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Question 4
To answer the question of whether men and women speak the same language, one must consider
which stance they will be proceeding from; sex or gender, because they do not mean the same thing.
For this essay, I will be discussing the differences in language between men and women from the
perspective of gender, as that provides fertile ground for discussion and analysis. Gender is defined as
the state of being male or female and is typically referred to in reverence to social and cultural
differences, while sex is concerned with the biological. To attempt to answer the question, I will
consider and discuss the various approaches in sociolinguistics, and these approaches include the
dominance approach, the difference approach, social constructivism and community of practice.

Dominance approach
The dominance approach, which arose during the mid to late 1970s and authored by Robin Lakoff,
states that the difference between language patterns in the two genders are caused by one gender,
namely male, dominating linguistic interaction. It is said to be a reflection of the political and cultural
domination that males similarly possess and thus manifests itself further in conversation, with female
language patterns reflecting their subordinate status in society (Lakoff, 1975). It is additionally
expressed that female language is demarcated by powerlessness and a sense of apprehension, and
commonly employs the use of mitigators and inessential qualifiers which enforces their appearance
as being weaker and lacking authority. Other traits women are said to have in their language are:

Specificity with colours (mauve, lavender)

Empty adjectives (adorable, charming, divine, nice)

Tag questions (The weather is really nice today, isnt it?)

Higher intonation with questions, expressing uncertainty

Hedges

Speaking in italics, or the use of Intensifiers (I feel so happy)

Bad sense of humour

Hyper-politeness

Hyper-correct grammar

Speaking about trivial topics

The most interesting aspect of the dominance approach however is the double bind women face
while under that system. They are criticised for not speaking like a lady, yet at the same time will be
systematically denied entry to power because of the fact they speak like a lady. Supporters of the

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dominance approach, Zimmerman and West, also added the use of interruptions and silence as being
a linguistic marker for men, stating that men silenced others and interrupted women more than
women interrupted men (West & Zimmerman, 1987). They argued that interruptions were a device
for exercising power and control in conversation (West & Zimmerman, 1983).
Immediately, one can see the cons of this approach. Chiefly, the belief that female speech is inferior
to male speech is an andro-centric view that portrays women as weak, helpless victims of a patriarchy
that forces them to act in weak, passive, irrational or ineffective ways (Freeman & McElhinny, 1996),
and this is a gross misrepresentation of reality. Another con is the fact that the research methods for
the approach were non-empirical, anecdotal and was based on generalisations.
Fellow linguists endeavoured to invalidate the claims made by Lakoff, Zimmerman and West in order
to represent reality in a more accurate fashion. Regarding interruptions, Tannen rightfully insists that
to claim that a speaker interrupts another is an interpretive, not a descriptive act (Tannen, 1994).
The tentativeness asserted to be a marker for womens way of speech is attributed to them because
of their use of hedges, which are linguistic forms such as I think, you know, Im sure, perhaps. Lakoff
claims that womens speech has more hedges than mens and stresses that women are socialized to
believe that asserting themselves strongly is not nice or ladylike, or even feminine (Lakoff, 1975, p.
54). However, after conducting a study, a researcher named Janet Holmes proved that hedges were,
in actuality, a multi-functional linguistic form and displayed certainty as well as uncertainty during
linguistic interaction (Holmes, 1995).

Difference approach
The difference approach, which arose in response to Lakoffs dominance approach, theorises that men
and women grow up in different subcultures and social organisations and that ultimately affects their
way of speech. Some linguists argue that the difference is biological where the two genders have
different rates of language acquisition and their biology causes psychological differences (H. Buffery
& Gray, 1972). An example of this would be the tendency for women to place more importance on
connecting with others, involving themselves and interdependency between people (Chodorow,
1974). Men, however, place more importance on independence and build hierarchical relationships.
Although, such claims are rebutted by most linguists and cite the differences to be the effects of
socialisation and not biology.
Social power is argued to be a reason behind differences between male and female linguistic
behaviour. The greater social power possessed by men is said to grant them domination during
interactions (West & Zimmerman, 1987). It is suggested by Deucher that members of society who lack

