Evaluate the idea that spoken language interactions between men and women are characterised by miscommunication (30 marks)

 Many theorists have debated the characterisation that miscommunication, the failure to communicate adequately, has on language interactions between men and women. In society, miscommunication occurs through speech where certain characteristics men and women use in their language can be interpreted differently by the opposite gender. Due to socialisation, men and women want to speak about contrasting topics and this can cause accidental miscommunication leading to many theories evolving surrounding it. 

Robin Lakoff (1975) developed the deficit model and believed women spoke a 'lesser' version of the English Language and that men's language is more desirable. Her list of women's language features, including tag questions (isn't it?), hedging (perhaps) and intensifiers (so), create confusion that makes men feel as though a woman is attempting to manipulate him by delaying her request when in fact, according to Lakoff, she is simply looking for support and the chance to form relationships. This is shown in The Secret Life of Four-Year-Olds that even from a young age, girls use ‘softer’ language such as tag questions (“This is fun, isn’t it?”) and boys use direct imperatives (“Give me that.”). O'Barr and Atkins agreed with Lakoff, supporting her ideas of language however, they discovered that this language was also found in men of a lower class, suggesting that they are also insecure of their speech. Because of their discoveries, O'Barr and Atkins decided to rename it 'powerless language' to include both men as well as women, however, this then defies interaction being defined by miscommunication between genders as both genders can miscommunication to their own by use of this powerless language. This can be shown through portmanteaus, usually considered women’s language that has been adopted by many people into modern English. Words such as “workaholic” are used by both men and women in daily speech, suggesting that Lakoff’s theory stretches beyond just women. Cameron and Coats, another pair of English Language theorists, focused solely on tag questions together and pointed out that women deviate less from the prestige norms in every social class in modern urban societies. This meant that because women could not gain status from simply doing domestic roles, they used their language to acquire status by changing their speech patterns in the direction of standard speech, which was mainly tag questions. Cameron and Coats believe this form of their language could easily be miscommunicated, as men could understand this as a way for women to monitor their agreement and to manipulate them into agreeing. This suggests that gender is more of a construct than essence and that socialisation is behind the differences such as men viewing women as simply trying to control them. Therefore, the miscommunication between men and women is down to the way the genders view one another. 

The dominance theory, suggested by Zimmerman and West, said that the English Language helps women in their lower hierarchal place compared to men. Zimmerman and West found with their research that men interrupted women 96% in conversation, allowing them to draw the conclusion that men dominate the conversation and women play a passive role when speaking to them. This dominance in speech can cause miscommunication as men could be considered by women to be rude, forwards and demanding, and whilst women are often looking to create relationships, men’s interruption of them isn’t compatible with this. However, despite their findings, Zimmerman and West have been disputed by other theorists for their representation of gender. An example of this is Donald Trump and Hilary Clinton’s debates for the American election 2016. Clinton was constantly interrupted by Trump, despite her answering questions or simply having a point to speak, reflecting the dominance that men feel they have proven by Zimmerman and West’s theory. People believe that they may have simply had an overtalkative man and that the study was too niche, consisting solely of eleven conversations between white middle-classed people. Geoffrey Beattie (1982) disputed Zimmerman and West and believed their study had included a talkative man which had a disproportionate effect on the results. He also questioned the idea of the dominance theory and whether interruptions really reflected dominance and re-did Zimmerman and West’s study more thoroughly, using 10 hours of conversation with 557 interruptions (compared to Zimmerman and West who only use 55 interruptions). He found that women interrupted with a similar frequency to men (men: 34.1, women: 33.8) and that the difference was not enough to show gender linguistic differences but more the societal differences between people. Pamela Fishman, another theorist for the dominance model, agreed with Lakoff’s ideas on the female language with tag questions: that women use tag questions four times more often than men. However, she drew a different conclusion: that questions are used by females to start a conversation and to continue the dialogue, drawing from Maltz and Borker’s theory that women simply want to form relationships (boys want status, girls want intimacy). Fishman calls this ‘conversational shitwork’ as it seems to be the woman’s job to continue the conversation as she accepts that this idea of tag questions is down to male dominance and that men are reluctant to do this ‘shitwork’ due to their dominant role. Her views suggest that miscommunication is not only based on gender but also on the societal expectation that is put upon women to create relationships for themselves. 

Another model is the Difference model when men and women naturally differ due to biological differences which leads to miscommunication. Deborah Tannen outlined that there are six different functions of language in which men and women differ. She found that men dominate the conversation and interrupt more frequently, despite them believing that women speak more. With independence vs. intimacy, Tannen found that men prefer to be by themselves and have ownership over tasks whereas females prefer to be part of a wider group which can lead to miscommunication. This is shown in The Secret Life of Four-Year-Olds where two girls were talking to one boy standing on a small hill. The boy was trying to assert dominance over the girls, despite being alone and the girls were conversing together rather than individually. Information vs. feelings suggests that men’s talk is goal-orientated whereas woman’s is about emotions and supporting each other. This links to Maltz and Borker’s views that males want hierarchy and to be considered ‘the best’ whereas females prefer to form close bonds which makes them feel more secure (e.g hedging, backchannelling which appeals to Goffman’s positive face, an examination of how an individual protects their personal identity if they depart from an approved standard of conduct, behaviour, or appearance). As well as this, order vs. proposals when men simply demand what they want/need when women instead will hedge their requests (Lakoff), leading men to think it is a manipulation tactic. This causes miscommunication as both men and women interpret each other’s speech differently due to their biological responses and the theory supports the idea that gender is an essence. Tannen’s theory explains male/female miscommunication by claiming that male/female speech is cross-cultural communication. Her theory is scrutinised by Janet Hyde (2005) who developed her own view on the theory, the diversity model. Hyde discovered, through results of 46 meta-analyses, that men and women are not as psychologically different as people think and that the differences simply come from sociological contrasts not specifically linguistic ones. She believes that social context is a much larger influence on miscommunication (e.g. occupation) than gendered linguistic choices. Hyde embodies that the diversity model’s external social factors are more important to consider. 

In conclusion, miscommunication is an issue between genders due to their sociological differences, presented by Lakoff with her list of female language differences. However, not enough research has yet been done to conclusively determine what affects the miscommunication between men and women as their biological differences play a part in the miscommunication between genders too. More up-to-date research must be done to conclude the evidence given and to present the spoken language between men and women being characterised by miscommunication. 

Teacher Comments: Clear understanding of the question set out in contextual knowledge. Lots of criticalities. The interweaving of theorists in this paragraph (paragraph 1) is great! An exceptional amount of depth. If this was in an exam I'm sure you would get full marks. I am wary of how long this took you however? (30/300