Gender Difference In Conversational Interaction In English Sitcom

Nowadays, the study of gender differences in language has become an important topic in the field of sociolinguistics. The initial focus was mainly on the form of language, such as pronunciation, vocabulary and syntax. As long as the research progresses, the concentration has shifted to the differentiation on conversational strategies, discourse style, etc. Comparatively speaking, detailed studies on language and gender have witnessed a shorter history in China, and often adopt the statistics from the West. Moreover, most of the data selected by scholars from home and abroad belong to ordinary interaction, chat in the internet, television talk show, speech in judicial setting and so on. There is little attention to TV serials, especially to sitcom. As one of the most popular TV serials all over the world, the sitcom uses language which not only resembles real life, but also has its own characteristics. The research on it would definitely further the understanding on the relationship between language and gender. Besides, the expressions in the sitcoms are so refined and authentic that they are widely welcomed by English learners, and have been well applied in English audio-visual teaching. Most of teaching practice has proved that: compared with traditional teaching methods, making use of TV serials can more easily arouse students'interest, make them appreciate western culture and learn vivid expressions. Furthermore, since we lack real foreign language environment, the communicative competence seems weak for Chinese students, such as how to use the appropriate expressions for each sex role in order to communicate effectively. Therefore, the study on scripts of the sitcom will also have enlightenment on cross-sex communication, cross-cultural interaction, language acquisition, audio-visual teaching, etc.This thesis adopts Conversation Analysis theory established by Sacks et al. (1974), and selects the scripts of the famous American sitcom Friends (Season 10) as the data. Then, it qualitatively analyzes the dialogues from seven perspectives, namely, amount of speech, interruption, overlap, minimal response, silence, topic choice and control so as to find out whether men and women really use language differently from each other in fictional speech, and if so, how and why.The results reveal that: in the English sitcom, men and women tend to make use of different strategies in the interaction and show diverse conversational styles. Briefly speaking, men are more competitive, while women cooperative. Meanwhile, the finding in the sitcom basically corresponds with those in the actual speech. But because of the need for dramatic conflict, male and female characters are more likely to interrupt each other and use other disruptive strategies for the sake of manipulating dialogues and achieving dramatic climax. Furthermore, the research also disputes some social prejudices against men and women, such as"men are inexpressive","women are talkative, like gossiping and trivial topics"and so on. Based on the previous findings, the thesis then tries to explore the reasons of gender differentiation in interaction from social and cultural aspects. At last, the theoretical and practical significance of the thesis is pointed out, and concrete implications and suggestions are proposed, in the hope that it will give benefit for the future related studies.