Gender and discourse

Dominance approach

Early research that regards imbalance of power as a main factor toward gender speech differences can be attributed to Robin Lakoff and her influential work “Language and Woman’s Place” (1975). In this book she prompted the “Dominance” approach, which assigns language variances [ˈve(ə)rɪənses] between men and women to the dominance of men within society. Although relying heavily on personal observation and later criticized for its feminist bias [ˈbaɪəs] and lack of empirical [ɪmˈpɪrɪk(ə)l] research, the approach created an initial theoretical framework which was argued and expanded by future researchers.