Reference:
Excerpts Cameron uses the phrase 'closer to the standard' (11).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | phrase |
standard |
'Sociolinguistics has dealt, therefore, with the what of sex
differences, but has it dealt so well with the why? Do the conventional
explanations given in sociolinguistic analysis stand up to scrutiny? That
is the question we want to address' (13).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | analysis |
sociolinguistics |
Women are often not the most conservative speakers of a
language, so notions that they are more conservative than men are not
generally valid (14-5).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | language |
'Women use fewer stygmatised forms and more prestige forms in
every class; it is no more justified to class this pattern of female usage
hypercorrect than it would be to call the usage of the middle class
hypercorrect in relation to that of the working class. The notion of
women's sensitivity to prestige norms is an explanation that arises from
the intrinsic maleness of the norms. Men's behaviour is seen as normal;
when women's differs, it has to be explained' (17).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | explanation |
hypercorrect |
notion |
pattern |
prestige |
relation |
'Daughters need not resemble their fathers, nor wives their
husbands' (18).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | Coates and Cameron report a study 'which finds social ambition a
better predictor than occupation, or even education, of linguistic
behaviour' (18).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | education |
study |
'Whatever the solution, it can hardly be denied that there is a
problem for sociolinguistics in using the traditional model which takes
the family as the primary unit of social stratification at a time when our
traditional concept of the family ... is breaking down' (19).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | concept |
family |
problem |
sociolinguistics |
stratification |
Coates and Cameron quite correctly point out to us that it is not
surprising to have men score higher in multiplexity of relationships, given
that the criteria are male-biased to begin with (20-1).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | criteria |
'We need a model of difference and not deficit' (21).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | deficit | difference |
Coates and Cameron report that Nichols has found a correlation
between occupations of speakers and whether they use Gullah or
'standard English'. After describing that older black women and men of
all ages work in jobs which allow them to speak Gullah, while job
opportunities for younger women have opened up which require them to
speak standard English, 'Nichols claims that in the South Carolina Black
community, labour market forces are the single most important factor
influencing linguistic choices' (23).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | community |
standard |
Coates and Cameron pose the question to us: 'Given differing
vernacular norms for the two sexes, what happens to the definition of the
speech community as a group with shared linguistic norms'?
(24).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | community |
definition |
'As always, there is a need for more empirical research. But this
must not be done in a framework which assumes that male behaviour
and male norms are prototypical' (24).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | empirical |
framework |
research |
Deuchar seems to assume a single strategy for women everywhere.
'Women tend to produce speech closer to the standard in pronunciation
than that of men. The main explanations advanced for this phenomenon
are in terms of sociological factors external to language such as status
consciousness or solidarity. I shall show that neither of these
explanations is entirely satisfactory, but that the phenomenon can be
explained in terms of pragmatic, interactional notions internal to
language use. The notions I shall make use of are those of face and
power as used by Brown and Levinson (1978) in their model of
politeness' (27).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | face | language |
power |
standard |
status |
strategy |
'We need to ask why they should use markers of status which
neither reflect nor determine their real status' (28).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | status |
'Brown and Levinson ... define the notion of face as "the public
self-image that every member wants to claim for himself". ... Negative
face involves the desire for freedom of action and freedom from
imposition, while positive face involves the desire for approval. Power ...
means that in an interaction, the speaker can be characterised as
relatively more or less powerful than the addressee' (29).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | action | addressee |
claim |
face |
interaction |
notion |
power |
speaker |
'In order to use the notions of face and power to explain women's
greater use of standard speech we need four assumptions: 1.
participants in an interaction wish to protect their own face; 2. attention to
other's face is affected by relative power in relation to other; 3. attention
to other's face may involve damage to one's own; 4. women have less
relative power than men' (30).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | face | interaction |
participants |
power |
relation |
standard |
Duechar claims that the use of standard speech connotes prestige
(31).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | prestige |
standard |
Edwards claims that her paper will discuss 'the speech of the
female participants in the study'. However, because 'it was arranged that
the fieldworker should be the same sex as the friendship group' being
studied, there is limitation of the observations to same-sex
conversations. Nevertheless, Edwards asserts that 'the validity of these
findings ... would have been considerably more limited if the variable of
sex had not been carefully controlled' (33-8).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | participants |
study |
validity |
Thomas studied speakers of a Welsh community where [E:] in
certain words is beginning to be lost in favor of a shift to [A:]. She
observed that women who use the feature more tend to attend a chapel
on the end of town where the dialect is more prevalent. Though most of
those who retain this feature in their language also live at that end of the
community, there are some who do not live in the east end of the town,
but attend church there. 'To summarize, use of the [E:] variant is confined
to older women, whose social networks are more community-based that
those of their male contemporaries and younger villagers of both sexes'
(59).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | community |
dialect |
language |
variant |
The perception of women and men as different subcultures is
marked. Usually subculture perception involves the use of features that
are 'odd' across cultural boundaries. Yet in the case of differences in
language use because of sex, men and women often seem to behave in
ways that both see as 'quite natural' (65).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | case | language |
perception |
subculture |
Power > difference, not deficit (66).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | deficit | difference |
power |
A single form does not imply a single function (66).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | form | function |
Tag questions are not always weak forms, as R. Lakoff 1973 claims
(67).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | Rules and understanding may be context specific, but they should
not be ad hoc (67).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | context |
understanding |
Analysts use observation only techniques (68).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | observation |
Could Wood's study lead to the conclusion that 'floor time' and
other language behavior that is often considered 'power' language is not
a significant factor in promotions? The woman in higher status does not
need to dominate her male subordinate. We could conclude that
language dominance is irrelevant to status in the women's behavior
(69).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | conclusion |
floor |
language |
power |
status |
study |
Minimum response said to be agreement in male speech
(70).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | agreement |
Relationship, not information, is the goal (70).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | There are multiple functions of tag questions (91).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | Gender is not the only relevant variable in the speech styles of men
and women (91).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | gender |
A female strategy is not just to display condition of subordination to
males, but to cope (92).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | condition |
strategy |
How is 'typical' known apart from contrast with other kinds of
discourse? (95).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | discourse |
Unshared presuppositions not proven (121).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | There is an assumption of differences between same-sex and
mixed conversations (120-1).
Domains: Under construction |
Key Terms: | assumption |
Last Modified:
July-11-96 17:24:24
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