Language and Gender:

Within language and gender, this is the study of the forms and functions of talk, in which we investigate when studying men and women speak. In particular, we examine further by looking at conversational styles, historical and contemporary changes, how language is used by each gender in terms of the context, the list goes on. 

Many theorists have studied such questions, and as a result there has been a number of theory's attempting to find answers, such as:

DEFICIT THEORY - Robin Lakoff

Robin Lakoff, in 1975, published an influential account of women's language. In a related article, Woman's language, she published a set of basic assumptions about what marks out the language of women. Among these are claims that women:

• Hedge: using phrases like “sort of”, “kind of”, “it seems like”, and so on.
• Use (super)polite forms: “Would you mind...”,“I'd appreciate it if...”, “...if you don't mind”.
• Use tag questions: “You're going to dinner, aren't you?”
• Speak in italics: intonational emphasis equal to underlining words - so, very, quite.
• Use empty adjectives: divine, lovely, adorable, and so on
• Use hyper correct grammar and pronunciation: English prestige grammar and clear enunciation.
• Use direct quotation: men paraphrase more often.
• Have a special lexicon: women use more words for things like colours, men for sports.
• Use question intonation in declarative statements: women make declarative statements into questions by raising the pitch of their voice at the end of a statement, expressing uncertainty. For example, “What school do you attend? Eton College?”

Lakoff further pointed out that women tend to

•  Speak less than men, 
• Use fewer expletives - expletive ɪkˈspliːtɪv,ɛk-/ noun - an oath or swear word.
• and use more intensifiers, such as 'so' and very'

She further argued that these features of women's language reflected women's inferior social status, and made it worse by making them seem somewhat indecisive and needy. In conclusion of her findings, she claimed that women's language is weak and compared to men’s language, and therefore this prevents women from being taken seriously.

DOMINANCE THEORY - Zimmerman and West.

This is the theory that within mixed sex conversations, (according to Z+W) men are more likely to interrupt conversations and tend to speak out within conversations, and as a result of this, theorists resulted in naming this as females being the subordinate participant, due to the patriarchal actions going on within mixed-sex conversations. This is evident as they found that almost 96% of interruptions were made by men, this then suggested that men are much more dominant in male-female conversations. they argued that this reflects male dominance in society.

DIFFERENCE THEORY: DEBORAH TANNEN:

Tannen described male and female conversational style in terms of difference.

She has summarised her findings and as a result came up with specific terms that have been paired, which describes a male and a female. For example:

• STATUS VS SUPPORT

Men grow up in a world in which conversation is competitive - they seek to achieve the upper hand or to prevent others from dominating them. For women, however, talking is often a way to gain confirmation and support for their ideas. Men see the world as a place where people try to gain status and keep it. Women see the world as “a network of connections seeking support and consensus, as well as being more cooperative.

• Independence vs intimacy

Women often think in terms of closeness and support, and struggle to preserve intimacy. Men, concerned with status, tend to focus more on independence. These traits can lead women and men to starkly different views of the same situation

• Advice vs understanding

Tannen claims that women tend to show more understanding by compromising, and offering support rather than solutions, in order to seem more gentle, whereas with men, they may want to be seen as 'knowledgeable' and 'powerful' therefore they tend to give more advice to others and show their status, rather than being more 'inferior' and asking for support, according to tannen.

Conflict vs compromise:

This shows that since men tend to be more 'vocal' they may find solutions to problems by involving conflict in order to show their masculinity, whereas women may tend to find a more calmer, humble solutions by compromising and finding agreements and solutions in a peaceful manner.