Pamela Fishman's Theory

Pamela Fishman’s Theory

 

Pamela Fishman conducted an experiment which involved listening to 52 hours of pre-recorded conversations between young American couples. Five out of six participants attended graduate school and all of the participants were either feminists or interested in the women’s movement. Every one of the participants was white and between the ages of 25 and 35.
   When Fishman listened to the recordings, she concentrated on the use of tag questions, e.g. “Isn’t it?” “Couldn’t we?” She states that tag questions are frequently used by women, and follow thoughts or suggestions previously made. For females, tag questions are an effective way of beginning and maintaining conversations with men.
    Fishman argues that rather than being indicative of a lack of conversational awareness, women use tag questions to gain conversational power and elicit a response from their conversational partner. She claims that questioning is required for females when speaking with males because men do not often respond to declaratives alone.
    The frequent use of the phrase “You know?” found in the recordings was discovered by Fishman to be an attention-getting device. It is used by the female to determine whether or not their male conversational partner is paying attention. When “You know?” is combined with a pause, she is inviting the listener to respond to what she has previously said. The recorded conversation study showed that women used four times as many tag questions as men. This is, however, not because women are uncertain and do not have adequate communicative skills (which is what is suggested by Lakoff’s theory and the Deficit Model) but because they want to keep the conversation going.
    Fishman concludes that the communicating style of women is not due to lack of social training but due to the inferior social position of women.