Intro Intro: Who am I? Who are you? The nature of this course and various courselike business  Syllabus, etc. - Also, I will try to pull together a panel of guests TBA  Groupwork (ugh!)  Maybe change the assignments? Slide 1

Intro The Pros and Cons of Learning Baby's Sex Should you find out if you're expecting a boy or a girl? By Julie Weingarden Dubin and Karin A. Bilich Some parents can't wait to learn the sex of their baby. Others are content to wait until their baby makes its grand entrance. Here are the pros and cons of finding out your baby's sex: Reasons to find out:  You only have to agree on one name  You can buy sex-specific clothes  You can decorate the nursery  You can better prepare for events after baby's birth, such as scheduling a bris (a Jewish circumcision ritual)  You may feel more connected to your baby  It may make the baby seem more real  It helps assure you that everything is okay Reasons to wait:  The surprise can be exciting  The last few weeks of pregnancy may be more bearable not knowing  You could have fantasies about a baby of either sex  It's the way people have been doing it for centuries  It might annoy your relatives! But what if you and your partner can't agree? One solution is for one partner to learn the sex and not tell the other. Or find out together and keep it a secret from the rest of the world. Either way, you'll find out the sex of your child sooner or later, so stop worrying and enjoy your pregnancy.

Intro What would you expect to study in this field?

Intro Do men and women speak the same? Assumptions behind this question: There is linguistic variation There is an expected (binary) difference between men and women in general There may be a difference between men and women’s speech

Intro What are some stereotypes about the way men and women behave? Game MEN aggressive Rational powerful strong confident stubborn Direct/assertive Bad listeners Not emotional - detached Sports freaks WOMEN Passive / aggressivefeminine Irrationaldelicate Hysterical Moody Nurturing Care-taker / care-giver Intuitive Spiritual Talkative / gossipy Nagging Bread winner Problem solver Math doer Bug killers Good driver Hard worker masculine

Intro You tube video about kids and a marshmallow What does this have to do with Gender and Language?

Intro What are some stereotypes about the way men and women talk? MEN loud Brief/blunt/to the point Mumble/no enunciate manipulative (direct) Non-emotional content/Fact-based content 1 st person experiencesswearing Gruntlower classes talk less correct Lower voices/deeperargumentative Literal meaningmen don’t talk Confidence in statementexaggerate Boastfuldominating conversation WOMEN Do interruptbaby-talk expressive Tangential (going off topic)3 rd person exp Superficial more standard Mumble/speak softlyclass? Chatty Cathybigger vocab Gossipelegant Exaggeratemanipulative (indirect) Laugh/smile self-effacing Cooperative/diplomatic2-faced/catty High rising intonationhedging

Intro What are some stereotypes about the way men and women talk? Robin Lakoff, 1975, “women’s language”  Tag questions  Rising intonation for declarative statements  “Empty” adjectives (divine, lovely)  Specialized women’s vocabulary (color terms)  Frequent use of emphasis (“speaking in italics” - What a beautiful hat)  Intensive so (You are so fired)  Politeness devices and hypercorrect grammar (women use more standard language; more indirect requests)  Hedges (well, like, sort of)  Women don’t tell jokes

Intro Some empirical evidence Discourse Studies  Many studies have looked at the idea that women talk more than men  James & Drakich, review of all these studies found that in only 2 of 63 studies that women talked more than men.  Many studies have looked at interruption  James & Clarke, review of these studies shows that men interrupt others more than women and that specifically, men interrupt women more than women interrupt men  Both areas or study have some methodological issues involved so not all studies use the same definitions of amount of talk and interruption  Exploring Language article by Janet Holmes (also in Lang Myths) explores myth that Women talk too much

Intro Different perspectives (lenses) of data analysis Dominance (1970s and 1980s)  Interprets the differences between women’s and men’s linguistic usage as reflexes of the dominant-subordinate relationship holding between men and women.  Zimmerman & West, shows that men interrupt women (even if women are doctors) and directly link this interruption to dominance based on sex of the interrupter and the interrupted  Interprets women’s language as usage tied to lack of dominance (leads to a deficit approach)

Intro Different perspectives (lenses) of data analysis Difference (Celebrate the difference!) (1980s and 90s)  The differences between women’s and men’s linguistic usage as arising from the different subcultures in which women and men are socialized  Arose after dominance model became a deficit model (using men’s language as a standard to which women’s was compared)  Maltz & Borker, Linguistic behavior of men and women based on different subcultures and what is appropriate for those subcultures - like intercultural communication when men and women are talking together  Tannen utilizes this approach  With respect to aggressive verbal behavior like interruption, the difference approach suggests that women tend to take overt aggressive behavior as a personal attack, while men view it as a conventional organizing structure for conversational flow

Intro Different perspectives (lenses) of data analysis Power  O’Barr & Atkins, show that the features outlined by Lakoff as “women’s language” were used by witnesses not by gender, but by degree of power (expert versus non-expert witnesses)  West, shows that female doctors were interrupted by their patients more than male doctors  Problems with “power” analysis is that women’s language features intrinsically defined as powerless - could have other meanings  When female doctors are interrupted by male patients, is this performing power or is it simply performing gender-based behavior?

Intro Different perspectives (lenses) of data analysis  All approaches have problems  Difference approach does not talk about issues of power or dominance  Dominance approach can devalue women’s language and essentially define women’s language as powerless

Intro Language and Sexuality  How is sexual orientation identity revealed in our speech?  Sounding gay and sounding lesbian  The sex/gender difference in transsexuals/transgendered persons  Can you tell the sexual orientation of someone without even seeing them?