The Differences On Discourse Style In Cross-Gender Communication

As a form of cross-cultural communication, cross-gender communication is a kind of face-to-facecommunication between people from subcultures.The differences on discourse styles do exist in cross-gender communication. The study on therelationships between gender and discourse style can be traced back to ancient Greece and ancientRome. However, it is not until the beginning of20thcentury when Otto Jespersen published Language:Its Nature, Development and Origin did the discourse style and gender issue start to attract the attentionof scholars. It is worth to notice that scholars’ study mainly focus on female discrimination, therefore itis difficult to make comments on discourse style differences objectively and comprehensively. Thus, theauthor aims to make comments on discourse style differences objectively and comprehensively, pointout the reasons for these differences and deepen understanding between males and females.The paper aims to describe the differences on discourse styles in cross-gender communication.Chapter one points out the rationales and structure of the study and makes a brief review of previousstudies. Chapter two defines several key terms, including gender&sex, culture&sub-culture,cross-gender communication and discourse style.Chapter three elaborates on the discourse style differences in cross-gender communication fromtwo aspects: utterance structure characteristics and conversation structure features. In terms of utterancestructure characteristics, men and women differ a lot in pronunciation, vocabularies and sentences. Theconversation structure features are discussed from topic choice, the amount of talks, relevance ofutterance, discourse response, topic control, turn-taking, communication strategy and speech patterns.Chapter four explores reasons for the two sexes’ different discourse styles, includingneurophysiologic, psychological, politics and cultural factor, among which, psychological, politics andcultural factor are the most important. In social psychology, different value tropisms (power-oriented&relationship-oriented) bring on two sexes’ different attitudes on speech responses and control of topics.Furthermore, the shape of the two sexes’ different discourse styles is influenced by role stereotypes.People standardize the individualistic behavior in accordance with the generally accepted gender roleunconsciously. In terms of politics, unequal social status results in different discourse styles. In socialculture, as a kind of subculture, gender culture is deeply influenced by mainstream culture. Amongseveral worldviews in the mainstream culture, individualism&collectivism and power distanceinfluence cross-gender communication most deeply.Chapter five states in what aspects cross-gender miscommunication is manifested and gives someadvice on how to improve cross-gender communication. Chapter six summarizes the issues presentedabove, and states that limitations of the thesis and suggestions on further research.