Language_&_Gender

For my chosen article I decided to critique Dadds & O’Kearney’s (2004) ‘Developmental and gender differences in language for emotions across the adolescent years.’ The overall proposals in this study was to identity and distinguish the similarities and differences between the male and female use of emotion terms in language use, focusing mainly on anger and fear. Dadds & O’Kearney discussed and hypothesised the different fundamentals involving emotion terms and found that the subjectivist/ experiential and expressive/ behavioural factors, along with linguistically and situational comprehension was crucial in the understanding of how and why it works. In order to test their hypothesis and main aims Dadds & O’Kearney selected a range of both male and female participants for which English was there first language, ranging from the ages of twelve to eighteen. The selection varied in year group and school and in total consisted of three hundred and three students from Brisbane, Australia. They suggested that it was more likely for adolescents to display negative terms of emotion when engaging in general conversation and interaction, implying that boys were more likely to portray an active and expressive manner in comparison to girls, based on the various situations an individual is place under, referred to by Dadds & O’Kearney as the ‘situational conditions.’ They set their participants vignettes in which the experimenter produced two different scenarios for the students to consider. The first was designed to produce the emotion anger, whilst the other was to generate fear. The chosen format of the results consisted of a table, containing the quantitative data acquired from the two sets of vignettes, and bar charts, followed by a detailed analysis. The methodology then consisted of a further explanation to their theories. The first was the ‘evaluative category’, which focused on the hedonic tone of emotion terms in which the semantic orientations of words were dominant. The ‘referential category’, which covered the pragmatic aspects, those of which displayed elements of interaction between the participants. Another category that was covered was the ‘dimensions’. Here Dadds & O’Kearney centred on the notion of the variety of emotions, including the intensity, relation and involvement. The final aspect to be investigated was the ‘causal structure’, in which the reasons behind each emotional attribute that occurred were taken into consideration based on the internal and external influences. Dadds & O’Kearney wanted to take a closer look into the expansion of adolescent self awareness and self regulation in relation to different gender attributes. They supported the idea that by the early stages of adolescence, pre teens/teenagers had a ‘...growing appreciation of the complexity of emotions.’ (p.915) Dadds & O’Kearney’s study had a sufficient amount of evidence to support there hypothesis and although they raised many strong and relevant points, supported and explored by many other authors and research, the majority of their study was based on theoretical suggestions rather than solid factual elements. Their practical solution for this, was to then explore adolescent emotions through their own research to support and discover first hand the relevance of there thesis. The main focus was to identify and distinguish between the emotions anger and sadness/fear and they chose to do so through two forms of vignettes. The problem with this method was that it does not reflect an accurate reading of results. By asking the students to convey results in written form they were not receiving the innate and automatic response which relate to the experience of having an emotion. And although the examples produced to create specific areas of emotions were believable and well thought through, the results could not always be one hundred percent reliable. When the students were given time to think through and assess how they would possibly react to a certain event, there is a large possibility that their initial responses could be unconsciously edited and changed, if not lost altogether. Another aspect that may have affected the results was the decision to carry out the experiment in groups rather than an individual analysis. Although the participants were asked to write all of their reactions down, they were also given the opportunity to openly discuss any questions they had about the assignment. (Lewis & Haviland-Jones, 2000) discussed children’s understanding of ‘consequence’ stating that they ‘...associated expression of emotion with popularity.’ (p.288) Therefore, by giving the participants the chance to share their views on what they thought may or may not be appropriate, some of the more dominant children may have influenced the decisions of other less popular students. In addition to this, the amount of male students in comparison to the total of females questioned the results were not equal, which could have affected the authenticity of results. One of the strong points in this article was the ‘Coding categories and procedures’ section. It consisted of an accurate analysis and informative details that helped the reader to understand the tables and charts. In this section Dadds & O’Kearney incorporated all of the key aspects they had discussed earlier in the study, thoroughly explaining how these elements would be put into practice for the results. (Dadds & O’Kearney 2004 as cited by Wellman 1995) states the development of linguistic emotion in adolescents through three various stages - ‘action-expressive conceptualisation’, through the understanding and experiences in various situations and the process of thought. (p.914) They also discusses the elements of ‘self-focused emotion’ in which an individual will use different and usually negative referents to relate to themselves.