Ok, so I found "The Handbook of Language and Gender" which I was able to access fully. It cites Tannen's work, which my professor talked about a lot, so I think this might be as close as I can get right now to what was specifically presented by her. This is, of course, one theory among many as far as sociolinguistic gender studies, but it's what I was recalling.
There is a lot of discussion on the construct of gender which is not really central to what we've been talking about, but seems very relevant. Aside from that, though, the connection is made between social group/cultural linguistic variation as a model for gender variation. So, essentially, women and men are coming from arguably different social subgroups which gives them a different "code" or style that they use to communicate. Women are able to use this style freely with other women without switching to the man model. The "women's model" definitely has a lot of F at play: affirmation, support, politeness, apologies, etc. while the "man's model" has lots of T things: criticism, harsh arguing styles, fact-driven rather than feelings-driven rhetoric. When women and men interact, there is an awareness on the women's part that their style is not as highly valued by men, and they are quicker to back down, more likely to pad statements with phrases like "in my opinion" and "maybe", and tend to speak in shorter utterances. It gets into lots of different situations and settings (in the family, in the workplace, on the internet, in schools etc.) and also talks about different norms and stereotypes, and like I said lots and lots on gender and identity.
I copied the piece on online communication because I thought it might be particularly relevant given how we're all communicating now:
"The linguistic features that signal gender in computer-mediated communication (CMC) are similar to those that have been previously described for face-to-face interaction, and include verbosity, assertiveness, use of profanity, politeness (and rudeness), typed representations of smiling and laughter, and degree of interactive engagement (cf. Coates 1993). There is an overall tendency for some of these behaviors to correlate more with female CMC users, and for others to correlate more with males. This does not mean that each and every female and male manifests the behaviors; exceptions to the tendencies can readily be found.^ It does mean, however, that gender predicts certain on-line behaviors
with greater than chance frequency when considered over aggregate populations of users, controlling for variables such as age, topic, and the synchronicity of the medium.
In asynchronous CMC of the type that takes place in discussion lists and newsgroups on the Internet and Usenet, males are more likely to post longer messages, begin and close discussions in mixed-sex groups, assert opinions strongly as "facts," use crude language (including insults and profanity), and in general, manifest an adversarial orientation toward their interlocutors (Herring 1992,1993,1996a, 1996b, forthcoming; Kramarae and Taylor 1993; Savicki et al. 1996; Sutton 1994). In contrast, females tend to post relatively short messages, and are more likely to qualify and justify their assertions, apologize, express support of others, and in general, manifest an "aligned" orientation toward their interlocutors (Hall 1996; Herring 1993, 1994, 1996a, 1996b; Savicki et al. 1996). Males sometimes adopt an adversarial style even in cooperative exchanges, and females often appear to be aligned even when they disagree with one another, suggesting that these behaviors are conventionalized, rather than inherent character traits based on biological sex. Moreover, there is evidence
that the minority gender in an on-line forum tends to modify its communicative behavior in the direction of the majority gender: women tend to be more aggressive in male-dominated groups than among other women, and men tend to be less aggressive in female-dominated groups than in groups controlled by men"^° (Baym 1996; Herring 1996b). This observation suggests that the more numerous a gender group is on-line, the greater the influence it will have on shared discursive norms.
Politeness is one common means through which gender is cued in asynchronous CMC. Women are more likely to thank, appreciate, and apologize, and to be upset by violations of politeness; they more often challenge offenders who violate on-line rules of conduct (Smith et al. 1997), and predominantly female groups may have more, and more strictly enforced, posting rules designed to ensure the maintenance of a civil environment (Hall 1996; Herring 1996a).
In contrast, men generally appear to be less concerned with politeness; they issue bald face-threatening acts such as unmitigated criticisms and insults, violate on-line rules of conduct, tolerate or even enjoy "flaming," and tend to be more concerned about threats to freedom of expression than with attending to others' social "face" (Herring 1994, 1996a, 1999). These patterns have been noted even in gay and lesbian discussion groups (Hall 1996), and among women who have succeeded in traditionally male-dominated professions such as computer science (Herring and Lombard 1995). "Inappropriately" appreciative or contentious messages can "give away" individuals in Internet
discussion groups attempting to pass as the opposite gender, evidence that stereotypes about on-line gender styles based on these patterns have emerged.Gender differences in on-line communication tend to disfavor women. In mixed-sex public discussion groups, females post fewer messages, and are less likely to persist in posting when their messages receive no response (Broadhurst 1993; Herring forthcoming). Even when they persist, they receive fewer responses from others (both females and males), and do not control the topic or the terms of the discussion except in groups where women make up a clear majority of participants (Herring 1993, forthcoming; Herring, Johnson, and
DiBenedetto 1992, 1995; Hert 1997). The lesser influence exercised by women in mixed-sex groups accounts in parf-^^ for why wo men-centered and womenonly on-line groups are common (Balka 1993; Camp 1996), whereas explicitly designated men-only groups are rare.-^^
Moreover, an inherent tension exists between the conventionally masculine value on agonism and the conventionally feminine value on social harmony. The contentiousness of male messages tends to discourage women from participating, while women's concern with politeness tends to be perceived as a "waste of bandwidth" by men (Herring 1996a), or worse yet, as censorship (Grossman 1997; cf. Herring 1999). This tension does not inherently favor one gender over the other - each value system potentially constrains the other. In Internet discussion groups, however, where civil libertarian values have traditionally constituted the dominant ideological context, and where few structures are in place to sanction anti-social behavior, aggression tends to prevail over less aggressive behaviors. In a number of documented cases, repeated aggression from disruptive males has forced women-centered on-line forums to disband, move elsewhere, and/or reconfigure themselves with strict rules and regulations regarding acceptable participant conduct."
Here's a link to my source if anyone's interested in checking it out.
http://xa.yimg.com/kq/groups/5593953/1378527240/name/the_handbook_of_language_and_gender.pdf#page=37
How's that for a female writing a short apologetic post on an online forum with mixed genders