Dominance Theory

Dominance Theory

Definition

Dominance Theory is concerned with the imbalance of power in a conversation between both sexes, and the power in the conversation will belong to the man. It is said that women’s language is powerless which maintains their subordinate position within society whereas male dominance is preserved in their language. The theory suggests that in conversations between men & women, men are more likely to interrupt than women. The first evidence collected that supports this was done by Zimmerman & West. They concluded from 31 extracts of conversation that men were more likely to interrupt than women because women only interrupted twice compared to the 46 interruptions made by men. Dale Spender, one of the main theorists for dominance, used the data from

Zimmerman & West to say that men interrupt to sustain male dominance in conversation.

Techniques used

Other techniques that are associated with the way different genders speak are techniques such as tag questions. It is believed that women are more likely to use tag questions in conversation than men. Lakoff believed that this showed hesitation and that women were insecure during a conversation. Also, Fishman believed that men speak for twice as long as women. Christie also suggested that there are gender differences in the pragmatics of public discourse.

Lakoff provides a list of ten linguistic features that characterizes a woman’s language. These are the use of hedges or fillers in conversations. Lakoff also believed that women used more tag questions, declaratives and interrogatives. She stated that women use more ‘empty’ adjectives such as “cute” and “charming” and that women will use specific colour terms such as “magenta” whilst a man will say it’s “purple”. Women will use more intensifiers such as “so”, “hyper correct” grammar and “super polite” forms such as euphemisms. The other two things that Lakoff found characterize women’s speech was the avoidance of swear words and stressing particular words mostly adjectives when they are speaking.

Texts Where These Techniques Are Evident

Jody: Do you want ice cream?

Andy: Before lunch?

Ian: Not me, no. I’ll have some after.

Jody: I always feel like //

Ian: // You go ahead.

Jody: No?

Ian: (…?…) totally opposite

Jody: Yes, [no]?

Andy: [Is] it self-serve?

Jody: Yes.

Andy: Get me a small dish. Thanks.

Ian: So on Monday I have to go and pick up my airline ticket in the morning

Jody: [Uh huh]

Ian: and then I’ll come over after I pick that up. Will that be okay?

Jody: Yea…What time is it? I mean…what time is the //

Ian: // anytime in the morning. They’re there from eight o’clock. What time are the movers gonna come?

Jody: Ten o’clock

Ian: Okay…well…

Jody: I think //

Ian: // I’ll just pick up my things at about…at about…uh eight thirty or nine. That should be alright.

Jody: Do you have a private class on Monday?

Ian: No…Wednesday and Friday.

Jody: Okay. I like the purple.

Ian: Yea.

Jody: Ice cream. Yea.

Andy: Grape?

Jody: Is it grape?

Andy: What else is purple?

Ian: Baskins and Robbins licorice ice cream is purple…yeah.

Jody: [Mmm]

Ian: It’s yummy, too.

Jody: This is really nice. I brought some Korean teachers…some middle school teachers here and some people were eating this. It looked really good.

Ian: That’s right…yea.

Jody: We didn’t order it at the time but I’m thinking we should’ve.

Ian: Yea…we’re wishing we’d ordered it.

Jody: Who is it you’re calling?

Ian: The phone company to cancel my phone.

Jody: I should really (…?…) Ummm…cancel your phone?

Ian: Yea.

Jody: I have to give //

Ian: // It’s laying on my mind

Techniques Used in the Text:

• Jodie asked more questions in the extract
• Jodie used back channel agreement
• The boys interrupted Jodie more than she interrupted them
• Jodie used clocked imperatives & mitigated imperatives

Real Life Texts

http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/aunt-and-uncle-agony/5696832/Should-I-stay-or-should-I-go

This particular text is from a website where a couple, an Agony Aunt and Agony Uncle,  where instead of working together to come up with advice from the both of them they each give their own advice as individuals. Not only are there obvious differences in their advice but there are also differences in the language they each use.

In terms of the context, Agony Aunt seems to be giving Tim some genuine advice without being too judgemental which is the complete opposite to Agony Uncle who opens his response in a mocking way, “ You’re ‘kind of’ having an affair?” and this continues throughout his response, “Why on earth as your parents arranging a marriage for you?”

In the Agony Aunt’s Response she used more words from a low frequency lexis such as “quandary” and “intrigue” whereas Agony Uncle used more colloquial phrases like when he referred to Tim as “dude” and the women as “chicks”. Also, Agony Uncle uses the acronym “WTF” and the F stands for an expletive which is more commonly used in male language. Agony Uncle also uses idioms to emphasise his point such as “fly the coop”. He also uses an idiom when telling Tim that he “didn’t have the balls to step up to the plate” could be considered a face threatening act and it is stereotypically a man who would threaten someone’s face.

It is possible that the purpose of this type of advice column could be to give sincere advice to someone through the Agony Aunt but also become more popular with the advice from Agony Uncle as his advice seems to be more entertaining than helpful which is suggested in his advice to Tim to use the “eenie meeny miny mo approach for ease”. On the other hand, this type of advice could just be done purely for advice but in a non-standard way with two sides - the advice you want to hear in a kind way and the naked truth phrased in a very harsh way.