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power must exercise politeness in their speech (Deuchar, 1988). It could then be said that in
communities where women are the powerless members of society, their language patterns would
include more linguistic politeness during conversation. Linguists who follow the difference theory
continue to believe that the conversational style between men and women differ in the sense that
male speech is characterised by competitiveness while female speech is characterised by co-operation
(Coates & Cameron, 1988). In a study made by Coates, she discovered that in her analysis of the speech
styles of her female subjects, they displayed distinctive linguistic traits, such as gradual topic
development and positive, well placed minimal responses; a characteristic lacking in frequency in male
speech (Hirschman, 1974). Ultimately, Coates came to the conclusion that it is a target for women to
maintain their social relationships and the objective of consolidating their friendships is mirrored in
their linguistic patterns.
Speech actions, such as advice-giving, storytelling, reactions to news of issues, requesting and giving
information, compliments and gossip were examined by Tannen and she came to the conclusion that
women approached the world as people connected in a network while men approached it as people
in a social hierarchy where one is either above or below someone else (Tannen, 1990). She further
goes on to elaborate on the duality of culture for both genders and states that for men,
Conversations are negotiations in which people try to achieve and maintain the upper hand
if they can, and protect themselves from others attempt to put down and push them around.
Life, then, is a contest, a struggle to preserve independence and avoid failure.
(1990, pp. 24-25)
For women, the difference is that, to them, life is
a community, a struggle to preserve intimacy and avoid isolation. Though there are
hierarchies in this world too, they are hierarchies more of friendship than of power and
accomplishment.
(1990, p. 25)
These theories of difference all stem from the belief that differences first began in childhood where
sexes were separated for groups and for boys and girls there were different sets of rules. Girls tended
to play in exclusive, small and cooperative groups while boys tended to play in larger but similarly
exclusive groups that were organised in a hierarchy (Freeman & McElhinny, 1996, p. 240). It is
therefore argued that, similar to regional and social differences, gender differences are created in the
use of language through physical and social segregation (Rickford, 1996).

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Despite the more egalitarian view of language between genders displayed in the difference approach,
it is not without its limitations. It shows ignorance of how race, class, age and sexual orientation
interacts with language. Uchida remarks that women and men belong to many interconnected social
groups in addition to that of their own sex, and an individual is more than a woman when interacting
with others (Uchida, 1992, p. 557). Also, the assumption that the same rules apply in the world of
adults from the world of children is overly simplistic as they are completely different experiences.
Further limitations are that the difference approach does not take into account power/dominance
relations and attributes communication breakdowns solely to misunderstandings between cultures
(Kramarae & Treichler, 1990). Finally, the simplistic nature of the difference theorys single approach
omits important details and factors and distorts the end results.

Social constructionism
It became established among linguists that the dominance and difference theories had far too
significant limitations and thus their understanding of language and gender differences had to be readjusted. Eventually, a new theory was built that stated gender was crucial in the construction of ones
social identity and became more definitive through linguistic practice. This ultimately meant that
language actually had no gender and that people chose to represent themselves as masculine or
feminine through language depending on the social context. Ochs states that the linguistic features
that referentially index gender are minimal in number and that social identities are more negotiated
and constructed during interaction (Ochs, 1993). Cameron asserts that:
Linguists interested in analyzing the constitution of gender identities/gender relations need
to look beyond lexical choice. Analyse who is represented as doing what, to who is and under
what circumstances and with what consequences.
(Cameron, 1998)
The debate over whether language should be regarded and studied as its own, definitive entity was
said to only be viable if the concept of activity in which language took place was adopted, as then it
would lead to a better understanding of language representing reality (Freeman & McElhinny, 1996).
Of course, with this new language approach, it means that there is less of a focus on differences in
linguistic patterns between gender and more of a focus on their similarities. Similarly, it provides a
better understanding of how and when men and women use language to construct gender differences
in various social contexts. In addition, it is also worth noting is the power of context in transforming
meaning in language, as Hyde (2005) states that context can produce, remove or reverse gender
differences.

