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Question 4
To answer the question of whether men and women speak the same language,
one must consider which stance they will be proceeding from; sex or gender,
because they do not mean the same thing. For this essay, I will be discussing the
differences in language between men and women from the perspective of
gender, as that provides fertile ground for discussion and analysis. Gender is
defined as the state of being male or female and is typically referred to in
reverence to social and cultural differences, while sex is concerned with the
biological. To attempt to answer the question, I will consider and discuss the
various approaches in sociolinguistics, and these approaches include the
dominance approach, the difference approach, social constructivism and
community of practice.

Dominance approach
The dominance approach, which arose during the mid to late 1970s and authored
by Robin Lakoff, states that the difference between language patterns in the two
genders are caused by one gender, namely male, dominating linguistic
interaction. It is said to be a reflection of the political and cultural domination
that males similarly possess and thus manifests itself further in conversation,
with female language patterns reflecting their subordinate status in society
(Lakoff, 1975). It is additionally expressed that female language is demarcated
by powerlessness and a sense of apprehension, and commonly employs the use
of mitigators and inessential qualifiers which enforces their appearance as being
weaker and lacking authority. Other traits women are said to have in their
language are:

Specificity with colours (mauve, lavender)

Empty adjectives (adorable, charming, divine, nice)
Tag questions (The weather is really nice today, isnt it?)
Higher intonation with questions, expressing uncertainty
Hedges
Speaking in italics, or the use of Intensifiers (I feel so happy)
Bad sense of humour
Hyper-politeness
Hyper-correct grammar
Speaking about trivial topics
(ibid)

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The most interesting aspect of the dominance approach however is the double
bind women face while under that system. They are criticised for not speaking
like a lady, yet at the same time will be systematically denied entry to power
because of the fact they speak like a lady. Supporters of the dominance
approach, Zimmerman and West, also added the use of interruptions and silence
as being a linguistic marker for men, stating that men silenced others and
interrupted women more than women interrupted men (West & Zimmerman,
1987). They argued that interruptions were a device for exercising power and
control in conversation (West & Zimmerman, 1983).
Immediately, one can see the cons of this approach. Chiefly, the belief that
female speech is inferior to male speech is an andro-centric view that portrays
women as weak, helpless victims of a patriarchy that forces them to act in
weak, passive, irrational or ineffective ways (Freeman & McElhinny, 1996), and
this is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Another con is the fact that the
research methods for the approach were non-empirical, anecdotal and was based
on generalisations.
Fellow linguists endeavoured to invalidate the claims made by Lakoff,
Zimmerman and West in order to represent reality in a more accurate fashion.
Regarding interruptions, Tannen rightfully insists that to claim that a speaker
interrupts another is an interpretive, not a descriptive act (Tannen, 1994).
The tentativeness asserted to be a marker for womens way of speech is
attributed to them because of their use of hedges, which are linguistic forms
such as I think, you know, Im sure, perhaps. Lakoff claims that womens speech
has more hedges than mens and stresses that women are socialized to believe
that asserting themselves strongly is not nice or ladylike, or even feminine
(Lakoff, 1975, p. 54). However, after conducting a study, a researcher named
Janet Holmes proved that hedges were, in actuality, a multi-functional linguistic
form and displayed certainty as well as uncertainty during linguistic interaction
(Holmes, 1995).

Difference approach
The difference approach, which arose in response to Lakoffs dominance
approach, theorises that men and women grow up in different subcultures and
social organisations and that ultimately affects their way of speech. Some
linguists argue that the difference is biological where the two genders have

