The "Cultural Difference" Approach
As a counter to the view that women's language is deficient compared to men's, a number of researchers maintain that women's language is not inferior but simply different. The cultural difference approach to language and gender is grounded in the belief that women's and men's speech is different because girls and boys in America grow up in essentially separate speech communities, because they typically are segregated into same-sex peer groups during the years in which they acquire many of their language-use patterns. This approach is central to the work of a number of researchers, including Deborah Tannen, a sociolinguist who is well known as the author of several best-selling books on language and gender for non-experts, including That's Not What I Meant! How Conversational Style Makes or Breaks Relationships (1987) and You Just Don't Understand: Women and Men in Conversation (1990).
Girls grow up in groups in which heavy emphasis is placed on cooperation, equality, and emotionally charged friendships, and so girls develop conversational styles which are cooperative and highly interactional, with each girl encouraging the speech of others and building on others' communications as she converses. In addition, girls learn to read others' emotions in quite subtle ways, because forming strong friendships is of key importance to them. On the other hand, boys grow up in groups which are hierarchical in nature and in which dominance over others is of central importance. Thus, boys develop conversational styles which are competitive rather than cooperative, and they place a heavy reliance on "proving themselves" through their words rather than on encouraging the ideas of other speakers.
D.Tannen's books have been well received by general audiences, who seem to be glad to have discovered that there are explanations for the miscommunications that they frequently experience in their own cross-sex interactions. At the same time, her works have met with some opposition by researchers. For example, like R.Lakoff, D.Tannen has been criticized because she emphasizes that women need to learn to "read" men without placing a corresponding emphasis on men's learning to understand the conversational conventions which guide female speech. D.Tannen has also been criticized for overemphasizing the differences between women's and men's conversational styles and hence perpetuating the artificial dichotomy between women's and men's language.
A number of proponents of the cultural difference theory, including the earliest advocates of this approach (Maltz and Borker 1982), maintain that by the time males and females reach adulthood, their conversational styles are actually quite similar. And even in childhood, it is maintained, similarities in conversational strategies far outweigh differences. For example, it has been shown that girls use the same strategies to win arguments as boys and that they are just as skillful at arguing as boys (Goodwin 1990).
The Dominance Theory
The notion that male-female conversation differences are due to societal power differences between men and women has been termed by the Dominance theory. Researchers point out the features of so-called “male conversational style” which is characterized by:
· uncooperative or disruptive speech
· taking up more conversational time than women
· introducing new topics rather than building on old ones
· more directness
In such a way they dominate women in conversational interaction.
A number of researchers suggest that men’s misunderstandings of women’s conversational style are often quite intentional.
Men’s dominance in society derives from the roles which have been ascribed to men by society. Current researches are intent on investigating as a social construct.
1.6.2. Differences encoded in language
Many differences in how men and women talk may be grounded in power differences between men and women. Power of men and women’s lack of power are encoded in the language.
Generic “he” and “man”
“He” and its forms “his”, “him” refer to a sex-indefinite antecedents:
e.g. If anybody reads this book he will learn about dialects.
Alternatives:
● informal they that refers to singular antecedents
● to pluralize sex-indefinite antecedents: e.g. If people … they will …
● to use he/she
Increased usage of the noun “man” to refer to “humankind”
e.g. “Man shall not live by bread alone”
Opponents argue that the use of generic “he” and “man” in no way excludes women or obscures their role in society, however experiments show that in reality, there is a tendency for readers to associate “he” and “man” with males alone, particularly when the readers themselves are male. It has been noted that unchecked usage of generic “he” can have far-reaching social implications:
e.g. Women tend to avoid responding to job advertisements containing generic “he” because they feel that they do not meet the qualifications outlined in the ads (Miller 1994)