Theories

The dominance approach sees women as an oppressed group and interprets differences in women's and men's speech in terms of men's dominance and womens subordination. Researchers and theorists taking this view include Robin Lakoff (1975), Dale spender (1980) and Zimmerman and West (1983). Deborah Cameron in verbal hygiene (1995) argues that theorists like Lakoff and Spender see gendered language in terms of power and powerlessness for this reason: throughout Western culture the masculine/male has been the unmarked norm in language, the feminine/female the marked form. However, the marked forms are politically incorrect.

The difference approach sees women as belonging to 'different sub-cultures', who are differently socialised from childhood onward, and who may therefore have different problems in communication and culture. Deborah Tannen (1989) is an exponent of this position. Tannens view also identifies gender differences in terms of competitiveness (male) and co-operative (female).

Cameron challenges the whole idea that there are two different and contrasting languages for men and women, argueing that this is a deficit model approach (one language is inferior to the other). She asks whether gender alone is at the end of individual identity- is the term genderlect more precise or less than idiolect. 

The way women (or men, or men and women) talk in a variety of situations (casual conversation, service encounters, occupational contexts etc) may reveal the effects of disempowerment or may signal the effects of other variables, including socio-economic status, education, context, peer group, even personality.

Jennifer Coates (1993) identifies two approaches which she describes as dominance and difference:

• Patriarchal society 
• Male dominated world
• Males dominate positions of power
• 51% women

Instrumental power- explicit power of the sort imposed by the state, by its laws and conventions or by the organizations for which we work. It operates in business, education and various kinds of management.

Influential power- the power to have an important effect on someone or something. If someone influences someone else, they are changing a person or thing in an indirect but important way.

Institutions of power

• Government- instrumental
• Media- both
• Family/parents/friends- both
• Schools/colleges- both 
• Role models/celebs- influential 
• Royal family- instrumental