ore informal, less clearly pronounced, and simpler. In terms of conversational patterns, it has been observed or claimed that women use more verbal «support indicators» (Like mm-hmm) than men do; that men interrupt women more than than they interrupt other men, and more than women interrupt either men or other women; that women express uncertainty and hesitancy more than men; and that (at least in single-sex interactions) males are more likely to give direct orders than females are. For nearly all of these issues of stylistic and conversational differences, there are some contradictory findings, and it seems that one must look closely at the nature of the circumstances in order to predict how men and women will behave verbally. Nevertheless, it is clear that in many circumstances, women and men tend to use language differently. Within the domain of culture, two broad classes of explanations for such gender effects have been offered:
difference theories and
dominance theories . According to
difference theories (sometimes called
two-culture theories ), men and women inhabit different cultural (and therefore linguistic) worlds. To quote from the preface to Deborah Tannen «s 1990 popularization You just don» t understand, «boys and girls grow up in what are essentially different cultures, so talk between women and men is cross-cultural communication.» [Tannen D., 1989]
According to dominance theories, men and women inhabit the same cultural and linguistic world, in which power and status are distributed unequally, and are expressed by linguistic as well as other cultural markers. In principle, women and men have access to the same set of linguistic and conversational devices, and use them for the same purposes. Apparent differences in usage reflect differences in status and in goals. The general consensus is that both sorts of explanations are appropriate to some degree, but the discussion is sometimes acrimonious and political. For instance, Tannen has been criticized by some feminist writers as a «deeply reactionary» «Apologist for men», who «repeatedly excuses their insensitivities in her examples and justifies their outright rudeness as merely being part of their need for independence.» Those who criticize Tannen in this way argue that the behavior of the men in her examples reflects a desire for domination rather rather than a different set of cultural norms. [Tannen D., 1989]
c) Children s language
To develop one s speech means to acquire essential patterns of speech and grammar patterns in particular. Children must use these items automatically during speech-practice. The automatic use of grammar items in our speech (oral and written) supposes mastering some particular skills - the skills of using grammar items to express one s own thoughts, in other words to make up your sentences.
One point in particular has become clearer: language has all the hallmarks of maturationally controlled behaviour. It used to be thought that animal behaviour could be divided into two types: that which was inborn and natural (for example, dogs naturally bark), and that which was learned and unnatural (dogs may be taught to beg). It turns out, however, that this divisi...