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different rates of language acquisition and their biology causes psychological
differences (H. Buffery & Gray, 1972). An example of this would be the tendency
for women to place more importance on connecting with others, involving
themselves and interdependency between people (Chodorow, 1974). Men,
however, place more importance on independence and build hierarchical
relationships. Although, such claims are rebutted by most linguists and cite the
differences to be the effects of socialisation and not biology.
Social power is argued to be a reason behind differences between male and
female linguistic behaviour. The greater social power possessed by men is said to
grant them domination during interactions (West & Zimmerman, 1987). It is
suggested by Deucher that members of society who lack power must exercise
politeness in their speech (Deuchar, 1988). It could then be said that in
communities where women are the powerless members of society, their
language patterns would include more linguistic politeness during conversation.
Linguists who follow the difference theory continue to believe that the
conversational style between men and women differ in the sense that male
speech is characterised by competitiveness while female speech is characterised
by co-operation (Coates & Cameron, 1988). In a study made by Coates, she
discovered that in her analysis of the speech styles of her female subjects, they
displayed distinctive linguistic traits, such as gradual topic development and
positive, well placed minimal responses; a characteristic lacking in frequency in
male speech (Hirschman, 1974). Ultimately, Coates came to the conclusion that
it is a target for women to maintain their social relationships and the objective of
consolidating their friendships is mirrored in their linguistic patterns.
Speech actions, such as advice-giving, storytelling, reactions to news of issues,
requesting and giving information, compliments and gossip were examined by
Tannen and she came to the conclusion that women approached the world as
people connected in a network while men approached it as people in a social
hierarchy where one is either above or below someone else (Tannen, 1990). She
further goes on to elaborate on the duality of culture for both genders and states
that for men,
Conversations are negotiations in which people try to achieve and
maintain the upper hand if they can, and protect themselves from others
attempt to put down and push them around. Life, then, is a contest, a
struggle to preserve independence and avoid failure.

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(1990, pp. 24-25)
For women, the difference is that, to them, life is
a community, a struggle to preserve intimacy and avoid isolation. Though
there are hierarchies in this world too, they are hierarchies more of
friendship than of power and accomplishment.
(1990, p. 25)
These theories of difference all stem from the belief that differences first began
in childhood where sexes were separated for groups and for boys and girls there
were different sets of rules. Girls tended to play in exclusive, small and
cooperative groups while boys tended to play in larger but similarly exclusive
groups that were organised in a hierarchy (Freeman & McElhinny, 1996, p. 240).
It is therefore argued that, similar to regional and social differences, gender
differences are created in the use of language through physical and social
segregation (Rickford, 1996).
Despite the more egalitarian view of language between genders displayed in the
difference approach, it is not without its limitations. It shows ignorance of how
race, class, age and sexual orientation interacts with language. Uchida remarks
that women and men belong to many interconnected social groups in addition
to that of their own sex, and an individual is more than a woman when
interacting with others (Uchida, 1992, p. 557). Also, the assumption that the
same rules apply in the world of adults from the world of children is overly
simplistic as they are completely different experiences. Further limitations are
that the difference approach does not take into account power/dominance
relations and attributes communication breakdowns solely to misunderstandings
between cultures (Kramarae & Treichler, 1990). Finally, the simplistic nature of
the difference theorys single approach omits important details and factors and
distorts the end results.

Social constructionism
It became established among linguists that the dominance and difference
theories had far too significant limitations and thus their understanding of
language and gender differences had to be re-adjusted. Eventually, a new theory
was built that stated gender was crucial in the construction of ones social
identity and became more definitive through linguistic practice. This ultimately

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meant that language actually had no gender and that people chose to represent
themselves as masculine or feminine through language depending on the
social context. Ochs states that the linguistic features that referentially index
gender are minimal in number and that social identities are more negotiated and
constructed during interaction (Ochs, 1993). Cameron asserts that:
Linguists interested in analyzing the constitution of gender
identities/gender relations need to look beyond lexical choice. Analyse
who is represented as doing what, to who is and under what
circumstances and with what consequences.
(Cameron, 1998)
The debate over whether language should be regarded and studied as its own,
definitive entity was said to only be viable if the concept of activity in which
language took place was adopted, as then it would lead to a better
understanding of language representing reality (Freeman & McElhinny, 1996). Of
course, with this new language approach, it means that there is less of a focus
on differences in linguistic patterns between gender and more of a focus on their
similarities. Similarly, it provides a better understanding of how and when men
and women use language to construct gender differences in various social
contexts. In addition, it is also worth noting is the power of context in
transforming meaning in language, as Hyde (2005) states that context can
produce, remove or reverse gender differences.
Examples of this includes the belief that men interrupted more than women. This
belief was likewise held by researchers (Anderson & Leaper, 1998) until studies
were performed and proved that only a small effect size was discovered. Effect
sizes for intrusive interruptions however were bigger, but the number of gender
differences had a diverse range depending on the social context (ibid). Results
suggested that there were a smaller number of interruptions between two people
and the number of interruptions within a larger group were indeed greater.
Anderson and Leapers findings also revealed that the number of interruptions
increased when subjects were with friends than with strangers. These outcomes
bring to the fore the importance of context in the interpretation of results in
gender differences and language.

