This document summarizes Robin Lakoff's theory of women's language and debates surrounding it. Lakoff proposed that women's language features things like hedges, tag questions and intensifiers. The dominance theory from the 1980s suggested that in mixed conversations, men interrupt more than women. However, later studies by Zimmerman and West with a small sample size and by O'Barr and Atkins in courtroom settings challenged these views, finding language differences were situation-dependent rather than based on gender. Further researchers like Fishman and Tannen argued the focus should be on conversational styles between genders rather than dominance or deficiency.

1. Robin Lakoff’s Theory
Women’s language features
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1. Lexical hedges or fillers (you know, sort of, well, you see)
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2. Tag questions (She's very nice, isn't she?)
3. Rising intonation on declaratives (It's really good?)
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4. "Empty" adjectives (divine, charming, cute)
5. Precise colour terms (magenta, aquamarine)
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6. Intensifiers (I like him so much)
7. 'Hypercorrect' grammar (consistent use of standard verb forms)
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8. 'Super-polite' forms (indirect requests, euphemisms)
9. Avoidance of strong swear words (fudge, my goodness)
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2. Dominance theory
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1980’s
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This is the theory that in mixed-sex conversations men are more likely to
interrupt than women. It uses a fairly old study of a small sample of
conversations, recorded by Zimmerman and West at the Santa Barbara
campus of the University of California in 1975.

3. Research - Method
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31 conversational segments analysed
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2-party interactions recorded in public places in a University community
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Equal numbers of male-male, female-female, male-female conversations
analysed
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All were white, middle class, between 20-35 years of age

4. Research - Findings
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In cross-sex talk, men with women, the pattern of interruptions “was grossly
asymmetrical,” with men initiating 96% of the interruptions.
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The second study involved college students who were unacquainted and
randomly paired. They analysed only the initial twelve minutes of
conversation, feeling that the students would be on their best behaviour
during the process of getting acquainted. Of the interruptions in those
conversations, 75% of them were initiated by men.
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One explanation of these differences is that women talk so much that men
must interrupt to get a word in edgewise. In order to test this hypothesis,
West and Zimmerman analyzed their data to see if there was an
association between the amount of talk and interruptions.

If men interrupt because women talk so much, then it would be expected
that the interruptions would occur later in the conversations, after enough
talk has gone by for the man to feel the need to interrupt. Their analysis

5. Research - Conclusion
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As Geoffrey Beattie, of Sheffield University, points out (writing in New
Scientist magazine in 1982): “The problem with this is that you might simply
have one very voluble man in the study which has a disproportionate
effect on the total.”
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From their small (possibly unrepresentative) sample Zimmerman and West
conclude that, since men interrupt more often, then they are dominating
or attempting to do so.

6. O’Barr & Atkins
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Conducted studies during courtroom cases looking at the witnesses’
speech patterns.
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Their findings challenged Lakoff’s views of women’s language.

7. Findings
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They found that language differences are based on situation-specific
authority or power – not gender.
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They concluded that speech patterns were neither characteristic of all
women nor limited only to women.

8. Pamela Fishman – Dominance?
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Pamela Fishman argues in Interaction: the Work Women Do (1983) that
conversation between the sexes sometimes fails, not because of anything
inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond, or
don't respond. Women ask questions to try to get a response from men,
not because of their personality weaknesses.

This consisted of the paper examining male – female hierarchy in
everyday interaction. Beginning with a discussion of the concepts of
power and of conversation as negotiated activity, it suggests that
successful interaction depends on conversationalwork by the participants.
She is based at the University of California , Santa Barbara.

9. Fishman’s research
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Pamela Fishman conducted an experiment that involved listening to fiftytwo hours of pre-recorded conversations between young American
couples. All were white, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five.
Fishman listened to recordings in their apartments and concentrated on
four features.

10. Fishman’s features
Feature
Questions (inc. tags)
Attention-getters
Minimal responses
Topic initiation
Males
Females

11. Difference Model
 Deborah
Tannen said that since males and
females grow up so differently, communication
between the sexes is similar to communication
between two entirely different cultures.
 The
feminine and masculine styles of speech
are like two different regional dialects.
 Tannen
explains why a woman and a man can
walk away from the same conversation with
completely different ideas of what was said.

12. Differences between men and
women
 Men
and women have different aims in
conversation.
 Women
 Men
want intimacy
want independence.

13. Men vs. Women
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Status vs. support
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Independence vs. intimacy
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Advice vs. understanding
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Information vs. feelings
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Orders vs. proposals
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Conflict vs. compromise

14. Male styles of talking
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Contrary to popular belief, men are not trying to dominate women in
conversation (even if that might be what ends up happening)
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Men are concerned with status. When telling stories, they will try to impress
their friends or “one-up” them.
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Men try to preserve their negative face

15. Female styles of talking
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Women are not trying to manipulate men when they talk to them.
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Women seek human communication
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Women want to be liked and are concerned about their positive face

16. 
For women, conflict is a threat to communication
and is often avoided.
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When telling stories about themselves, women will
often display themselves as clumsy or foolish so that
she doesn’t imply that she is better than the people
she is talking to.
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Women display a co-operative overlap and
engage in a lot of backchannel behaviour while
listening to others.