Mini Investigation into Language and Gender

The Know and the Fallout 4 trailer – Investigation into Language and Gender 

Hypothesis When looking at 2 transcripts about the same subject, one involving all women and the other all men, the men and women will follow Tannen’s difference pairs. 

-Status:     -Men - 1     -Women - 0 -Support:    -Men - 0    -Women - 0 

-Independence:    -Men - 0    -Women - 0 -Intimacy:    -Men - 1    -Women - 0 

-Advice:    -Men - 0    -Women - 0 -Understanding:    -Men - 0    -Women - 0 

-Information:*    -Men - 0    -Women - 0 -Feelings:    -Men - 2    -Women - 0 

-Orders:    -Men - 3    -Women - 1 -Proposals:     -Men - 1    -Women - 1 

-Conflict:    -Men - 2    -Women - 2 -Compromise:    -Men - 0    -Women - 0 

*as it is a news story I didn’t count this pairing in either transcript 

Key quotes Men  -“Have you heard of Nuzu” “No” - conflict -“We’re gonna be kind of down” - feelings -“I care about you Adam”- feelings and intimacy -“(2) Spoole (.) work”- status and orders 

Women -“let’s take a look and see what you think”- proposals -“but first”- orders -“come on|” “|hey come on”- conflict -“fuzzy and cute”- female topics/ baby talk 

PEE analysis According to Tannen’s difference pairings, men should prefer conflict whereas women should prefer to find compromise. In the transcript I have both men and women use conflict an equal number of times and never seek for compromise. This is shown in the male transcript with one of them saying “have you heard of Nuzu” and the other male saying “no” despite the fact that he was the one to bring up Nuzu and how they are going to talk about it. This shows that he had in fact heard of Nuzu and was only saying “no” to cause conflict between to two of them. In the female transcript they show conflict through interruptions. I would be compromise if it was co-operating interruptions but the first woman said “come on” and the other overlapped her with “hey come on” showing that she is disagreeing with her statement. One reason for the lack of compromise is because it is a news story and they are trying to raise different ideas about the game and cause conflict, not only among themselves, but also among the viewers. 

Another one of Tannen’s pairings is orders vs. proposals. In both of the transcript they both use orders and proposals. The men use three times more orders than the females though and they both use the same amount of proposals. While this does support Tannen’s pairing to an extent as they do follow the pairing, it also goes against Tannen’s theory as they aren’t exclusive in each side of the pairing. With the proposals in each of the transcripts they are referencing the audience with “let’s take a look and see what you think” in the female transcript and “you probably wanna stop” in the male one. The use of the personal pronoun “you” in each of the transcript includes the audience in the story making them more inclined to discuss the same as they are in the comment section of the video. While both of the transcripts use orders it is in a different manner in each transcript. In the female transcript she says “but first” as an order, more to move the conversation on rather than to control the other person. Whereas in the male transcript they use their orders in a more demanding and controlling way, an example of this is “(2) Spoole (.) work”. By telling him to continue working and now join in the conversation could be demeaning but it can be assumed that they are friends and that it is either playful chatter or an inside joke. 

Tannen also has the difference pairing of independence vs. intimacy which isn’t followed in these transcripts. In neither transcript independence is shown and the only time intimacy is shown is in the male transcript. In the male transcript it says, “I care about you Adam”, this admittance of care isn’t something which is stereotypical of male language and thus makes it odd. The people in this video could be friends so this admittance could be common between them but typically this declaration of feelings is something of a female trait. The person who the quote is directed to does respond with an order which is a part of Tannen’s male pairing and could also be a show of status but as explained in the last paragraph it could just be playful conversation amongst friends. 

While it is not a part of Tannen’s pairings, it is interesting to look at the difference in the language they used to describe the dog in the trailer. In the male transcript they don’t boost up the dog and even go as far to say that they have seen a better dog in a different trailer, but in the female trailer they use completely different language to describe the dog. One of the females describes it as “fuzzy and cute” which is a form of baby talk and is stereotypical of females to be on the topic of cute animals. It can also be assumed that when the female spoke this in the transcript that she changed her tone of voice to sound higher as if she was talking to a baby or animal.  

Evaluation and whether or not my hypothesis was supported There are aspects of the transcripts that do follow Tannen’s difference pairings but as a whole they don’t. The two transcripts tend to follow the stereotypically male traits more, possibly because of the topic of the videos which is video games. The rare times when female traits are used are mainly by the men rather than the females. It could be possible that these videos were lightly scripted and so the language would’ve been adapted to fit the assumed to be primarily male audience, however by the interruptions and stutter over words it can be assumed that some of the script was to be improvised. In order to get results without this restriction I could’ve recorded males and females talking about the same subject that aren’t from YouTube, but this could be affected by the ‘observer’s paradox’. 

