RESEÑA HISTÓRICA DE LA FACULTAD DE CIENCIAS DE LA EDUCACIÒN Y

It is important to highlight the role of gender when studying silence as perceived and practised in social settings. For this reason, the current study has selected an equal number of male and female participants to ensure gender balance. This section sheds light on the most significant theories that study the relationship between language and gender: the deficit theory, the dominance theory, and the difference theory.

44 2.8.1. The Deficit Theory

This theory considers women’s language as a deficient version of men’s language i.e. women’s language is insufficient compared with men’s language (Sadiqi, 2003, pp. 4-5). Sadiqi (2003, pp. 4-5) states that the origin of this theory is related to the medieval era. It is based on the essentialist view of the relationship between language and gender which relies on the notion of ‘Chain of Being: God above men, above women, above beasts, although many, including those who framed deficit theories, might reject this view’ (Sadiqi, 2003, p. 4). According to this theory, the dominant gender is male and thus female language is imperfect and deviant. The initiator of this theory was the Danish grammarian Jespersen (1922), who wrote of ‘women’s more limited and refined vocabulary, simpler sentence structures, and inclinations to speak before they thought, resulting in sentences that were often left incomplete’(West, 1995, p. 108). Another initiator of this theory is Lakeoff (1975), who argues that women's lower status is reflected by the language which women speak and in which they are described.

Holmes (1992, p. 314) endorses Lakeoff’s (1975) argument about gender in the following linguistic features of women’s language:

A-Lexical hedges or fillers, e.g. you know, sort of, well, you see. B-Tag questions, e.g. she’s very nice.

C-Rising intonation on declaratives, e.g. it’s really good. D-Empty adjectives.

E-Precise colour terms, e.g. magenta, aquamarine. F-Intensifiers such as just and so, e.g. I like him so much.

G-Hypercorrect grammar, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms. H-Super polite forms, e.g. consistent use of standard verb forms. I- Avoidance of strong swear words, e.g. fudge, my goodness. J-Emphatic stress, e.g. it was a BRILLIANT performance.

This study agrees with Holmes (1992) who criticises Lakeoff’s (1975) methodology, since Lakeoff made the recordings in a laboratory under artificial conditions. Lakeoff also put a screen between the speakers and most of the subjects were university students, so it is difficult to generalise from these results with respect to society as a whole. In addition, the linguistic data itself was unsophisticated (1992, p. 315). Holmes (1992, p. 315) refutes

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Lakeoff’s notion of using questions to replace the direct command. Holmes (1992, p. 315) also considers this judgement to reflect a lack of linguistic expertise. Holmes (1992, p. 315) explains that Lakeoff (1975) unifies some linguistic features which are considered as functional coherence. Lakeoff’s list was arbitrary, however, because it included expressions of hesitation or shyness (Holmes, 1992, p. 315).

According to Holmes (1992, p.315), most studies draw their statistical differences between sexes without focusing on Lakeoff’s essential notions. Holmes (1992, p. 316) divides internal functional coherence, which is identified by Lakeoff’s list of features into two functions: first, the use of linguistic devices to hedge or reduce the strength of an utterance. Second, other devices to boost or to reduce a proposition’s force.

Lakeoff (1975) argues that the employment of hedging and boosting devices is proof of an unconfident speaker. In other words, while hedging devices mark the lack of confidence of the speaker, the boosting devices symbolise the speaker’s expectation that the listener is still unconvinced. Lakeoff (1975) explains that women use hedging devices to express uncertainty and they use intensifying devices to convince their listener. Women’s boost is, therefore, an attempt to gain the attention of their addressees. As a result, ‘both hedges and boosts reflect the women’s lack of confidences’ (1992, p. 317). Holmes (1992, p. 317) avers that there is no evidence to prove the difference between men’s and women’s language, because all the studies are contradictory. Holmes (1992, p. 317) concedes that the use of hedges and boosts is not employed exclusively by women, but by both men or women who are powerless in a certain situation such as where they are a witness in a court. The main limitation of Lakeoff’s (1975) study is that it does not allow the actual interaction between males and females in certain communicative events.

