Zimmerman and West

Their Study They recorded 31 conversations, all participants were white, middle class and under 35. In 11 mixed-sex conversations, men used 46 interruptions, women only 2. Many people have doubted the validity of their findings for many reasons

Problems Factors were overlooked by their study. The participants used weren’t representative, they were all of a certain age group, class and ethnicity. Age or the personality of the participants could easily have affected the conversations and so alter the findings of their study. E.g. there may have been a particularly vocal or dominant man speaking. The study was carried out once in the same, fixed location. In order to be accurate it should have been done in many different universities/countries and over a longer period of time.

Other Studies- Men Professor Tannen- “men grow up in a world in which conversation is competitive… seek[ing] to achieve the upper hand or to prevent others from dominating them” “men see the world as a place where people try to gain status”

Other Studies- Women Professor Tannen- “talking is often a way to gain confirmation and support for their ideas” “women see the world as ‘a network of connections’ seeking support and consensus”

Other Studies- Mixed Sex Conversations Pamela Fishman- “in mixed-sex language interactions, men speak on average for twice as long as women” “conversation between the sexes sometimes fails, not because of anything inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond, or don’t respond”

My Study The one thing which I thought was problematic was the fact Zimmerman and West’s study was only relevant for UCLA where they performed it I decided to look at an English household instead and also my subjects were married couples, adding another dimension to the conversations that would take place due to their familiarity with each other

My Study

Pragmatic: -turn taking is established and there are adjacency pairs evident but there are lots of overlaps -as the participants are married this may have affected the validity of the results- they’re used to each other and roles of dominance have probably been establishing over the years Grammatical: -the woman tends to speak with longer sentences, the man’s utterances are shorter in general Semantic: -the man’s utterances are only to either affirm or disagree with woman’s prior discourse Conversation Analysis

My Study

Pragmatic: -turn taking is less established than in example 1, overlaps occur frequently, more so by the woman as she disagrees with what the man says -once more the participants are married so this may affect the results- they have already established the roles of dominance within the household and perhaps within conversation itself -after the woman changed the topic slightly, conversation altered and the rules of turn taking seemed to be established once more but overlaps occurred after this short section Conversation Analysis