| The purpose for this project was to uncover norms of complaining, a behavior that is prevalent in everyday talk and in student writing teams. In this study, I wanted to determine what statements of dissatisfaction constitute an "annoying" complaint, how men and women in mixed-gendered writing teams complain, and how men and women are perceived when they complain. The complaint speech act is more complicated than other, more conventional speech acts like the promise, and is more likely than a promise to misfire, causing negative repercussions for students trying to communicate about a project.; This project used a variety of methods to answer different types of questions. In order to identify complaints that were "annoying" to outside observers, I conducted interviews and analyzed the interview data with an abbreviated version of grounded theory. Second, to study complaint behavior that occurs in mixed-gendered writing teams, I conducted discourse analysis on transcripts from conversations taking place in student team meetings. Third, I collected surveys to determine if there were general trends in how complaints were perceived; this data was analyzed using simple ANOVA analysis. In order to determine whether or not there was a difference in how men and women were perceived when uttering the same complaint, I created two versions of the survey: in set A, a complaint is uttered by a woman; in set B, the same complaint is uttered by a man.; Findings were varied. First, interview data found that complaints functioning as excuses were most "annoying." Other "annoying" complaints included those that violated Grice's maxims for the cooperative principle, such as the maxim of manner. Second, discourse analysis generated hypotheses about male/female complaining behavior. Contrary to popular stereotypes, in my sample, women and men uttered the same number of complaints. Yet, they uttered different types of complaints: European- and African-American women made more call for accounts complaints than European-American men, while men made more complaints functioning as excuses and to promote their own superiority than women. Third, survey data revealed interesting trends based on gender of complainer, type of complaint, and gender and major of participant. Complaints functioning as excuses were perceived most harshly by women. When a man uttered a call for accounts complaint, he was more likely than a woman to be perceived negatively and as "needing help." In addition, a women who made a complaint functioning as self-handicap was more likely than a man to be perceived as "needing help" (when a man made the same exact complaint). Finally, engineering majors are harsher than other groups on women complainers, but they were not harsher than other groups on men complainers.; This study of complaining behavior and perceptions can help teachers coach students to create more effective collaborative writing teams. By teaching students that complaining behavior can create perceptions such as "whining" or "needing help," teachers can help students see the important role oral communication plays in managing functional teams. Teachers can help students become aware of their own biases against people based on the way those people talk (and utter complaints), biases such as seeing that person as incompetent---often-times, these biases have little basis in fact. Finally, if students are prone to uttering certain types of complaints like excuses that are deemed inappropriate for a student writing team, they can become more conscious of their tendency to make such complaints and attempt to alter their behavior. |
