Interaction Analysis

• Interaction Analysis is method for theempirical investigation of the interaction ofhuman being with each other and with objectin their environment.

• It investigate human activities such as talk,nonverbal interaction, and the use of artifactsand technologies, identifying routinespractices, and problems and the resources fortheir solution.

Introduction

• This essay will examine and discuss genderdifferences in language using a recording of aconversation. The essay shall begin bydetailing the background of research withinthis area. It will then move on to analyse therecording. This will also include a discussion ofrelevant issues which arise from the analysisof this research.

An Investigation into Differencesbetween Women’s and Men’s

Speech

analyses of male and female speech differences bywriters such as Jesperson (1922) who wrote thatwomen are more refined in their speech, use lesscoarse and gross expressions, are uninventive,and were men forced to be restricted to women’sspeech style would quickly be reduced to a stateof boredom due to the nature of women’sconversation. (Jesperson 1922) These viewsclearly illustrate how women are seen as beinglinguistically deficient in comparison to men.

Identifying Poblem

• 1. Most man speech more vulgar, dominant, ungramatically, asserttive.

• 2. Most Women are more refined in theirspeech, use less coarse , more active listening devices, tentative.

• There were also a large number of pieces ofresearch into differences in the grammaticalstructures women and men use, as thetraditional belief that women are more politethan men, (Brown 1980) use fewer vulgarterms (Gomm 1981) and language closer toStandard English were examined. (Milroy andMargrain 1980, Cheshire 1982)

Methodology

• In order to investigate gender and speech, aconversation was recorded so that this couldbe transcribed and analysed to provide datafrom which these issues could be discussed.

• The conversation involved two men and twowomen, all of whom work for the same long-established English Language School. Therecording took place with the full knowledge ofall participants, and took place in the familiarsurroundings of the teacher’s room duringworking hours. While it would have beenpreferable to make the recording without theparticipant’s knowledge, due to the desire torecord ‘natural conversation’, this was practicallyimpossible due to the recording equipmentavailable, whilst also being ethically questionable.

• The participants were not told the reasons for the research, only that they were taking part in a piece of research for this course. Following the conversation all participants were given a confidential questionnaire to fill in, and were interviewed in an attempt to discover their general feelings about the conversation. This was done to gain an understanding of both the style of speech, and perceptions of how those involved spoke.

Analysis

Conversational Dominance

• One of the major differences in women andmen’s speech is that men have been found todominate conversations through the use ofinterruptions and overlaps, and that theamount of these conversational irregularitiesthat took place rose significantly when menwere talking to women.

Swearing and Vulgar Language

• A traditional belief about the differences betweenmen and women is the use of swearing and vulgarlanguage. Illustrated by the prevalence of phrasessuch as ‘ladylike’ behaviour, or ‘swearing like atrooper’ which point to the beliefs that swearing is ahabit purely for men. A number of assertions havebeen made about female and male speech styles inthis area. It was claimed by Jesperson (1922) thatwomen have an instinctive shrinking from coarse andgross expressions and a preference for refined and(in certain spheres) veiled and indirect expressions.

• Flexner (1960) claimed that “most American slang is created and used by males.” (Flexner 1960: xii). Also Lakoff (1975) claimed that while men use stronger expletives, women use politer versions such as ‘damn’ and ‘oh dear’. (Coates 1986: 108)

• From the analysis it appears that in part this belief holds out to be true. As eighty per cent of the vulgar terms in the transcript, are uttered by the men.

Assertive and Tentative Speech Styles.

• A further common belief about language is thatwomen are more tentative in their speech. Lakoff(1975) highlighted the use of the ‘tag question’ asan illustration of this. Claiming that women usemore tag questions than men, who in turn byusing them less appear to be more assertive.Further research found that tag questions weremore commonly associated with women’slanguage (Siegler and Siegler 1976), illustratingpeople’s attitudes towards women’s speech andits tentativeness.

• The study carried out for this essay however, found very different results with men using tag questions more than the women. What is interesting about this is that none of the tag questions are uttered by Male, who was assessed as the more dominating person, due to his excessive use of interruptions.

• This is perhaps significant as the more aggressive style of speech employed by Male could also lead to his being more assertive in his speech. However, this can not be said to be related to gender.

Conclusion

• This study has attempted to examine the differences betweenfemale and male language, and while generalisations from such asmall research group are impossible, it does point to the fact that incertain areas conversation styles differ greatly. To say whether thisis a question of gender or simple differences in conversational stylewould require much more research. However, within this group:both men interrupted the most, and both women were interruptedthe most; a woman used the most active listening devices, and aman used the least; a man spoke the most, and a woman spoke theleast; both women used more hedges which signify tentativespeech; and both men used more vulgar terms. These basic factsshow that while there are many factors which could have and didinfluence this research, such as length of relationship, seniority inthe company, and not least that the researcher is a man. It doesappear that a number of the research findings from twenty andthirty years ago, still hold true today.