Turn-taking In Cross-gender Conversations-a Case Study Of The American Tv Serial How I Met Your Mother

Turn-taking is one of the main topics in Conversation Analysis.Since it was first put forward by Harvey Sacks and his colleagues in1974,many researchers have studied turn-taking in various interactions, likeanalysis of turn-taking features in TV interviews, dating shows,cross-generation conversations, etc., but few studies have been focusedon studying the turn-taking features in cross-gender conversations. So thisthesis, based on previous studies, will analyze turn-taking in cross-genderconversations in terms of the turn-taking system and turn-takingstrategies, and further explore the similarities and differences ofturn-taking between women and men.The data in this thesis are collected from the American TV serialHow I Met Your Mother. Both quantitative and qualitative analyses areapplied in this thesis, but qualitative analysis is the main method to studythe turn-taking on the basis of quantitative analysis. The quantitativeanalysis is focused on calculating the specific numbers of everyturn-constructional component, turn-allocation component andturn-taking strategy used by women and men. The qualitative analysisaims to analyze the results and behind reasons, such as gender differences,pragmatic contexts, personality and some other reasons.The results show that1) both men and women use sentences and sentence groups when taking turns, select the next speaker by nominationand questions, and get the turn for themselves by initiation and insertion;2) women usually use “greeting” to initiate a conversation and “askingquestion” to yeild the turn. Men are good at using strategy to hold theturn and they are more likely to claim the turn by insertion andinterruption.This research enriches the studies of turn-taking and enlarges itsresearch domain to the specific context-sitcom. It also makes people gaina better understanding of the turn-taking features and then helps themachieve successful communication. This thesis ends with the implications,limitations as well as suggestions for the future study.