Mini investigation

For my investigation I have decided to see if the dominance theory applies to natural speech between male and females. I wanted to investigate this as the Zimmerman and West theory states the males are more dominant than females and do this through the use of interruptions and or overlaps during conversation, this could also like to Tannen’s pairing theory of competition vs co-operation suggesting males compete during conversation whereas females are co-operative and support each other through speech.

Hypothesis-  I predict to find that the male participant in my data will be more dominant than the females.

Methodology-  I randomly selected two different natural speech transcripts from the internet and made sure each one had one male and one female participant. Too make sure I avoided bias I didn’t read all possible transcripts available I picked the first two I found with a male and female. This was done so that I did not specially select transcripts which would contain the ideal amount of data I am counting that would be in favour of my hypothesis.

Analysis-

	Male	Female
Cooperative overlap	2	1
interruptions	1	0
No. of words avrg per turn	10	18

 

Conclusion/evaluation- Overall from my data pool there is evidence from the data I collected and the data does support my hypothesis as males interrupt and overlap one more time each than females do therefore this suggests that the males are more dominant from the transcripts that I analysed. The data show us that women have a higher number average of words per turn therefore this may highlight why males interrupted and overlapped more because they had less air time a maybe felt the need to say something that couldn’t wait or to possible get their point across. However the males mostly cooperatively overlapped therefore they weren’t trying to compete with the females, this isn’t representative for Tannen’s pairing of cooperation vs competition as the males are more cooperative than the females show by the data collected. The males may feel as if they need to be more cooperative with the females due to their higher amount of air time so if the males interrupted they might fee that it would have to relevant and appropriate to the conversation and to what the female was saying previously. However as I only collected two transcripts this is a huge limitation to my investigation as this isn’t an accurate representation of the wider population therefore the hypothesis may not be legitimate to apply in general  as it has limited evidence for this hypothesis even though it is supported. Also in my transcript I only had two participant’s one male and one female, this is also a limitation as if there were more participants involved of mixed gender the data collected may be significantly different. This could be because one or even both genders might behave differently when there are more people involved within the conversation for example a male might feel the need to dominate the conversation more if there were a higher number of females present at that time or even if there was a higher number of males one male may interrupt more to enforce his dominance over the other participants.

To improve this investigation next time I will need to analyse and collect data from a higher number of transcripts that also contain a varied number of mixed gender participants. This would create a wider pool of data to collect from, effectively giving me more accurate data. As well as measuring how many times males and females interrupt and overlap along with the number of words per turn, I could also further investigate Tannen’s pairing theory by analysing whether the participants stick to the adjacency pairs of a question and an answer or a statement and an answer and then see if any participants or how many break the adjacency pairing, showing competition rather than cooperation.

TRANSCRIPT 1

 

SALLY: so how's your new job going

JOHN: well (.) you know (.) all right

SALLY: what you doing then

JOHN: this week I've just been on the phones      *SALLY: what (.) selling

JOHN: no they're doing like a survey (.) what people think of the the service and all that

SALLY: that's a bit off (.) so you've got to deal with all the moaning and complaining all the flak

JOHN: no (.) no it's just like a questionnaire were your goods delivered on time yes or no

SALLY: d'you think you'll stick it     *JOHN: next week I'm with the regional manager out on the on the road (.) that'll be all right

SALLY: I was on the phones at the Town Hall (.) dead boring

JOHN: tell me about it

SALLY: so what's your mate doing

JOHN: who

SALLY: you know what sisface (.) had the Mohican           *JOHN: Oh Gizmo

SALLY: yeh

 

 

 

TRANSCRIPT 2

 

M: What vegetables?

W: Vegetables, bloody expensive vegetables                    *M: Yeah, but when you see the

W: Ridiculously expensive, I’ve hardly vegetables, they’re always like eaten any vegetables since I’ve been here

too bloody expensive

M: Yeah

W: You’ve got to start going to the lunch specials with the salads.

Twitter Investigation

 

For my twitter investigation I decided to analyse a selection of tweets from one male and one female account.

For this investigation I can apply the deficit theory, this states that women have more air time that is filled with many things such as empty adjectives, tag questions, more emotive language , filler etc.

I decided to collect data from five of one woman’s tweets at random and five of one male tweets at random also and analysed the amount of technology in the tweets such as video links an emojis.

Emojis could be seen as a new version of the deficit theory as the emojis convey emotions and can be seen as a form of a weak communication.

Methodology:

To make sure this investigation isn’t bias I selected every 5^th tweet to collect m pool of data from.

I found from my data that the female has 12 cases of using technology whereas the male only uses 5, I also analysed the word count the female had a count of 76 whereas the mal significantly less with 35. Finally the last thing I counted was the number of nonstandard English used in the tweets, females used 2 and males used 7. However this data may not be as reliable as to make this information relevant we could have measured whether these cases were in the form of being creative/ on purpose for effect or by accident.

From this data we can conclude that our hypothesis is correct as women use more emotions through the use of technology, however this may just be in proportion to the word count which is higher than the males. 16% of women’s tweets contained technology as a source  to demonstrate their emotions whereas in 14% of males tweets contained technology so in relation to the word count there isn’t much significant difference in the data.

The transcript I decided to analyse was the Geordie shore video.

From this video you could apply the deficit theory.

