Paper 2 - LANGUAGE AND GENDER - Essay Plan

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-INTRO - Increasing hot topic/main debate - 3D's
-Dominance - females = subordinate, difference in language effect of male power (language and society;patriarchal)
-Deficit - similar ^^ male language = norm and females are deficient
-Difference - males and females from different 'sub-cultures' - told to do so since childhood
-Finish with rhetorical questions e.g. 'biological or social?'

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-LINK TO STIMULUS MATERIAL

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-DOMINANCE - explain as intro
-Dale Spender - 'Man Made Language' 1980, male language = norm own idea of patriarchal order; states that it is 'very hard to challenge this power system, as the way we think of the world is part of and reinforces this male power'
-Zimmerman and West 1983 - conclusion based on a study of mixed-sex conversations where men interrupted more (link to stimulus?) males dominate conversations and this creates patriarchal society - men want to gain power

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-Geoffrey Beattie challenges Zimmerman and West and states that interruptions don't necessarily mean dominance - they can be strung from other factors such as interest and involvement

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-DEFICIT - Robin Lakoff 1975 in her book 'Language and Women's Place' - list of assumptions that constructs female language - women tend to use more tag questions, hedges, super polite forms and apologise more - most controversial = women speak less frequently - doesn't how often we speak have more to do with our personality traits rather than simply our gender? #
-Pamela Fishman 1990 'Work Women Do' challenges Lakoff 'Women ask questions, not because of their personality weaknesses but to show a sign of involvement, questions are conversation attributes' and Fishman says that women ask questions because of the power of these and not because of their personality weaknesses

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-DIFFERENCE - Deborah Cameron 1990 - 6 contrasts; e.g. Advice VS Understanding - suggests men like to come to a solution to a problem and impress with their knowledge whereas women like to sympathise and relate - e.g. Conflict VS Agreement - men compete for power in conversation (dominate) whereas women like to avoid conflict wherever possible (perhaps link to stimulus?)
-Deborah Cameron 1995 'males and females have normative expectations for their gender, and in different circumstances and situations, they will always fall back on it' - rhetorical questions e.g. 'Perhaps this is why men feel pressured to be powerful in all aspects of life'

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-CONC - no right or wrong answer
- Janet Hyde - more contemporary suggests that 'where there are differences, they are due to other contextual factors such as age, occupation, education...'
-Come to a conclusion of the stimulus and link to theories spoken about
-End with the same rhetorical questions as intro