Apprentice transcript and analysis

A: I was the project manager I lost money (.) but the reason I lost money and I could’ve made a fortune in that shopping centre this morning|

B: |yep|

A: | if we’d started this |morning

C: |could’ve |could’ve

A: | because I’m good at

C: could’ve yeah could’ve should’ve would’ve yeah but ya didn’t right (.)

A: no sir I didn’t 

C: no ya didn’t yeah (3) I think I’ve heard enough for me to make a very very difficult decision here today

B: Sir Alan may I say one more thing please

(3)

C: if you insist

B: I think in this whole competition if you sit back and remain quiet and under the radar (.) people assume they’re safe (.) and I’ve been bold and I know I’m vocal and that puts me|

C: | oh you have been bold alright don’t worry about that (.) I’m sick and tired of you denying all this you know (1) I’m sick of looking at ya at the moment get out that door (3) get back to the bloody house okay (.) get back to the house yeah (.) because you're gonna be the next team leader I'm sick of looking at ya at the moment get out that door and get back to the house


Notes
Despite person Cs instrumental power by the other people calling him 'sir', he doesn’t use very formal language and instead replaces 'you' with “ya”, possibly as an accent. You would expect someone who is in high power to speak formally so this is unusual to the situation. He also repeats what he says a lot as shown in his final turn where he tells person B to get back to the house a total of 3 times. Compared to person A and B who use formal language throughout excluding person Bs “yep” at the beginning of the transcript.

We can apply Brown and Levinson's politeness strategies with the bald on record strategy that person B could be implementing and how that is usually a form of power but they are sing it as someone who doesn't have instrumental power. You can also include Fairclough's unequal encounter theory as person C has more power over person A and B from the star (or when person c starts talking). You can also tentatively argue that person C is slightly flouting the maxim of manner from Grice's maxims as he repeats himself and says phrases such as, “could’ve yeah could’ve should’ve would’ve yeah” which doesn't make much sense but can be understood if you have the pragmatic understanding that it is a phrase that someone uses.

As this transcript is from a television show, we could get a recording from an actual meeting room and compare it to the language used here and see if there are any similarities. We can assume that they won't follow the exact same patterns as the television version would’ve been changed to make it more interesting but there could be similarities to explore.

You could investigate in this how someone in a position of instrumental power uses imperatives. You can compare this to the features he uses which is less formal to show how much power he has that person A and B still follow his orders.

Investigation into persuasive language in IGN tweets

-The IGN tweets used 5 AFOREST techniques across 18 tweets (1 every 3.6 tweets)
-The IGN tweets used 4 personal pronouns across 18 tweets (1 every 4.5 tweets)
-The IGN tweets used 15 hashtags across 18 tweets (1 every 1.2 tweets)

Personal prounouns
There are 4 personal pronouns in total but they aren't all inclusive towards the audience, only 25% are when they used the inclusive "your". The other 75% they chose to use "we" but in an exclusive manner and uses the "we" in reference to themselves as an organisation.

Hastags
The amount of hashtags used is between 0-3. There was one tweet which was an anomaly since it had 3 hastags where the other tweet only had about one or two.

Organisations use influential power via twitter to generate trust for their site
Support the hypothesis
-It's all click bait - gives you enough information to get a rough idea but not enough information to give you the whole picture
-Does use persuasive techniques to draw attention to their site, such as AFOREST and hashtags
Doesn't support hypothesis
-All the tweets are very similar to one another - they all follow the same structure
-There are anomalies in the tweets and the personal pronouns vary from inclusive and exclusive

Evaluation
Conclusion
It does agree with my hypothesis to an extent but there are some features that disprove it. One example of this is the use of exclusive pronouns which were used 3/4 times when personal pronouns were used. In order to gain a wider range of results we could've used another organisation and steer away from IGNs formula. There wasn't much of a problem with the sample method as there wasn't much variety when we selected every 5th tweet. Counting was the easiest way to quantify the data as a thread as you can make decision and discuss anything in the count which is odd and why.

Romance novel extract

The wind from the ocean was a simple breeze from where she sat on the cliff. A vintage white bench a safe enough distance from the end but close enough to see the view. The noon sunset painted the sand with a deep orange that glistened from the light, perfectly complimenting the natural beauty of the aquamarine sea. Alice pushed a strand of cherry red hair behind her head and sighed. After a day like today, she needed some relaxation.