In general, Lakeoff’s anticipations on gendered patterns of language use were borne out (Holmes, 1992, p. 317). Holmes (1992, p. 336) explains that sexist language is an example of the way in which the society or the culture conceals its values and attitudes from a marginalised group. That is to say, there are stereotyped attitudes towards women’s language that discriminate against women in the linguistic domain. For example, metaphors reveal more offensive images for women than for men. Holmes (1992, p. 337) mentions an example that explains this idea:

The chicken metaphor tells the whole story of a girl’s life. In her youth, she is a chick, then she marries and begins feeling cooped up, so she goes to hen parties where she

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cackles with her friends. Then she has her brood and begins to hen-peck her husband. Finally, she turns into an old biddy.

According to Holmes (1992, p.337), English morphology, like French and German, also considers a woman as a deviant. For example, in its word-structure, it takes the masculine form as the base form and adds a suffix to signal female, e.g. lion-lioness; count–countess; actor–actress. Holmes (1992) thinks that adding a female suffix to the end of a word shows women to be abnormal, deviant and superfluous (Holmes, 1992, p. 337). Her claim is that it clear that this is the nature of the language; human beings do not have a hand in this, because it is the nature of the language. It is therefore impossible to change the morphology or the semantic system of any language to avoid gender differences (Holmes, 1992, p. 337).

2.8.2. The Dominance Theory

This theory hypothesises that the dominance of men in society reflects their dominance on language, particularly in a mixed-sex conversation. However, this is not always true (See Section,5.4).The dominance model is more convincing than Lakeoff’s (1975), as it relies on empirical evidence (Sadiqi, 2003, p. 6). Power dominates the use of language in society. Zimmerman and West (1975) study a sample of white, middle class Americans less than 35 years old. They provide 31 parts of conversation, in 11 conversations between men and women. They conclude that men used 46 interruptions, but women only two. Moore (1999) argues that the men’s interruption of women reflects men’s dominance or their attempt to do so. However, interruption may not mean dominance; it may reflect desire for non- involvement in the interaction (Moore, 1999).

Another supporter of the difference theory is Poynton (1985, pp. 70-75) who posits a comprehensive difference between women and men who speak Australian English. According to Poynton (1985, p. 6), sexist language concentrates on lexical items, such as chairman; chairperson and titles Mr.; Miss. …etc. To describe gender in language, Poynton (1985, p. 6) adopts Halliday’s Systemic-Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach which proposes three language strata to describe language: first, discourse, dealing with the structure of texts. Second, lexico-grammar, or the grammar of clause. Third, phonology which is realised by speech sounds, intonation, and rhythm.

Poynton (1985) adapts the SFL approach as a model of interpretation of gender in conversation, which is based on two strata: discourse and lexico-grammar. Because this study

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deals with discourse not grammar, only the discourse stratum will be discussed. Poynton (1985, p. 6) contrasts female and male discourse as:

1-Interruption, men interrupt women, but not vice versa in mixed-sex conversation.

2-Switching pause, white males in the US have longer pauses after their turn than do white females in mixed-sex dyads, the opposite is true for blacks.

3-Topic choice, men may reject women’s topic choices in mixed-sex conversation while women will talk on topics raised by men.

4-Back-channel noises, women use (mmhmm) significantly more than men, particularly in woman-to-woman interactions.

5-Speech function (speech act), choice and realisation, men used more commands than women and tend to realise them congruently by means of the mood choice Imperatives, however, women do commands[sic] by using Interrogative, ‘would you mind closing the door? And by using a declarative clause, ‘I wonder if you would be so kind as to shut the door?’

6-Intiating conversations, women attempt to initiate conversation more frequently than men do, but they may fail because of the lack of male cooperation.

