on the speech of lesbian/bisexual women.
They are consistent with the idea that innate biological factors influence GLB speech patterns indirectly by causing selective adoption of certain speech patterns characteristic of the opposite sex. Gender-based linguistic differences, part 3: Gender-based linguistic differences, part 3 Pragmatics Question tags: Question tags Showing solidarity:
His portraits are quite static by comparison, aren’t they?
You were missing last week, weren’t you? (Coates/Cameron 1989: 82)
This particular utterance could be confrontational with the right intonation
Men use question tags more often to express uncertainty while women use them largely to facilitate communication (Holmes 1992:319).
Coates, Jennifer/Cameron, Deborah. (eds.) (1989): Women in Their Speech Communities. London.
Holmes, Janet (1984): 'Women's Language: A Functional Approach'. General Linguistics 24/3: 149-178. Interruptions: Interruptions Eakins/Eakins 1978: status seems to be a factor in the pattern of interruptions.
Males initiated more interruptions than females in their study of faculty meetings, but…
there was a clear ranking along status lines.
The chair of the department suffered the least number of interruptions
Nevertheless, the most interrupted person was a woman.
But, Holmes 1992:
in doctor-patient conversations female doctors were interrupted more often than male physicians
in business organisations, men but not women tended to dominate the interactions
And West 1998: study of interaction between doctors and patients: female physicians were interrupted more often by patients of all social status groups than male physicians.
Gender of Physician # of Interruptions by Physicians by Patients # of Patients
Male 188 67% 33% 17
Female 59 32% 68% 4 Eakins, Barbara/Eakins, Gene: 'Verbal Turn-Taking and Exchanges in Faculty Dialogue'. In: Dubois, Betty/Crouch, Isabel (eds.) (1976): The Sociology of the Languages of American Women. San Antonio, TX: 53-61.
Holmes, Janet (1992): An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London.
West, Candace: 'When the Doctor is a 'Lady': Power, Status and Gender in Physician-Patient Encounters'. In: Coates, Jennifer (ed) (1998): Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: 396-412.
Zimmerman, Don/West, Candice: 'Sex Roles, Interruptions and Silences in Conversations'. In: Thorne, Barrie/Henley, Nancy (eds.) (1975): Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley; MA: 105-129. Conclusions: Conclusions Gender surfaces in language in a wide variety of ways: phonetic, lexical, pragmatic…
The interactions between gender and other social variables, goals, etc. are extremely complex.
Though language can affect social systems…
…the primary direction of influence is socio-cultural linguistic. References: References Labov, William. 2003. The reinterpretation of social categories in the course of linguistic change. Paper presented at the LSA.
Chambers, J. K. 1995. Sociolinguistic theory: Linguistic variation and its social significance. Oxford: Blackwell.
Cheshire, Jenny. 1982, Linguistic variation and social function. In S Romaine, ed. 1982, Sociolinguistic variation in speech communities, 153-166. [Excerpted in J. Coates ed. 1998, Language andamp; Gender: A Reader, 29-41.]
Coates, Jennifer. 1993 (2nd ed.). Women, Men and Language. London: Longman.
Coates, Jennifer, ed. 1998. Language and Gender: A Reader. (Blackwell Publishers).
Coupland, Nikolas, andamp; Adam Jaworski, eds. 1997. Sociolinguistics: A reader. Palgrave/St. Martin’s Press.
Eckert, Penelope. 1989. The whole woman: sex and gender differences in variation. Language Variation and Change 1:245-267.
Eckert, Penelope. 1998. Gender and sociolinguistic variation. In J. Coates ed. 1998, Language andamp; Gender: A reader, 64-75.
Gordon, Elizabeth. 1997. Sex, speech, and stereotypes: why women use prestige speech forms more than men. Language in Society 26: 47-64.
Guy, Gregory. 1988. Language and social class. In F. Newmeyer, ed., Linguistics: The Cambridge Survey, vol. 4. (Language: The Socio-cultural context.), 37-63. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
