Pamela Fishman (Dominance Model)

Pamela Fishman researched women's language by listening to prerecorded conversations. She found that women used a lot of tag questions such as "you know?" and "couldn't we?" and "you know?" following thoughts or suggestions. She argued that women use these questions to gain power and control of a conversation, rather than a lack of confidence and need for validation. She also says that these types of questions are needed when females are speaking to males as men often do not respond to declarative statements or reply very minimally.

She stated that the phrase "you know" was a conversational device used to discover whether the person they are speaking to is listening and is inviting the listener to respond.

Women used four times more tag questions than men did.

Pamela Fishman disagrees with Lakoff and says that women use these tag questions to try to continue the conversations. She suggests that women do all of the work in the conversation and sometimes interactions fail not because of the inferior position of women, but because of the lack of cooperativeness from the men.

Because men are more dominant they are less concerned with the "conversational shitwork" because society expects them to be more laid back.

Homework no.1

The Rise of First Wave Feminism,

·         First wave feminism is feminist activity in and around the 19^th and 20^th century.

·         This movement focused on women’s right to vote, and feminists were more commonly known as suffragettes.

The Effects of First Wave Feminism,

·         Due to feminists campaigning for their rights laws were changed. The first law change to benefit women’s wellbeing recorded was in 1809 in the USA, the law allowed married women to make a will.

·         The first significant change in England was made when a group called the Langham Place Circle campaigned for women’s rights in the workplace and education.

·         In the UK, women were given the right to vote in 1928.

The Rise of Second Wave Feminism,

·         Second wave feminism began in the early 1960’s in the USA.

·         This movement then spread through the western world and lasted until the early 1980’s.

·         Second wave feminism broadened the spectrum of issues feminists were focused upon, instead of being focused on women’s rights to vote.

·         They argued that the way women were portrayed in the media was limiting the life chances that women had.

The Effects of Second Wave Feminism,

·         Laws were changed and introduced due to second wave feminism, for example the Equal Pay Act was introduced.

·         This also made a lot of new job/career options available to women as people hiring couldn’t be discriminatory.