Questions: Language and Gender

Question 1

Which approach holds that men and women grow up in different conversational subcultures, so their styles differ much as dialects do?

• A. Deficit approach
• B. Dominance approach
• C. Difference approach
• D. Universal grammar approach

Answer: (C)

The difference approach, popularized by Deborah Tannen's 1990 book 'You Just Don't Understand,' treats gendered styles as cultural differences learned in childhood peer groups. The deficit approach treats women's speech as weaker, and the dominance approach links differences to men's social power.

Question 2

Robin Lakoff's 'Language and Woman's Place' (1975) is best known for which claim?

• A. Men and women use identical styles in every setting
• B. Women's speech shows features such as hedges, tag questions, and intensifiers that convey tentativeness
• C. Gender differences in speech are mainly genetic
• D. Grammatical gender determines how speakers think

Answer: (B)

Lakoff argued that women were socialized into a style marked by hedges, tag questions, 'empty' adjectives, and hypercorrect grammar, which signaled powerlessness. Her claims drew on introspection and observation, and later empirical work tested and often complicated them.

Question 3

In many studies of language change in progress, women are found to lead men in adopting new forms.

• T. True
• F. False

Answer: True

William Labov and other variationists have reported that women often lead in many changes in progress, while also tending to use more standard forms in stable variation. Labov called this combination a gender paradox.

Question 4

Explain what researchers mean by studying gender as something people 'do' in interaction, rather than as a fixed category that predicts speech.

Model answer: Instead of assuming that being male or female directly causes certain speech features, this view looks at how speakers use language to present gendered identities in specific settings. The same person may talk differently at work, with friends, or online, and communities differ in which styles count as masculine or feminine.

This approach, often linked to the idea of communities of practice developed by Penelope Eckert and Sally McConnell-Ginet, shifts attention from broad averages to local meaning and choice.