Pamela Fishman (1980)

Fishman's Experiment

Pamela Fishman conducted an experiment which involved listening to fifty-two hours of pre-recorded conversations between young American couples.

Five out of the six subjects were attending graduate school; all subjects were:

• Either feminists or sympathetic to the women’s movement
• White
• Between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five

Fishman listened to recordings and concentrated on two characteristics common in women’s dialect, including tag questions for example ”you know?”

Fishman also analyses the frequent use of the phrase ”you know” used by women. ”You know” is an attention-getting device to discover if the conversational partner is listening. Fishman therefore concludes again that women’s style of communicating is not from lack of social training, but to the inferior social position of women.



She argues in interaction with the work women do (1983) that conversation between the sexes sometimes fails, not because of anything inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond or don't respond. Women ask questions to try to get a response from men, not because of their personality weaknesses.

 

Dominance Theory

 

The dominance theory states the power imbalance between men and women is due to men being dominant and controlling their interactions.

All the theorists in this field believed it was not down to inferiority of women speakers, but more the dominant style that men had. some ideas from theorists in this category suggest that compared to women, men talk for longer on average, they interrupt more and they control the language system.

Fishman focuses on some of the features of women's language considered by Lakoff but interprets them in a very different way. For example, she asserts that questions do not signal uncertainty or powerlessness, but are instead one of a variety of tools used by women as a means of keeping a conversation going.

Fishman argues that women have to do the majority of the 'conversational shitwork' when interacting with men, because men, in their more dominant role, are less concerned to do so. For Fishman the differences in male and female conversational behaviour are explained in terms of expectations - men are more dominant (linguistically) because that is what society expects.