Pamela Fishman
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, were 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?” Experiments The dominance theory States the power imbalance between men and women is due to men being dominant and controlling in their interactions. Dominance theory-Fishman 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. 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 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. Fishman begins by examining the use of tag questions being asked and states that women frequently use tag questions ‘isn’t it?’ or ‘couldn’t we?’ following a thought or suggestion. For females questions are an effective method of beginning and maintaining conversations with males. Fishman argues that women use questions to gain conversational power rather than from lack of conversational awareness. She claims that questioning is required for females when speaking with males; men often do not respond to a declarative statement or will only respond minimally. argues in Interaction: 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.