I chose to collect data about the amounts of fillers and air time that both participants use and in this video, Vikki has the most air time at 67% of the conversation, it is also filled with fillers such as "like" use continuously throughout. The majority air time could have been taken by the woman because the conversation about her wedding therefore she could have felt more passionate about this than the man was possibly.

I could have also collected data on interruptions and overlaps of the male and female. This would have linked to the dominance theory as it is stated that the male would interrupt women's speech more as a sign of dominance and power. You could call an investigation like this 'An investigation to analyse whether males are more dominant in natural speech than females'

Romantic novel extract

He starred at her intently.  He was intrigued by the way his eyes were locked onto hers, as if nobody else was around. Oblivious to the que he was creating, the summons of the cashier wasn't quite as appealing to her unspoken delight. Thinking heart before head he walked over to her with every intension for a conversation but his entire thought capacity had disappeared. Edging closer their gazes clocked, she was the first to speak any words.

"Hi you"

All the memories came flooding back, all the days they spent together, the time , the money was worth it in his eyes. The white band across her finger still symbolises the bond they once had.

"How have you been?" She said delicately

He was finding it difficult to find his words, but managed to mumble out a simple
"Good"

The sound of his voice made a sudden flutter of her heart. There was no need for any other words, just the presence of each other brought a warm, comfortable  recognisable feel.

They spent the day together, as if it was the first time again. This time was different, it was as if all the petty dislikes and annoyances were not important anymore. Walking until the sun set he walked her home like he used to. From behind the silhouette of what looked like an expensive car obviously owned by a stereotypical handsome chiseled business man, a deep voice strained
"Give me a hand, honey"

Gender Theories

Dominance theory 
This theory suggests that in mixed gender conversations. Zimmerman & West recorded conversations and found that men interrupt the conversation more than women. From this they concluded that because men interrupt more or attempt to do so this shows that the men are either more dominating or trying to do so.

Semantic non-equivilences
These are pairs of terms which are differentiated by gender that have gained certain status' and value that could place one gender superior to the other e.g.
Queen-King
Actor-Actress
Lady-Lord

Difference theory 
Deborah Tannen suggests that male and female use language in six contrasts
Status/support---men seek to dominate,women attempt to gain confirmation
Independence/intimacy---women try to be close and support one another, men focus more on independence and their status
Advice/understanding--- men try to take action again possibly dominating, women want understanding of how they feel and think
Information/feeling---men get straight to the point with the valuable information in as little as possible time, women tend to fill the air time with unnecessary chat
Order/proposal---women may suggest or do indirect hints at something, men are commanding or are direct and straight to the point
Conflict/compromise---men can often resist arguing or saying their view, women may resist conflict but complain subsequently to avoid confrontation

Influential power
This is the power used to persuade and influence others.
An example of this is in a group of friends all about the same age -

A:go on
B:please try that flavour, it's really nice
A:yes, do it
C:hmm maybe

Here participant A and B have the influential power as they are trying to convince C to try something that we assume they both have. In this quote we can analyse the use of imperatives such as "go" and "do it" to show their use of commands to try and persuade the other person to try the flavour.
We can also use the mitigated imperative "please try" to show the politeness strategy possibly to show the strength of their friendship so that person C might trust them enough to do what they are trying to achieve. Next we could also comment on " it's really nice" said by A this is used as a reassurance to back up what person B said so that C would feel more confident in what they are saying .

language and power

Plan

barrister - influencial power as the judge would have the instumental power to cause any action to Mr P who is being charged
wareing polictical power
faircloughs unequal encounters

 over lap ..

 "whether they came to see you 'or not?'"
                                                   "'I don't' think they did no"


"that didnt cross your mind 'at all?'"
                                              'no'

possibly a fta as it could mean the barrister is loosing the face needs to vbe respected and liked as the over lap show a lack of respect in turn taking to talk

same quote possibly flouting grices's maxim of quality as he has denied the statement said but doesnt not give any evidence that could prove his point for denying it and is bery  vauge....

In this text the barrister is questioning a witness (Mr N) about his involvement with the man on trial (Mr P). The barrister has both instrumental and influential power, this is because he is in a much higher political position than Mr N and has the power to control the subject topic this is also why Fairclough’s unequal encounters is involved in this text. He also has influential power where he has the ability to influence Mr N’s answers because he can control what he asks the witness so he would state the answers that he could possibly want. As well as this Wareings political power is used in this because the barrister is a lawyer and has the ability to influence and argue the case of Mr P to the judge for this case.

In this text Mr N overlaps the barrister on two different occasions, such as: “whether they came to see you [or not]”

             “[I don’t] think they did no” This might be considered a face threatening act as the barrister is losing the face to be liked and respected, as the witness of a lower power is interrupting the barristers question and is not taking turns to speak. This might be because the witness is becoming impatient with the trial as the barrister is continuingly asking him questions possibly to try and make the witness make a mistake in his answer as he is Mr P’s lawyer. He could be doing this to take the pressure and attention of off Mr P by trying to make the witness look bad. Another possibility is that Mr N overlaps because he is eager to respond to the question being asked and already knows what he is going to say so he jumps in with his response without letting the higher power finish talking.

The witness Mr N could be flouting Grice's maxim of quality. This is shown when the barrister asks "that didn't cross your mind at all?" And the witness replies simply "no" the lack of detail and quality of information in the answer shows he could be possibly hiding something or maybe even trying to avoid giving any details that could make him look undermined.

(BEING EDITED)