In order to discuss the perceived and practised silence in its social context, it is crucial to investigate whether women and men practise silence similarly or not. Poynton (1985, p. 4) disagrees with Freud’s comparison between males and females which was based on their biological differences. Poyntan (1985, p.4) claims that what is significant is the social identification of masculinity and femininity. In other words, gender is a social creation. To prove this assumption, we should rely on linguistics to examine how males and females practise language (Poynton, 1985, p. 4).

Poynton (1985, p. 4) outlines three consequences of this differentiation in Australian societies: first, ‘the institutionalised inequality or the inferiority of women’, that is, they are denied doing certain activities. Second, ‘the institutionalised channelling of human diversity along two and only two pathways’. That is to say, women and men have their stereotyped role in society, which assumes that men were born superior. Third, ‘the institutionalised hostility between male and female’. For instance, the aggressive attitudes of men toward women in Australia; the worst violation of female by male is rape.

2.8.3. The Difference Theory

According to the difference theory hypothesis, men and women have different styles of language. Women’s language is not the same as men’s because of cultural differences (Sadiqi, 2003, p. 9). This assumption is true, especially in Jordanian society. Sadiqi (2003, p. 9) explains that the deficit theory is based on power; the dominance theory on psychology,

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whereas the difference theory is based on inter-ethnic and cross-cultural factors. The supporters of this view are 2Maltz and Boker (1982), who argue that women and men tend to learn, as children, how to use words in conversation with their same-gender friends. The problem may appear when they try to interact with each other equally. In addition, the difference theory was also called the ‘two-culture model’, since it focuses on the notion of sociolinguistic subcultures. That is to say, boys and girls are not socialised together. They therefore learn two different sociolinguistic substructures: the male and the female substructure (Sadiqi, 2003, p. 9).This is true in Jordanian society where school education is separated, and the norms of the society do not allow males and females to socialise together. Men and women therefore have different sociolinguistic styles (See Section 5.4).The style and the language of the women are positively highlighted in the difference theory (Sadiqi, 2003, p. 9).

Sadiqi (2003, p. 10) summarises 3Tannen’s (1990) and Maltz and Boker’s (1982) notions of the difference theory as women are better conversationalists for the following reasons: ‘(i) their elicitory strategies aimed at raising the level of conversation for all participants, (ii) they sought support in language, a strategy that was basically different from men’s upmanship (cf. Tannen, 1990), and they learned different behaviours from men as part of their social differentiation from playgroups onwards’.

Summary of the Chapter

There are few studies that investigate the meanings and functions of silence in either Australian or Jordanian societies. This study was conducted to fill this linguistic gap in terms of social settings. It is therefore the first study, to the researcher’s knowledge, that investigates silence as an anti-language in its social context in both cultures. This chapter discusses two kinds of literature review: first, theoretical which includes Conversational Analysis, and turn-taking systems. Second, it uses empirical case studies that include the meanings, the types, and the functions of silence in social settings. In addition, it presents some attempts to interpret the meaning of silence in its social context. Moreover, it presents some proverbs and popular sayings about the value of silence in both Jordanian and Australian societies. Furthermore, this chapter discusses the relationship between silence and politeness theory. It also sheds light on Halliday’s notion of context of situation as an

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Cited in Sadiqi, F. (2003). Women, gender, and language in Morocco. Leiden; Boston: Brill.

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essential method of interpreting silence. In addition, it is impossible to understand silence away from its social context. It also discusses Volosinov’s notion of multi-accentuality and its applicability to silence. Finally, this chapter addresses three gender theories: the efficient, the dominance, and the difference theories.

Chapter Three: Methodology

This chapter introduces and contains a discussion of the methodological approach and research design best suited to examine the research questions set out in chapter one. A multi- method design is proposed in order to arrive at answers to the research questions. The subsequent section includes an illustration of the specific process of data collection, followed by an overview of the methods of data collection, the procedures, the participants, and the data analysis.