Gender and discourse

The "dynamic" or "social constructionist" approach

The "dynamic" or "social constructionist" approach is, as Coates describes, the most current approach to language and gender. Instead of speech falling into a natural gendered category, the dynamic nature and multiple factors of an interaction help a socially appropriate gendered construct. As such, West and Zimmerman describe these constructs as "doing gender" instead of the speech itself necessarily being classified in a particular category.  This is to say that these social constructs, while affiliated [əˈfɪlɪeɪtɪd] with particular genders, can be utilized by speakers as they see fit.

The study of genderlect and differences between men’s and women’s language have been one of the hot debates for many scholars. Several researchers using psychological and sociological findings and believes proposed quite intense claims on women’s language such as Trudgill /ˈtrʌdɡɪl/;  (1972), Lakoff (1973), Bradley (1981), etc. Women have been considered as irrational, [ɪˈræʃnəl] emotional and subordinate gender compare to men, who are reckless, confident and dominant in either social or psychological domains. Meanwhile some studies like Brown (1980) explained the phenomenon differently and criticized the previous claims and social labels.

According to Braun (2004), men:

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  use more directives;
  
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  behave more competitively in conversations;
  
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  talk more colloquially and make greater use of dialect;
  
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  less grammatical and more elliptic;
  
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  less emotional, more factual use a greater amount of locatives and terms relating to quantity
  

Danish linguist yens orro herry yespersen Otto Jespirsen (1922) published a set of ideas about women’s language:

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  women use half-finished sentences because they speak before they
  
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  have thought about what they will say
  
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  women link sentences with ‘and’ because they are emotional rather
  
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  than ‘grammatical’
  
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  women use adjectives such as ‘pretty’ and ‘nice’ too much. They are
  
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  also fond of saying ‘so pretty’ and ‘so nice’
  
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  women use adverbs too much and tend towards hyperbole
  
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  women have a smaller vocabulary than men – the words they use are
  
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  the ‘indispensable small change of a language’
  
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  women know their smaller vocabulary so well that they are more
  
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  fluent in speaking and less hesitant than men
  
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  novels written by ladies are much easier to read and use fewer
  
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  difficult words
  
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  women often gain spoken mastery of foreign languages more easily
  
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  than men, but when put to the test in translating a difficult text, men
  
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  prove superior