Bibliography

• http://www.universalteacher.org.uk/lang/gender.htm
• http://aggslanguage.wordpress.com/womens%E2%80%99-usage-of-specific-linguistic-functions-in-the-context-of-casual-conversation/
• http://www.stuff.co.nz/life-style/blogs/aunt-and-uncle-agony/5696832/Should-I-stay-or-should-I-go

Grouping Texts Group Task - Use of Graphological Techniques

Text A - A Legal & General advertisement

Text B - Dorset Chocolate Mousse Cake Recipe

Text C - An Extract from Mr Bump Loses His Memory

Texts A, B and C use graphology features in their varying forms to convey their different purposes of persuasion, advising or entertaining and although they may not necessary to the text, they are in fact crucial.

     Interestingly, the Legal & General Advertisement uses an image of a theatre which links to where the advert appeared which was a theatre programme. The primary audience could possibly be people who frequently go to the theatre, possibly those who are older and who have more money to spend and then invest. Legal & General have chosen this type of audience because they would have the money to spend so the company would gain more revenue and by using the image of the theatre they are showing that Legal & General are interested in their interests and makes the audience feel like this is a good company to invest in because of the belief that they have the same interests.

    Contrastingly, the Recipe uses the an image of the final product to show the audience what the final product should look like if the recipe was followed correctly. 

Grouping Texts Task

Text 1 - Transcript for “Age UK” Advert

Text 2 - A Script Extract from an Episode of “Friends”

Text 3 - Transcript of the “Skittles” Advert

The transcript for the charity Age UK’s advert includes represented speech which is used to convey to the viewers their message of informing families, especially families with elderly members, that Age UK is the charity they can trust. The advert talks about how they can solve some people’s “problems” and help them with things that they would like such as being able to keep their “independence” and how to stay “active or healthy”. The charity highlight these things to show families and the elderly that there is more to helping than just simply taking them from their homes and placing them somewhere else. The advert’s primary audience are the elderly and the secondary audiences are their families and is suggested by the phrase “find the right care for you or a relative” which shows that although the information in this advert is mainly for an older audience - (their families can watch it too because it may be played during a TV programme the adults might be watching) - they may have done this because it allows for more elderly people to be aware of the charity and possibly to gain more funds for the charity because the families may donate. Similarly, by having the secondary audiences being the families of those who are older could be to help make people more aware of the charity by ending the advert with ways in which people could contact them - by “[giving] them a call, go online or pick up a leaflet” - stereotypically, the elderly may not go online to find information it may be the families who do this to gain more insight into what they can do to help. The advert’s actual last piece of speech was the declarative sentence mood “Mmmm, sponge cake”, on the one hand this could be considered spontaneous speech because it does not fit the context or the tone of the rest of the advert however, it may be cleverly scripted represented speech which has been added to the advert to lighten the mood of the advert and it is slightly humourous because it doesn’t fit possibly allowing the audiences to feel at ease and comfortable with seeking help from this particular charity.

   An extract from an episode script of “Friends” also uses represented speech which is not that surprising as it is script for a TV show with the purpose to entertain its audience. Although both texts use represented speech, the script uses it to entertain the viewers primarily through humor and by having situations their audience can relate to such as dating. Even though both texts use represented speech, there are not many other similarities other than that the script is primarily to entertain through the humourous language and that the possible humorous ending declarative of the advert transcript which may not have been the true intentions of the advert. The advert’s transcript was constructed of mainly simple sentences with a use of asyndetic listing to show that what the charity can offer is endless. On the other hand, the script was filled with questions that hopefully would evoke laughter in the audience such as “Wait, does he eat chalk?” and “Did I say that out loud?”, the questions are not only asked to create humour but because they show the audience what the characters are like and that although both these questions are funny it gives insight into the characters especially as this extract is from the Pilot episode. Also, the audience could relate to these situations especially if they have ever said anything out loud that was meant to be said in their head.

              Another advert transcript I have is the “Skittles” advert where the creators did a modern day version of the myth of King Midas where instead of turning things to gold, he turned things into skittles. This advert also uses represented speech but it has more similarities to the “Friends” script because although it is the same form as the “Age UK” advert, this text seems to be persuading the audience to buy skittles through entertainment using melodrama. This particular audience of younger children and possibly teenagers may find this advert humorous because although “Tim” may find his gift a curse because he cannot “hold [his] newborn baby boy in [his] arms”, this particular age group would find turning anything into skittles as being “awesome”. Another similarity between this text and the script is the use of questions such as “Did you feed and dress yourself this morning?”, although “Tim” uses them to evoke sympathy from “Joel” and the girl but instead evokes humour in the audience because they are aware it is not true.  

My Target of Improvement

Target: To make sure I organise my points during the planning stage of the essay and make sure I prioritise the most important, evaluative, interesting and difficult aspects of the text because they will allow me to access the top grades as long as I am tentative in the discussion of these points. 

Task: To set myself a general question on language & power and apply it to a text that will allow me to meet my target and practice the essay. I will spend longer on the plan of this essay and make sure I can pick up on the most interesting, evaluative and ambiguous aspects of the text. Also, I will spend longer at looking at the purpose of the text and having an overview of the text so I can really concerntrate on the text and the question and that I answer it.