Language and Gender Theories

Dominance
This theory suggests that men are more likely to take dominance in a conversation than women. Zimmerman and West conducted an experiment at UC Santa Barbara and found that in same-sex conversations the interruptions were spread evenly among the participants. Whereas in mixed-sex conversations the males were responsible for 96% of the interruptions. Spender also agrees with this theory saying that any interrupting woman were seen as rude. Many will argue that his theory reflects the patriarchal social order. However, Beattie criticised Zimmerman and West as they may of had one man in their experiment who frequently interrupted. Beattie conducted his own research and found that the interruptions over a 10 hour long recording was equal, with men interrupting more but so slight it's not significant. 

Difference
Tannen addresses the linguistic differences between men and woman and how they have been created form the different subcultures that they have been brought up in. Tannen argues that male and female language has 6 contrasts:
-Status vs support - Men see language as a way of asserting and gaining dominance, or preventing others from asserting on them. Women see language as a form of establishing connections. Women seek to gain support for their ideas and support others.
-Independence vs intimacy - Men seek to have independence and won't seek support as it is seen as diminishing their status. Women will strive to gain intimacy and will admit to support and closeness.
-Advice vs understanding - Men use language as a means to solve problems, whereas women would convey sympathy.
-Information vs feelings - Men will have shorter conversations that mainly concern facts. Women would have long conversations discussing feelings and emotions.
-Orders vs proposals -  Men tend to use imperatives and may prefer to hear them. Woman will often use suggestions and hidden directives. 
-Conflict vs compromise - Men will seek conflict and will use their language to resist. Women will try to find a middle ground.

Report talk and rapport talk
Tannen also looked into the report talk (men) and rapport talk (women).

Women:
-Talk too much
-Speed in private contexts
-Build relatives
-Overlap
-Speak symmertrically

Men:
-Get more air time
-Speak in public
-Negotiate status/avoid failure
-Speak one at a time
-Speak asymmetrically

However, Deborah Cameron from The Guardian wrote a article on language of men and women and criticised the stereotype that women talk more than men. She looked into 56 research studies and found that:
-34 of them said men talk more than women
-2 of them said women talk more than men
-16 of them said they talk the same amount
-4 of them said there was no clear pattern

Bibliography
http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/gender.htm#lakoff
http://www.allinfo.org.uk/levelup/enb2gender.htm
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books
http://faculty.georgetown.edu/bassr/githens/theories.htm
http://www.lancaster.ac.uk/fss/courses/ling/ling201/res/diss/2004/white.doc