3 D's

Dominance

•         Jennifer Coates
•         Coates looks at all female conversation – builds on ideas from Tannen
•         Pamela Fishman 1983
•        (Fishman) tag q’s set an agenda, disagrees with Lakoff (Fishman believes tag q’s are used to start conversation)
•         Interrogative syntax
•        “Females use tag questions to gain conversational power rather than as a sign of tentativeness”

Deficit

•         Robin Lakoff
•         ‘Language and Woman’s place’ 1975
•         No precise statistical evidence
•         Observed women’s speech        
•     Nature v nurture
•         Suggests tentative explanations
•         10 ‘women use’ explanations. E.g. women use… hedges and empty adjectives
•         Differences were socially rather than biologically constructed
•         Janet Holmes (1992) suggested tag questions are used to be polite

Difference

•          Deborah Tannen
•          ‘You just don’t understand’ 1992
•          Status v Support,  Conflict v Compromise, Independence v Intimacy etc
•          Deborah Cameron suggested language difference is a cause of situation not gender
•          Coates – all female talk is cooperative (supports the speaker)
•          Coates – women and men had different socio-cultural experiences
•          Tannen suggested women form bonds and avoid conflict