Gender and conversation strategies: a study of four television debates 2005 (English)Independent thesis Basic level (degree of Bachelor)Student thesis

Abstract [en]

The aim of this study was to find out what conversation strategies men and women used in four Swedish television debates and to see if there were any differences in these contexts. The study had a quantitative as well as a qualitative, deductive approach and the dialogues were analyzed from various aspects. The methods used were discourse analysis and conversation analysis. The study shows that differences between men´s and women´s conversation strategies in these contexts can be found in choices of topics, where men tend to avoid discussions about feelings and relations, and women feel comfortable doing so. Men are also loud and aggressive in these argumentative discourses and use different types of interruptions to get control and dominate in these situations. This aggressiveness often results in short turns. To control dialogues men use different techniques, for instance addressing by name, question/answer, requests, challenges and accusation/denial – especially in mixed sex communication situations. In single sex communication situations women frequently use challenges to get control, and both women and men often use accusation/denial in single sex argumentative discourses. The study shows that “back channel support” is a common strategy when only women discuss, but not in mixed sex conversations. Women are better listeners and show better fluency and also use more complex sentence structure than men in these contexts.

Place, publisher, year, edition, pages

2005.

Keywords [en]

gender differences, conversation strategies, discourse analysis, conversation

Identifiers

URN: urn:nbn:se:hh:diva-12785Local ID: U11851OAI: oai:DiVA.org:hh-12785DiVA, id: diva2:367946

Uppsok

Humanities, Theology

Note

Denna uppsats kan beställas från arkivet / This paper can be ordered from the archive. Kontakta / Contact: arkivet@hh.seAvailable from: 2010-11-09 Created: 2010-11-09 Last updated: 2025-10-01Bibliographically approved

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School of Humanities (HUM)

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