the conclusion that transnationals with the intention to stay would use language in the same way as the locals to include themselves. Whereas transnationals with the intention of moving on would still use the global like.

Peter Trudgill

·         1974 Norwich Study – how gender affects dialect in each social class.

·         H and ing dropping

·         Looking at “walking”& “talking” as the standard form instead of "walkin" and "talkin" in its non- standard form.

·         It assesses participant’s awareness of their own accents as well as how they wished to sound.

·         Men over-reported their non-standard usage – implying that men wished to sound more non-standard, assuming that they used more of the covert prestige forms

·         Women over-reported their standard usage – implying that women wished to sound more standard, assuming that they used more of the overt prestige forms.

Jenny Cheshire

·         1982 Reading Study – relationship between use of non-standard variables and adherence to peer group norms.

·         Identified 11 non-standard features and measured their frequency of use in boys and girls in a Reading playground, differentiating between those who approved or disapproved of minor criminal activities

Bernstein

Language and Social Class – Restricted code and Elaborated code – 1971

·         Restricted code - Has a limited vocabulary, looser syntax, uses more words of simple coordination.

·         Elaborated code - Has a more formally correct syntax, having more subordinate clauses and fewer unfinished sentences.

Language and Gender theories

Deborah Tannen

Her theory, the difference model, explains that being two separate genders impacts our language and can cause miscommunication. She tells you that men dominate conversation and interrupt more frequently than a woman to gain status. Tannen basis` her theory on 6 contrasts, one being competition vs co-operation.

Robin Lakoff

·         Her research (1975) is known as the `deficit approach`, this explains that male language is stronger, prestigious and more desirable than a woman’s. It also informs you that men speak more than women.

Pamela Fishman

·         She believes that women use hedges, polite forums and question tags to help continue a conversation and get everyone involved. She calls this “conversational shitwork” to hold the conversation together and keep it flowing.

Janet Hyde

·         She proposes a “gender similarities hypothesis” which explains male and females are similar on most but not all psychological variables. She tells you that there are more similarities between male and female language than differences and any variations in speech could be down to age, occupation, status, class etc.

Christine Howe

·         She explains her theory to return to the point of men and women’s language differences due to their gender. She explains that men are more likely to respond quicker to what is being discussed so they can put their viewpoint across before anyone else.

O'Barr and Atkin's

·         Her research is interesting, and seems to suggest that it is not so much differences in the sexes' language, more the situations that they face which result in the difference. This theory is known as the dominance theory: if there is a difference in language, it is because males have always dominated in both the home and workplace, and females have had to play the domestic roles.

Zimmerman and West

·         Dominance theory. They were investigating the presence of uncooperative interactive features, such as interruptions, in conversation. They wanted to find out whether the gender of conversation participants affected the use of these features.