Differences in Language and Gender

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Differences in Language and Gender

There are many differences in language between male and female. This

is why we sometimes do not understand the opposite sex. These

differences can be lexical, phonological, grammatical or

conversational.

There have been many studies into gender and conversational behaviour

one of which answers the most common question of who talks the most

this was conducted by Fishman '90. He found that in mixed sex

conversation, men talk twice as much as women. Although this cannot be

generalised to all males and females as many people do not follow the

trends.

Women are more supportive in their behaviour in conversation. They ask

more questions, give more feedback, pay more compliments, start up

different topics and they try to bring others into the conversation.

On the contrary, men interrupt, express disagreement, ignore other

people and don't like to follow other people's new topics. This shows

that women are more cooperative and men are competitive in

conversation.

Zimmerman and...

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