A Conversation Analysis Approach To Language And Gender Research In China

The previous language and gender studies, from the mid 1980s to the early 1990s, mainly focused on differences between the men's and women's usage of language which play a key role. In China, most of the language and gender studies were only introductions to western theories and findings on this issue, especially on the English language. But these reports of"gender differences"were ultimately discovered to be exaggerated. Language changes with society, and the differences are diminished. The language and gender studies in recent years have yielded numerous analyses across a wide range of linguistic practice. With the dominance of new theories, this thesis evokes a skeptical attitude to"gender difference"and criticizes the approach that takes female-male differences as a starting point and as explanation for linguistic behavior.The discussion that follows will be on guard against stereotyping and challenge some explanations based on"difference"approach from several perspectives. The idea discussed here therefore does not hold an absolute negative attitude to"difference"approach, but rather a tentative and suggestive one that allows similarities and differences among the approaches of language and gender researches. Thus this thesis mainly challenges the existing problems in the early studies of the"differences"mode in the following aspects: (1) the breakdown of the two—gender system; (2) gender differences from amount of speech; (3) gender differences from communication competence; (4) gender differences from context; (5) gender differences from culture.The thesis provides analysis of gender conversational interactions to investigate the features of language and gender in specific Chinese context. The data entitled Psychological Consultation Interview includes twelve interviews conducted by CCTV-12. On this study, the main areas of conversation analysis research focus on gender features in interruption, minimal response and turn-taking. By analyzing the data, the study reveals that there do exist some gender-related features in the conversations of Psychological Consultation Interview. In Chinese specific-context, interruptions seem to be a little bit different from the previous style. In the amount of consultants'interruptions, most of them are by male consultant. The study also shows that older female guests interrupt more often than older male guests do. Most interruptions made by male and female are used to show interest and cooperation in the conversation. In the aspect of minimal responses, Chinese female consultants offer more minimal responses as listening function to show that they are listening and show interest in the ongoing story. Male guests and male consultant tend to use more minimal responses as agreement function, while female guests especially the young show less as agreement function. Though female guests also provide minimal responses to other speakers, but not as frequently as male guests do. In the aspect of turn-taking, participants in conversation alternate their turns smoothly. Both males and females use a cooperative style of turn-taking. During the interviews, hostess plays an important role in the above three aspects.The importance of"difference"approach in language and gender shows no signs of abating, but there is still a great deal of room,especially in China, for language and gender issue to adapt what it needs from diverse perspective.