Gender Research

Deborah Cameron - Discursive Model
One of the more recent theories relating to Gender is Cameron's discursive model; she believes that men and women do not use language differently, and that belief is one of the 'greatest myths of all time'. One of her famous quotes is that 'your genes don't determine your jeans'; by this, she believes that we 'do' gender, meaning we change our language based on the situation we are in. Men use female connotations when, for example, talking to a baby, and women are believed to use men's usual language when, for example, talking in a role of a manager or high in the hierarchy of the workforce.


O'Barr and Atkins
This pair of theorists believe that gender does not influence the way people speak, it is more the situation you are in, and relates to the power held in a conversation. Their evidence comes from 30 months of research in courtroom cases; in particular, a numerous amount of men and women were extensively studied, and neither of them spoke characteristically like their respected sexes, showing that there is no real connection between gender and language.
Opposing to Lakoff's deficit theory , they believe that after studying a wide range of women's language, there wasn't a substantial use of  Lakoff's ideas of women using stereotypical women's language traits such as hyper-correct grammar and intensifiers.


Pamela Fishman against the Deficit theory
Fishman's book 'Work Women Do' reveals her belief that conversations between different sexes fail; this is not however because of women's 'abnormal or deficient' language, but because men have ways of responding unbeknown to women. She also explains that Lakoff's belief that 'women asking questions shows insecurity' is wrong, rather it shows an attribute of interactions, showing power.


Geoffrie Beattie's evidence that challenges Zimmerman and Wests'
Compared to Zimmerman and West having 55 experiences of interruptions occurring between an unrepresentative, small sample size, Beattie has evidence of 10 hours of  tutorial discussions, totalling 557 interruptions where the frequency difference between men and women interrupting was just 0.3% (men - 34.1%, women - 33.8%) along with the fact that this is a much larger sample size, the difference in frequency is not enough to make the judgment that men interrupt significantly more than women.


John Grey - Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus
John Grey's book relays the point that men and women try to diverge with each-other when communicating, and overall claims that:
Language and communication matters more to women than it does to men;
Women talk more than men (opposing the Zimmerman and West theory) and overall have better verbal skills than men;
Men aim to 'get things completed' when using language, compared to women wanting to make connections with people;
Men's language is of a competitive nature, whereas women's consists of wanting to cooperate with people.
Grey believes that all of these factors lead to a miscommunication between men and women, linking to Fishman's idea that conversations between the sexes fail.


Mary Beard
Mary Beard believes that vocal women are not treated the same as vocal men, claiming the females are treated completely wrong; she believes that men are allowed to appear vocal because they come across as a 'deep voiced man with connotations of profoundity' compared to females voices not being linked in any way to authority.