The ‘Dominance’ theory of language and gender was first instigated by Robin Lakoff, who gave light to her approach in her book Language and Woman’s Place. She described her work on language and power as being ‘less… the final word… than as a goad to further research.’
Lakoff’s theory
was seen as a new way of looking at language between the sexes, in a time when
feminism was rising for the second time and the Western world was listening and
finally making changes that ‘challenged traditional patriarchal values’.
Unfortunately
though, Lakoff fell into the same trap as Jespersen had before her, and the
‘Dominance’ approach ended up with many similarities to the ‘Deficit’ theory.
Lakoff made reference to women speaking a completely different language, as
Jespersen had, something that once again divided the genders so that they could
have been seen as two different cultures or even species. Because of this, she
is associated more with the ‘Deficit’ theory.
She claimed that
in conversation women would: Hedge (“sort of”, “kind of”), use tag questions
(blah blah blah, aren’t you?), use empty adjectives (oh that’s DIVINE), use
direct quotation rather than paraphrasing, use a special lexicon (instead of
just saying red, they might say crimson, scarlet, rouge etc.), speak less
frequently than men, use more intensifiers (SO, VERY, REALLY, blah blah
blahhh), lack a sense of humour and so on.
While it’s easy
to count tag questions or uses of hedging, judging whether or not a
conversation’s participant is much harder as it’s a subjective measure.
Don Zimmerman and Candace West were responsible for
much of the work done looking at dominance. They looked closely at mixed-sex
conversations in which they discovered men were more likely to interrupt than
the women. They did, however, use only a small number of samples in which the
subjects were mostly white, middleclass and under the age of thirty five… not
very representative of the population as a whole.
In eleven
of the conversations the pair studied, men used forty six interruptions, while
women only used two. They concluded from these results that since men were
twenty three times more likely to interrupt, they would always be the dominant
participant. Or, if they aren’t, they will try to be.
However
Sheffield University’s Geoffrey Beattie argued this conclusion, asking "Why
do interruptions necessarily reflect dominance? Can interruptions not arise
from other sources? Do some interruptions not reflect interest and involvement?"
Beattie repeated
their experiments, this time recording around ten hours of discussions and
noting approximately 557 interruptions. He found that all in all, men and women
interrupted almost exactly as much as each other (men = 34.1, women = 33.8). The margin was not exactly
statistically significant.
Despite this,
there are far fewer cases of people referring to Beattie’s work – Zimmerman and
West’s research remains on top.
The following is a transcript from ‘The Apprentice’
SA = Sir
Alan
B = Ben
Y = Yasmina
P = Paula
SA: Ww what was the point you were making
as a human resources manager then (?)
P: Because you got (.) a person ‘ere
who works in finance an a person who runs a restaurant
SA: But you were the team leader (.)
you’re the team leader
P: I understand that (.) but my skills are in creativity and…
SA: Well you know how to work out redundancy on a
calculator
P: Yes
SA: Mmmn
(2) It’s a feeble excuse as far as I’m concerned, you put yourself up to come
in this process and you’re now using the excuse that you’re a human resources
manager, so therefore you shouldn’t be in charge of costings (.) If that’s the
case why did you put yourself in charge of costings (?)
P: I
didn’t put myself in charge of costings Sir alan (.) which is why I nominated
two people to look after my costings
SA: Oh (.) so its not three of you in
charge of costings then
P: Absolutely not
SA: What
your saying is (.) you nominated these two only to deal with costings is that
what youre saying (?)
P: I
nominated them to look after costs (.) obviously as team manager I would have
to keep an eye on that myself as well which is what I was trying to do.
B: I
think the bottom line here (.) is that if you’d wanted me involved with those
costings (.) then it’s a failure on your part as the project manager for not
saying Ben can you come round here and look at it and just make sure its
alright
P: Surely an idiot would have worked out
that they had that they should be…
B: Were talking about idiots now (.) well lets
talk about 5 pounds and 700 pounds if you wanna talk about idiots at the end of
the day you made a complete balls up of it you were the ones responsible for
the cock up in the fragrances you were the project manager you were the one who
should have come to me getting involved in the costings if you wanted to and
P: I asked you to
B: And the next day I sold my bloody
heart out for you just to do damage control
P: The
cost of the fragrances was a cost it wasn’t a cost on its own I asked you to
look after costs and you didn’t
SA: Ok who should I fire then (?)
P: Ben should be fired
SA: With all that’s been said so far Ben
why shouldn’t I fire you
B: The
reason you shouldn’t fire me Sir Alan is that I’m very good at selling I sold
my heart out the girls even said I was brilliant
SA: Which girls (?)
B: Erm Yasmina and Deborah the girls
who were with me
SA: Really (?)
Y: He was very good at selling Sir Alan
B: Yeh and I’ve still to prove that
I’ve got the potential to be an excellent leader
SA: Yasmina
whats your opinion on this (?) Because if the fragrance as Ben makes a very strong
case for is the culprit then you’ve already accepted half the responsibility
Y: In
my mind that was a mistake that I made I shouldn’t be judged on the mistakes I
should be judged on how I deal with those mistakes OK (.) We could have spotted
the error sooner than we did other than that one mistake I made on that task
Sir Alan I did not make any other
mistakes on the day so if its between myself and Paula for the mistake (.) I’m
gonna have to say that Paula should be fired
P: Are you talking on the basis of the
mistake or overall on the task (?)
Y: I’m
just saying that as Project Manager somebody should have taken overall
responsibility of the costs and that wasn’t done and I’m saying that it was
your responsibility to either do that or delegate that properly.
P: I DID delegate it
Y: N n not properly Paula you didn’t
B: You didn’t just get it a little bit wrong, you got it
very very wrong and I’m still not finished
P: I’m not surprised that youre both going to say
that I should be fired obviously because
B: No because we’re better candidates
than you are
P: That is a sweeping statement Ben
you’ve shown yourself to be a right thug
B: No (.) but I genuinely believe that I’m a better candidate than
you and I think that I did outstandingly on sales
Y: But you might …
Within this excerpt there are a total of twelve
interruptions – both men interrupt four times, Paula interrupts three times,
Yasmin only once. This makes the ratio of men interrupting:women interrupting
2:1. This result lies between those of Z&W and Beattie, with the sample
being far too small to make any real comparison.
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