Gender-based Differences In The Use Of Follow-up Moves In Chinese Daily Conversations

Follow-up move or feedback from the teacher is initially introduced by Sinclair andCoulthard in1975when they study classroom discourse. Since then, it has remained a heatedissue for many linguists, whose researches range from classroom discourse to non-classroomdiscourse. Follow-ups, besides evaluating the correctness of responses from students inclassroom, have other varied functions in non-classroom discourse, such as accepting thepositive outcome of the provided information, minimizing the face-threatening effect, orshowing a minimal acknowledgement of the interaction, etc. As a third move of a three-partexchange, its occurance, in daily conversation, is largely connected with the gender of thespeaker. Therefore, this paper examines the production of follow-up moves in Chinese dailyconversations involving only two speakers, with either male iniators or female initiators, andtries to answer the following questions:1. What are the general gender-based tendencies in terms of the use of follow-upmoves?2. What are the gender-based differences in terms of the use and functions of thefollow-up moves corresponding to the types of initial moves?3. What are the potential factors for the differences?After detailed analysis, this research gets the following findings:1. On the whole, follow-up moves are more often used by females than by males inChinese daily conversations.2. In view of the different initial moves, both in elicitations and inforamtives, follow-upsare more often produced by females than by males; while in directives, follow-ups, mostly,are not produced by both female and male speakers. In terms of function, females tend to usefollow-ups to acknowledge the outcome of the interaction; whereas, males tend to use them toendorse the positive outcome of the interaction.3. Differcent social roles and statuses, socializations, psychological features, as well aslinguistic behaviors are the major factors for the different use of follow-up moves by femalesand males.