Influence of Communication Partner's Gender on Speaker's Language

This research investigates the influence of communication partner gender on a speaker's conversational style. Forty participants (20 male) had two 3-minute conversations with a trained male and female communication partner. Eighty three-minute conversations were transcribed and coded for dependent clauses, fillers, tag questions, intensive adverbs, negations, hedges, personal pronouns, self-references, justifiers, and interruptions. A ratio of the frequencies of these linguistic markers to total number of words produced was calculated for each speaker in each conversational context. Results suggest no significant changes in language based on speaker gender F(10, 29) = .412, p = .929, eta 2 = .124. However, communication partner gender was influential in language change F(10, 29) = 15.573, p <.000, eta 2 = .843. There was no significant interaction to suggest language change for communication partner was specific to one gender group F(10, 29) = 1.061, p = .421, eta2 = .268. These results are discussed in context of previous research, communication accommodation, and social-versus-biological factors associated with language and gender.