Language, gender and power: Conflict during engagement

This qualitative study described gender-related communicative strategies that engaged couples used when discussing their wedding. This study also described power differentials working between these engaged men and women during their wedding discussions. Finally, this study used retrospective instruments, enabling participants to give their individual perspectives on the discussion they had together.; The participants were professionals in some capacity, challenging existing research which stated that traditional gender roles in society directly affected the language each gender used. Since women were increasingly entering the marketplace, thereby affecting their gender roles and societal power, this research attempted to discover if those societal changes for women had affected their language.; Participating couples chose three of ten hypothetical engagement scenarios to discuss. Firstly, each gave me his/her individual answers without the other fiancé present. Then they came together to reach a mutual decision on each scenario. During a second interview, participants listened to the tape from the first interview and separately discussed their perspectives on the recorded interview.; Results showed that the men and women's communicative strategies were very similar: both used the same strategies, to differing degrees. Power differentials did exist within each couple; the men used these powerful strategies more often than the women. Finally, the participants' retrospective comments demonstrated that engaged couples did not view their fiancé's strategies as overpowering even if the data suggested they were.; Societal changes from both the women and the men in the study represented the similar results in strategies used. In relation to issues of power, women maintained a self-consciousness about appearing polite that the men did not experience. This self-consciousness related to Eckart's (1995) use of symbolic capital, whereby women were held to strict moral standards, regardless of progress they made in the marketplace. These disparate entities, being aggressive at work but polite in society, led to a double bind that Mindell (2001) referred to in terms of the Janus Principle: women hold two opposing ideas in mind at the same time, enhancing their language style because of their ability to be aware of both entities simultaneously.