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Examples of this includes the belief that men interrupted more than women. This belief was likewise
held by researchers (Anderson & Leaper, 1998) until studies were performed and proved that only a
small effect size was discovered. Effect sizes for intrusive interruptions however were bigger, but the
number of gender differences had a diverse range depending on the social context (ibid). Results
suggested that there were a smaller number of interruptions between two people and the number of
interruptions within a larger group were indeed greater. Anderson and Leapers findings also revealed
that the number of interruptions increased when subjects were with friends than with strangers.
These outcomes bring to the fore the importance of context in the interpretation of results in gender
differences and language.

Community of Practice
The community of practice theory primarily stems from the social constructivist approach in the sense
that the emphasis on social context is inherited, however the difference in this theory lies in its focus
and analysis of the language being shared by an aggregate of people, or in other words, a community.
From social interaction, ways of talking, ways of doing things, beliefs and values develop and become
practices within that community and continues to structure the community socially. Of course, these
groups of people are only in subgroups determined by their own position within larger social
structures, and thus the community of practice theory provides a mediated area for local and global
analysis (Bucholtz, 1993). It then becomes apparent that this approach offers a broader analytic
sphere than the one offered by social constructivism, which just studies social activity.
How the theory of community of practice applies to gender differences can be explored through
analysing them in a specific community. The workplace is a good example for this. Studies of how men
and women interact with each other at work as well as how they assert their authority in professional
positions have been made, and this has been in order to challenge the claims made by sociolinguistic
scholars that said that there were stereotypical speech differences between the two genders. Coates
argued that gender differences based on language in the workplace enabled female alienation in
professional jobs and hampered their career progression and development (Coates, 2013). Further
beliefs about women in the workplace was that they could not communicate successfully when in a
position of power.
Despite her claims, there have been efforts to move away from the stereotype, and these efforts came
in the form of studies (Wellington Language in the Workplace Project, 1996) made to challenge
notions that women had to speak like men in order to succeed in their career as well as other genderbased notions like it. Results interestingly showed that positive feminine traits, such as having the
power to give others (the work force) sustenance, nurture their growth and care for them rather than

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follow typical masculine traits of decision-making and giving orders (Priola, 2004) were not exclusive
to women in managerial roles. Men also displayed these soft management skills in their use of
language which showed that both genders did not follow linguistic stereotypes. It also suggested that
both genders used each others language traits to become more competent managers. In a study
made by Mullany (2000), she discovered that male managers used hedges and mitigations (the
inclusive pronoun we) to reduce their speaker status; a trait commonly associated with female
language patterns. Also, both male and female bosses displayed an involvement of their staff in
decision making processes to make them feel empowered.
Holmes continues to prove that preconceived gender differences in the workplace were incorrect and
that women, as well as men, were successful and competent speakers who employed a wide variety
of sociolinguistic skills to suit whatever social context they were in:
effective communicators, both female and male, typically draw from a very wide and varied
discursive repertoire, ranging from normatively feminine to normatively masculine ways of
talking, and that they skilfully select their discursive strategies in response to the particular
interactional context
(Holmes J. , 2006)

Conclusion
The various approaches to language and gender has been discussed and I believe that men and women
indeed do not speak the same language differently. Taking a stance from the social constructivist view
of language, I agree with the notion that gender identities are constructed through language during
interaction and that we cannot fully understand the link between language and gender until we also
understand the social context in which language is performed. The community of practice approach
provides an extended awareness of that and also provides a further developed understanding of the
gender differences in language. The benefits of those two approaches are that they dont make
assertions about gender differences in language. They just attempt to challenge the ones that are
already established. The other approaches display limits in their theories, and it is evident that they
fail to understand the fact that gender and gender differences are constructs concerned with language
as well as used in it. Lastly, where language and gender is concerned, it is imperative that more
attention is paid to other social variables which could potentially affect the data being produced, so
the automatic attributing of differences between male and female speech to differences in gender
would only lead to incorrect findings.

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