The Dominance theory (1975)
Robin Lakoff
The Dominance theory says that in a mixed gender
conversation, men are more likely to interrupt than women. Lakoff tries to get
away from the deficit theory (which says female language is weak in comparison to
the male language), and instead consider men’s language as dominant, but still,
not better than the female language. However; Lakoff says that women lack
authority, seriousness, faith in themselves and principle.
Some of the ways women’s language may be perceived as being
the; are techniques such as tag questions, these are questions that follow a
declarative sentence, for example: ‘This is nice, isn’t it?’ or ‘I should, shouldn’t
I?’, fillers, such as words like ‘um’ or any break in the text filled with a
verbal noise which usually has no meaning-for example ‘I think you should, um,
urrrr…’, intensifiers, this is words like ‘very’, ‘completely’, ‘better’ etc…
Anything that puts emphasis on the meaning or phrase, in context; ‘isn’t she
very pretty’ and ‘I completely understand’, hypercorrect grammar: using grammar
incorrectly to perhaps look better, formally or intellectually and hedging,
which is things that weaken a sentence, and therefore make it lack in authority
or declaration and show query, for example ‘I suppose I can’ or ‘I sort of can’
Here is an advert with a tagged question: http://www.printwand.com/blog/media/2013/08/example-advertising-question-with-answer.jpg
If this was used in woman’s language, according to Lakoff it
could be considered a sign of weakened language compared to men’s. But in this
advert it clearly is thought provoking and effective. The question at the end; ‘don’t
they?’ perhaps makes parents (who I think are the target audience of this
advert) think and reminisce about either children they have who have grown up,
or young children and thinking about their future. This doesn’t show weakness,
but that they are looking for you to think about the topic they are introducing,
and getting the audience involved.
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