A Study On Gender-related Language Differences In Chinese TV Talk Shows

Since the 1960 s, with the rapid development of sociolinguistics, research on gender-related language differences has gained extensive attention around the world. The importance of gender differences in language continues being strengthened. In recent years, research on gender differences in language has made significant progress both at home and abroad. In this paper, the TV talk show to be investigated is Intimate Talk with Li Jing(Fei Chang Jing Ju Li), which is a popular Chinese television talk show that airs on Anhui Television and has received great success since 2009. Equipped with the theoretical framework consisting of Robin Lakoff’s Deficit Theory, Grice’s Cooperative Principle and Gu Yueguo’s Politeness Principle, this paper analyzes 30 episodes extracted from the program Intimate Talk with Li Jing, in an attempt to explore the main gender-related language differences in Chinese TV talk show.This paper mainly adopts the quantitative approach to investigate the frequency and distribution of the words according to different categories, namely, lexical, syntactical, phonological and discourse categories. All the statistical results are revealed via the software provided by the website www.cncorpus.org, the aim of which is to find out the gender-related language differences in Intimate Talk With Li Jing. After analysis of thirty episodes under the theoretical framework, the main findings of the empirical research are listed below:(1)At the lexical level,the intensifiers that are exploited by women account for2.1%.Among these intensifiers,“特别”,“挺”and“太”stand out in frequency,which is approximately double those applied by men.Women use hedges more frequently than men do in their utterances,especially“可能”and“比较”.In the thirty episodes,women use euphemisms 7 times while men only twice.Women use more interjections than men do,especially“嗯”,“啊”and“哎呀”.Both men and women use the modal particles frequently in the talk show,and women use them 418 times while men 319times.(2)At the syntactical level,women tend to use more hedges,especially“我觉得”and the frequency is 29.13%.Women in the talk show use tag questions 13 times versus 6 times by men.In women’s speeches,exclamatory sentences account for 10.92%while men 8.83%.(3) At the phonological level, intonational emphasis and the question intonation occupy a larger proportion in women’s speeches, which account for 4.77% and 1.91%, while men 1.32% and 0.99%.(4) At the discourse level, men violate the Cooperative Principle 16 times while women 4 times and men violate the Politeness Principle 21 times while women 4 times.Finally, the author discusses the reasons for gender-related language differences in Intimate Talk with Li Jing. The social division of labor is the main cause of the gender-related language differences. Men, who are in a dominant position, often control the topic or interrupt others in communication, while women are more passive. Next, the gender stereotype stipulates that men should be brave, strong, straight, responsible, initiative and so on while women should be tender, implicit, gentle and quiet. So people in daily communication will be in accordance with their own gender characteristics. In addition, different psychological characteristics of men and women also contribute to the occurrence and existence of gender differences in language.