A Study Of Gender Language Differences And Miscommunication In English Conversations

As is known to all, the society is made up of males and females. That is to say,males and females are the two main social groups. Because the social, cultural,historical, religious, physiological and psychological factors influence, males andfemales have many language differences in conversations. How males and femalesuse different languages to communicate is an important and eternal topic. Alsobecause of the existence of gender language differences, sometimes males andfemales may misunderstand each other in conversations, thus themiscommunication happens inevitably. Therefore, for males and females, in order tosuccessfully communicate with each other in conversations, the study of genderlanguage differences and miscommunication in conversations has a great practicalsignificance.According to the relative researches, the author makes some research ongender language differences in English conversations from two aspects: one is fromlanguage form, another one is from conversational style. More specifically, theauthor elaborates gender language differences in language form from four aspects:pronunciation; intonation; vocabulary and sentence structure. In addition, the authoralso elaborates gender language differences in conversational style from threeaspects: topic selection, speech amount and conversational tactics. The authoradopts Grice’s theory of cooperative principle and Levinson’s theory of turn-takingin the process. Because of the existence of language differences between males andfemales, such as different preferred topics, distributions of speech amount,interpretations of minimal response and interpretations of question andself-disclosure, the miscommunication between them is inevitable in conversations.Then the author analyzes the miscommunication by gender language differencesand its causes which include social, cultural, historical, religious, physiological andpsychological factors. In the process of analyzing the causes of miscommunication,the author adopts gender theories. In order to avoid the miscommunication bygender language differences, people should admit gender language differences,increase shared knowledge, learn to be tolerant, learn to respect each sex and learn to be open and flexible. Thus, the communication between males and females cango on more successfully in conversations.Through this study, the author finds that language differences between malesand females in conversations are mainly manifested in the following aspects: Firstly,females use more standard pronunciation than males in conversations and theirintonation variation is more abundant than males. Secondly, females use moreadjectives, color words and intensifiers while males use more curse words, taboosand slangs. Thirdly, females use more normative sentence structure than males andthey always speak in a euphemistic mood in conversations. Fourthly, females preferto talk more about the personal matters while males like to talk more about politics,business, sports activity and so on. Fifthly, females prefer to chat and have free talkin informal occasion so as to maintain a harmonious relationship with others whilemales speak more than females in formal occasion. Sixth, females like to use moreconversational overlap and tag questions to keep the conversation going onsmoothly. However, males often interrupt others in conversations. Seventh, femalesuse more minimal response and hedges than males. If females are interrupted inconversations, they will keep silent. However, males use less minimal response andthey often violate the cooperative principle and break the turn-taking.The thesis studies language differences between males and females in Englishconversations and miscommunication by gender language differences and its causes.Through this study, the author hopes to help people have a better understanding ofgender language differences and miscommunication by gender language differences.More specifically, the author hopes to help people accept the existence of genderlanguage differences in conversations. In addition, the author hopes to help peoplefind the causes of miscommunication so as to reduce miscommunication andpromote the communication among people.