Robin Lakoff

Robin Tolmach Lakoff
Born (1942-05-24) May 24, 1942
Brooklyn, NY
Residence Berkeley, California, United States
Nationality United States
Fields Sociolinguistics
Language and gender
Institutions University of California, Berkeley
Alma mater Radcliffe College
Indiana University
Harvard University
Known for Language and gender
Spouse George Lakoff (divorced)

Robin Tolmach Lakoff (/ˈleɪkɒf/, born November 27, 1942) is a professor of linguistics at the University of California, Berkeley. Her 1975 book Language and Woman's Place is often credited with establishing language and gender as an object of study in linguistics and other disciplines.[1][2][3]

Biography

Lakoff was born in 1942 in Brooklyn, NY. She earned a B.A. at Radcliffe College, a M.A. from Indiana University, and a Ph.D. from Harvard University. She was married to linguist George Lakoff.[4] She has taught at University of California, Berkeley, since 1972.

While an undergraduate at Radcliffe College (in Cambridge, MA), Lakoff audited Noam Chomsky's classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), and became connected to the MIT Linguistics Department. During this time, as Chomsky and students were creating Transformational Generative Grammar, Lakoff and others explored ways in which outside context entered the structure of language.[5]

Lakoff is a regular contributor to the Huffington Post.[6]

Lakoff received national attention for an opinion piece in TIME titled "Hillary Clinton's Emailgate Is an Attack on Women".[7]

Language and Woman's Place

Lakoff's work Language and Woman's Place introduces to the field of sociolinguistics many ideas about women's language that are now often commonplace. It has inspired many different strategies for studying language and gender, across national borders as well as across class and race lines.[3]

Her work is noted for its attention to class, power, and social justice in addition to gender.[8]

Lakoff proposes that women's speech can be distinguished from that of men in a number of ways (part of gender deficit model), including:

  1. Hedges: Phrases like "sort of", "kind of", "it seems like"
  2. Empty adjectives: "divine", "adorable", "gorgeous"
  3. Super-polite forms: "Would you mind..." "...if it's not too much to ask" "Is it o.k if...?"
  4. Apologize more: "I'm sorry, but I think that..."
  5. Speak less frequently
  6. Avoid curse language or expletives
  7. Tag questions: "You don't mind eating this, do you?".
  8. Hyper-correct grammar and pronunciation: Use of prestige grammar and clear articulation
  9. Indirect requests: "Wow, I'm so thirsty." – really asking for a drink
  10. Speak in italics: Use tone to emphasise certain words, e.g., "so", "very", "quite"

Lakoff developed the "Politeness Principle," in which she devised three maxims that are usually followed in interaction. These are: Don't impose, give the receiver options, and make the receiver feel good. She stated that these are paramount in good interaction. By not adhering to these maxims, a speaker is said to be "flouting the maxims."

The Language War

Lakoff's The Language War performs a linguistic analysis of discourse on contemporary issues. She covers topics including the Hill–Thomas hearings, the O.J. Simpson trial, the Lewinsky scandal, and the political correctness phenomenon. Lakoff discusses each topic while arguing a general thesis that language itself constitutes a political battleground.[9][10]

In The Language War, Lakoff introduced the idea that frames create meanings. She quotes that language (either verbal or nonverbal) and experiences is a “body of knowledge that is evoked in order to provide an inferential base for the understanding of an utterance.” (Levinson, 1983)

Frames are ideas that shape expectations and create focuses that are to be seen as truth and common sense. When someone decides to adopt a frame, that person will believe everything within the frame is genuine, and that what she or he learns within the frame becomes what she or he believes is common sense. For example, in the 19th century, people believed women should wear corsets and bind their waist. No one thought about wearing clothes without a corset underneath because it was common sense that corsets are a must-have fashion item.

However, if someone decides to look at the same situation outside of the frame— which rarely happens because people are always convinced that common sense does not require justification— that person will have a completely different understanding of what is in the frame, and feel that common sense no longer makes sense. Continuing the corset example, in our present time it is common sense that corsets are unhealthy and will do more harm than good to a female body. This is why the majority of people these days don’t wear corsets. And when we look back to the old frame from the 19th century, we think that fashion sense of that time is strange. This is the outcome of shifted frames.

Notes

References

  1. ↑ Mary Bucholz, "Editor's Introduction", Language and a Woman's Place: Text and Commentary, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-516-757-0, p. 3. "The publication of Robin Tolmach Lakoff's groundbreaking book Language and Women's Place (LWP) by Harper & Row in 1975 has long been heralded as the beginning of the linguistic subfield of language and gender studies, as well as ushering in the study of language and gender in related disciplines such as anthropology, communications studies, education, psychology, and sociology."
  2. ↑ C. Todd White, "On the pragmatics of an androgynous style of speaking (from a transsexual's perspective)", World Englishes 17(2), 1998.
  3. 1 2 Sergio Bolaños Cuellar, "Women's Language: A struggle to overcome inequality", Forma Y Función 19, 2006.
  4. ↑ "Biography - Lakoff, Robin Tolmach (1942-)", Contemporary Authors, Thompson Gale, 1 January 2004.
  5. ↑ Robin Tolmach Lakoff, interview with Catherine Evans Davies, Journal of English Linguistics 38(4); accessed via SagePub; DOI: 10.1177/0075424210384191DOI: 10.1177/0075424210384191.
  6. ↑ "Robin Lakoff", Huffington Post, accessed 17 November 2012.
  7. ↑ http://time.com/4551711/hillary-clinton-emailgate/
  8. ↑ Mary Bucholz, "Editor's Introduction", Language and a Woman's Place: Text and Commentary, Oxford University Press, 2004, ISBN 0-19-516-757-0, pp. 11–13.
  9. ↑ Virginia Vitzthum, "'The Language War' by Robin Tolmach Lakoff", 11 July 2000.
  10. ↑ Judith Rosenhouse, "Robin Tolmach- Lakoff. 2000. The Language War. Berkeley: University of California Press." California Linguistic Notes XXVI(1), Spring 2001.

Selected writings by Lakoff

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