Are men really from Mars and women from Venus?
The media nowadays highlights three main theories that discuss how men and women use language differently. The deficit model, the dominant model and the difference model.
The deficit model was founded by Robin Lakoff, Language & Womens place (1975). Robin provided a vision for language theories and researchers to come. She says in her theory that women are more polite and have a poorer sense of humour than men. Lakoff noted that there was specific linguistic and discourse patterns that marked powerlessness of women arguing that women are putting themselves in the position of a subserviant to men. Examples of these features are things like answering a question with another question and super polite forms.
This model is extremely controversial as it was made over 40 years ago when at the time females were only just breaking away from the stereotype that women were slaves to men. It is also hard to eliminate the personal factors that would impact language for example confidence when speaking. Lakoff's remark about humour is much harder to relate to just gender, as people have a huge range of what they would class as funny to someone else who would have a completely different ideas of what is humour.
A contradictory view point of the deficit theory is the work done by William O'Barr and Bowman Atkins in 1980. They analysed courtroom cases and witnesses' speech. The results that they found challenges Lakoff's view on women's language. In researching what they describe as 'powerless language' they show that linguistic patterns depend on the situation, specific authority or power, not gender.
The dominance model was founded by Zimmerman and West in (1975). They found that men interrupt conversations more than women. They found that within 11 conversations between men and women, men interrupted 46 times compared to women only twice. They conclude that since men tend to interrupt more they are dominating or at least trying to dominate.
As a contradiction to this Geoffrey Beattie points out that there may have been one loud man who had a disproportionate effect on the total of interruptions. As he completed his own research and analysed 10 hours worth of conversation and found that men and women interrupt with more or less equal frequency. Beattie then carries on to question that since when do the amount of interruptions reflect the dominance of someone? Do some interruptions reflect acknowledgement and interest rather than dominance?
The difference model was made popular by Deborah Tannen in 1990 through her book 'You Just Don't Understand'. The difference theory states that men and women belong to different subcultures, this approach avoids blaming or being prejudiced towards men or women, it merely suggests that they communicate differently. She has come up with a series of 6 contrasts which are: Status vs support, Independence vs Intimacy, Advice vs understanding, information vs feelings, orders vs proposals and conflict vs compromise.
In status vs support the difference approach suggests that men seek to achieve dominance over others in the conversation whereas women prefer supporting and giving conformation to the others.
In independence vs intimacy the difference approach suggests that men are focused on keeping their place in the hierachy so refuse to ask if things are okay with their significant other whereas women indulge in the fact they console with their partners as a sense of intimacy.
In advice vs understanding Tannen suggests that men would try and find a solution to the problem whereas women would give emotional support and stability.
In information vs feelings the difference approach suggests that men only talk about informative subjects and that there conversations have a meaning behind them whereas women talk more about feelings and things that are not instructions or facts.
In orders vs proposals men would tend to use direct imperatives when women say "shall we.." and "lets.."
In conflict vs compromise Tannen suggests men will announce their problem vocally whereas women would comply but complain a substantial amount.
Koenraad Kuiper in 1991 suggested with evidence that many men use insults as a way of expressing solidarity with one another whereas women would be more focused on saving face and not hurting each other.
The argument of if men speak differently to women will always continue no matter what theories people come up with. There will be no physical end to the disagreement in the foreseeable future.