Community of Practice

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The community of practice theory primarily stems from the social constructivist
approach in the sense that the emphasis on social context is inherited, however
the difference in this theory lies in its focus and analysis of the language being
shared by an aggregate of people, or in other words, a community. From social
interaction, ways of talking, ways of doing things, beliefs and values develop and
become practices within that community and continues to structure the
community socially. Of course, these groups of people are only in subgroups
determined by their own position within larger social structures, and thus the
community of practice theory provides a mediated area for local and global
analysis (Bucholtz, 1993). It then becomes apparent that this approach offers a
broader analytic sphere than the one offered by social constructivism, which just
studies social activity.
How the theory of community of practice applies to gender differences can be
explored through analysing them in a specific community. The workplace is a
good example for this. Studies of how men and women interact with each other
at work as well as how they assert their authority in professional positions have
been made, and this has been in order to challenge the claims made by
sociolinguistic scholars that said that there were stereotypical speech differences
between the two genders. Coates argued that gender differences based on
language in the workplace enabled female alienation in professional jobs and
hampered their career progression and development (Coates, 2013). Further
beliefs about women in the workplace was that they could not communicate
successfully when in a position of power.
Despite her claims, there have been efforts to move away from the stereotype,
and these efforts came in the form of studies (Wellington Language in the
Workplace Project, 1996) made to challenge notions that women had to speak
like men in order to succeed in their career as well as other gender-based notions
like it. Results interestingly showed that positive feminine traits, such as having
the power to give others (the work force) sustenance, nurture their growth and
care for them rather than follow typical masculine traits of decision-making and
giving orders (Priola, 2004) were not exclusive to women in managerial roles.
Men also displayed these soft management skills in their use of language which
showed that both genders did not follow linguistic stereotypes. It also suggested
that both genders used each others language traits to become more competent
managers. In a study made by Mullany (2000), she discovered that male

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managers used hedges and mitigations (the inclusive pronoun we) to reduce
their speaker status; a trait commonly associated with female language patterns.
Also, both male and female bosses displayed an involvement of their staff in
decision making processes to make them feel empowered.
Holmes continues to prove that preconceived gender differences in the
workplace were incorrect and that women, as well as men, were successful and
competent speakers who employed a wide variety of sociolinguistic skills to suit
whatever social context they were in:
effective communicators, both female and male, typically draw from a
very wide and varied discursive repertoire, ranging from normatively
feminine to normatively masculine ways of talking, and that they
skilfully select their discursive strategies in response to the particular
interactional context
(Holmes J. , 2006)

Conclusion
The various approaches to language and gender has been discussed and I
believe that men and women indeed do not speak the same language differently.
Taking a stance from the social constructivist view of language, I agree with the
notion that gender identities are constructed through language during
interaction and that we cannot fully understand the link between language and
gender until we also understand the social context in which language is
performed. The community of practice approach provides an extended
awareness of that and also provides a further developed understanding of the
gender differences in language. The benefits of those two approaches are that
they dont make assertions about gender differences in language. They just
attempt to challenge the ones that are already established. The other
approaches display limits in their theories, and it is evident that they fail to
understand the fact that gender and gender differences are constructs
concerned with language as well as used in it. Lastly, where language and
gender is concerned, it is imperative that more attention is paid to other social
variables which could potentially affect the data being produced, so the
automatic attributing of differences between male and female speech to
differences in gender would only lead to incorrect findings.

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