The Myth of Mars and Venus

One linguist, Deborah Cameron (2009), interprets Hyde’s (2005) findings as meaning that women and men, in truth, have more in common than pop psychologists’ books might have us believe. She writes to a popular audience and tries to convince laypeople that “evolutionary biology” is mere conjecture, and that writers like Tannen (1991) and Brizendine (2006), who emphasize the differences, are doing more harm than good. However, Cameron (2009) relies heavily on James & Drakich’s (1993) findings on amount of talk and on Hyde’s (2005) finding that the overall effect of gender on differences in communication is small. While Cameron is not fabricating numbers ala Brizendine (2006), she conveniently ignores all of Leaper’s studies that found significant differences in male and female styles of speech.

With the publication of Cameron’s The Myth of Mars and Venus (2009) as a popular/linguistic rival to Tannen’s You Just Don’t Understand (1991), two camps were created. They use different sets of data to justify different conclusions about gender’s effect on amount of talk. Only time will tell which school of thought will fade into history and which will prove lasting, or if, like Universal Grammar, one camp digs in, establishes its own universities, and refuses to listen to others in the field.

Sexuality as identity: Gay and lesbian language

by Cameron and Kulick

Research on the language of gays went through 4 stages:

1. 1920s-1940s. seeing it as a pathology and the language emphasized its strangeness. (Also, at that time it was thought that gays actually desired sex with the opposite sex). Focus on vocabulary and gender inevrsion
   
2. 1950s-1960s. Researchers drew a division between old-fashioned "princesses" and young gay brothers, idealizing white middle-class speech.
3. 1970s-mid 1990s. Influenced by literature on ethnic speech varieties, group cohesion as a gay identity and unity.
4. 1990s to present. Queer theory: looking at variety and diversity in gay identity. Identity is now the effect of semiotic forms, not its source.

Do women and men speak the

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/oct/01/gender.books

Deborah Cameron. Extracted from The Myth of Mars and Venus published, by Oxford University Press in hardback at £10.99. To order a copy for £9.99 with free UK p&p go to guardian.co.uk/bookshop or call 0870 836 0875.

covers a lot of ground, like how manufacturing jobs have declined, service jobs have risen, and the myth that women are better at verbal skills means that employers will discriminate against men.

Says that "evolutionary biology" justifies modern discrimination by appealing to genetics.

The folk belief persists because it justifies prejudicial behavior.