The 3 D's

Dominance - 
We live in a patriarchal society and language represents that. The dominance approach "sees women as an oppressed group and interprets differences in women's and men's speech in terms of men's dominance and women's subordination." - Jennifer Coates (1993)

Difference - 
Women belonging to "different sub-cultures" who are socialised differently from childhood onwards and who may have communication problems as adults. Deborah Tannen (1989) argues that theorists like Lakoff and Spender see language in terms of power and powerlessness. This is for the reason that throughout Western culture the masculine male has been the unmarked form in language and the feminine female the marked form. e.g. Unmarked forms - "manager" Marked forms - "manageress". Tannen says that "the desire to affirm that women are equal has made some scholars reluctant to show that they are different. These are gender differences in ways of speaking, and we need to identify and understand them." Tannen also sees male and female language in terms of status vs support, independence vs intimacy, advice vs understanding, information vs feelings. orders vs proposals and conflict vs compromise.

Deficit - 
One language is inferior to the other as supported by Robin Lakoff (1975).This is the idea that men and women speak two different languages. However, Lakoff doesn't use statistics but phrases such as "many men" or "men tend to" which lacks evidence as they are just generalisations. There has also been changes since 1975. Jenny Cheshire supports this by doing a study. She found that boys use more slang than girls. Cameron challenges the whole idea that there are two different and contrasting languages for men and women arguing that this is a deficit model approach. Cameron has reevaluated stereotypes.