A Study Of Gender Differences In Conversational Repair

Conversation repair is a frequent phenomenon in conversational interaction. It often consists of four components: trouble source, repair initiation, repair and outcome. Conversation repair is often divided into four types. They are self-initiated self- repair, other-initiated self-repair, and self-initiated other-repair, and other-initiated other-repair. With the efforts of Schegloff and other linguists, the theory of conversation repair has developed rapidly. However, most of the past studies are focused too much on the formal organization of conversation repair itself, rarely touching on the question what the relationship between social factors and sequential organization. This thesis is a study of gender differences with gender as a social variable in conversation repair, which targets at a helpful answer to this question.Specifically, through the application of Brown &Levinson's face-saving theory to the explanation of some phenomena in conversation repair, this thesis aims to demonstrate the gender differences existing in conversation repair and the reasons according to face-saving theory.Generally, gender differences are identified from two aspects of conversation repair: the placement of initiation and the techniques of initiation for self-initiated self-repair, other-initiated self-repair and other-initiated other-repair. Statistics results got from our recording data transcription indicate that there are no clear gender differences existing in placement of initiation and in initiating techniques for self-initiated and self-repair. For other-initiated self-repair, females prefer using indirect initiating techniques to males. This shows that females are more polite than males, and more concerned with male's positive face. As to other-initiated other-repair, males and females use interruption to initiate and get the floor to speak. However, in mixed-sex conversations, the evidence of my statistics is that for much of the time it's males who did the interruptions as the means of initiation.