Quick questions on Language and gender: deficit, dominance, difference, diversity - OCR A-Level English Language

The models form a sequence, each responding to the last, and naming the researcher and claim precisely is the AO2 foundation.

Gender questions on media texts often ask about representation: how a text constructs men and women through lexis (naming asymmetries, connotations), grammar (transitivity) and presupposition, and what attitudes the construction normalises. This applies the representation skill to gender critically.

"The female speaker's frequent tag questions ('that's right, isn't it?') look, on Lakoff's deficit model, like markers of tentativeness, but the context complicates this: she is chairing the meeting, and the tags draw quieter colleagues in and check shared understanding, a facilitative rather than powerless use. The data thus supports Cameron over Lakoff: the feature's meaning is set by role and situation, not gender, and reading it as 'women's language' would misdescribe it."

"The article's naming is asymmetrical: the male executive is referred to by surname and title, the female by first name and appearance, constructing the man as a professional and the woman as a personality. The transitivity reinforces this, with the man as agent of business verbs and the woman as object of evaluation, normalising a gendered hierarchy of seriousness." This analyses the construction critically.

What does Lakoff's deficit model claim, and what is its main weakness? [2 marks]

What is Cameron's main critique of the earlier models? [2 marks]

Evaluate the view that men and women use language differently, with reference to data and relevant research. [16 marks]