"Alice? Are you okay?" A voice called, startling Alice to turn to her left to meet the source of the intrusion.

"D-Daniel! Don't sneak up on my like that, you scared the life out of me," Alice squeaked flattening out her yellow sun dress which crinkled when she jumped.

"I apologise, was just wondering if the pretty lady would like some company," he joked before taking the remaining spot on the bench.

Normally Alice would say no. Not because she didn't like Daniel, quite the opposite in fact. No, it was because the cliff-side was her private domain where she could go get some alone time. But, something in Daniel deep eyes convinced her other wise. The smirk he sent her after she responded sent butterflies in her chest, assuring her that she made the right choice.

"The view is beautiful," Daniel said after a pause, staring at Alice as the wind blew her hair as if it was waves.

"I know," she replied, her gaze briefly flashing to him from where it was focused on the horizon. When she saw what he was referring to a deep blush flooded her cheeks.

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

Wareing's Social Power

Wareing's social power - the power that someone has in a social circle. This can be influenced by many factors such as age and gender.

The quote, "that's nice (.) that's great (.) for you" is an example of Wareing's social power. There are many ways to gain social power within and group and one of them is through the use of comedy. By controlling the jokes in a room it allows someone to seem humorous to their social group and thus would become the centre of attention as the group would seek out entertainment. In the context of this quote it is within a group of friends, it can be assumed that they have been friends for a long time as the type of humour used was sarcasm. Sarcasm has a undertone of belittling towards a person, lowering their power to boost your own. Within a group of friends being sarcastic with one another and belittling is normal as the friends will know that they are joking and only using it as a humour technique. It is shown that this persons humour was successful and they gained attention from it due to the laugh that followed.

Language and Power - Legal transcript

Plan

Paragraph 1
-Overview of the text, explaining the context. In the court of law the barrister had instrumental power while Mr Neil is trying to gain influential power.
-“Because it is in a Scottish court…” the effect on language? Any slang? Unequal encounter?

Paragraph 2
How Mr Neil tries to gain influential power.
-The interruptions ending the barristers sentences taking away his power to add to his own.
-“[Laughing quietly]” as a form of patronising? Laughing to show that the barrister may have instrumental power but nothing that in influential, almost as if he cannot control Mr Neil.

Paragraph 3
-How the barrister has instrumental power but not influential power, the power over the witness and the judge. Link back to being interrupted and the laughing.
-The barrister uses a lot of pauses, builds up tension?
- The adverb “according to you” puts the blame on Mr Neil despite the fact that he is a witness, trying to get information? Can also be linked in with how the barrister is constantly asking questions.

Overview
Because this transcript is set in a court there is quite a distinction between the 2 people present, the barrister and Mr Neil. The barrister has instrumental power in the court as it is his job to handle the legal matter. The witness, Mr Neil, tried to gain influential power in court by taking away the barristers power. The court was Scottish so there was some effect on the language from that, the slang term “shopped you to the police” was used giving an informal undertone in a formal court of law.

PEE Paragraph
In a court of law the barrister has instrumental power over the witness in the court, which is what Mr Neil is. Having this instrumental power it means that the barrister has got to get the correct information from him. While having this instrumental power, it doesn’t automatically mean that he has influential power. The barrister is trying to persuade the judge that would be present and so would use his instrumental power over the witness to do this. One of the ways that the barrister tries to gain this influential power is through the use of pauses. The pauses build up tension and can also be used to put emphasis on certain statements. An example of this is, “this ill feeling (.) this grudge”, while the barrister repaired his wording it wasn’t because of a mistake, he was putting emphasis on the “ill feeling” buy using the harsher word “grudge” almost as if he is putting blame on Mr Neil despite the fact he is a witness. By blaming Mr Neil he is asserting his instrumental power over him by treating him as almost a ‘lesser person’. Another way that the blame is put on Mr Neil is through the adverb, “according to you”. By saying this it suggest that the rest of Mr Neil's statements are almost ‘lies’, making them redundant. By taking away Mr Neil’s influential power it builds up his own, making his argument more persuasive to the judge. The barrister main job is to persuade the judge by making a well informed case, another way that the barrister in this transcript does this is by asking Mr Neil many questions about the situation. Most of the questions that the barrister asks are repeated phrases of Mr Neil, "you can't remember whether they came to see you or not?" after Mr Neil said the he couldn't remember seeing them. This form question is patronising Mr Neil as it is only giving him 2 options to choose from even though he said that he couldn't remember, asserting his power to question and suggesting that Mr Neil is a liar.