Don’t men seem to have their own language when they talk to other? It is most definitely characteristically different from the way they talk to women. Aside from the trite but quintessential stereotype of guys calling each other “dudes” or “bros,” they also appear to use harsher language when speaking to one of their own. There seems to be a universal preconceived notion that this is the way a man must act with other men; little boys were raised and taught to embody certain traditionalistic masculine behaviors growing up, such as the way they should talk to members of same as well as opposite sex. A study conducted by Yokoyama (1999) on Russian children’s literature found that even the texts in children’s books were rife with these stereotypes that men have to be strong and women are inherently weak. The gender stereotypes were even represented in the way male and female characters talk in the books. Female characters are nine times more likely to speak with diminutives and interjections compared to male characters (Yokoyama, 1999), giving the impression that they “softer,” “cuter,” more polite, as well as more easily confused than male characters.

These are the types of books that we commonly get for our developing young children. Apparently, these textually-represented gender stereotypes are prevalent from nursery books all the way to preschool level texts (Yokoyama, 1999). Children are able to differentiate between the two sexes and their associated activities (i.e. boys play with toy soldiers and girls play with dolls) from as young as 2 years old (Thompson, 1975). Because of this, Yokoyama (1999) argues that these children’s books can most definitely influence the way children grow up and how they come to think of the two genders as they develop into mature adults.

Fortunately, this may not be the case. A recent study conducted by Park et al. (2016) claims that based on their Facebook posts, women are just as assertive as men are. The study found women to be warmer, politer, and have more compassion than men, but are just as assertive. It would appear that, based on people’s online behavior, they did not grow up to fulfill the traditionalistic stereotypes imposed on them as children.

The study conducted here today hopes to solidify and support Park at al.’s (2016) findings that women are just as assertive as men by analyzing the language used in internet videos. Internet videos are arguably the most accessible and popular form of media being used today. Just imagine the possible implications of sexist overtones being present in the viral videos young children around the globe watch during recess in the playground, quietly influencing their views on the world. My focus today is specifically on Conan celebrity interviews on the TeamCoco channel on YouTube. “Conan” is a late-night TV talk show that airs on TBS but also has clips frequently uploaded to their YouTube channel. It is hosted by comedian Conan O’Brien and “sidekick” Andy Richter.

I analyzed the differences in authoritative language between Conan interviews with male celebrities and female celebrities. I divided authoritative language into three subsections: hedging, interruptions, and commands. Hedging is a linguistic phenomenon that occurs whenever a speaker is trying convey uncertainty or ambiguity. A common example of this is by adding the phrases “I guess” or “kind of” to sentences. Another is by adding tag questions to the end of sentences like, “You’re John, aren’t you?” Hedging would be an example of unauthoritative language. Interruptions is further divided into two more subsections: successful interruptions and unsuccessful interruptions. A successful interruption is when someone successfully interjects and the other person stops talking. An unsuccessful interruption is when someone interjects but the other person continues talking and so the first person who initially interrupted stops talking. Commands is anytime anybody in the interview tells another person to do something using a direct imperative like, “Tell us about your day,” or “Stop it!” Any commands addressed to the live studio audience were not counted into the results of this study. Interruptions and commands would be considered examples of authoritative language. A combination of low instances of hedging and high instances of interruptions and commands would mean a high “score” for overall authoritative language.

Based on the tables above, it is quite clear that male celebrity interviews had far more instances of overall authoritative language than female celebrity interviews; male celebrity interviews had more instances interruptions and commands as well as far less instances of hedging. It would appear that the hosts (both men) appear to use different types of language when speaking with male celebrities than with female celebrities. This is not consistent with the results from Park et al. (2016) that women were just as assertive as men. In the context of celebrity interviews, the female celebrity Conan interviews had far less authoritative language used than the male celebrity Conan interviews. Moreover, the hosts consistently hedged more in the female celebrity interviews than they did in the male celebrity interviews. This further solidifies and supports the idea that men do indeed talk differently with other men than with women.

It would seem that we as a society have not quite reached the level of progressiveness as we had hoped and that traditionalistic stereotypes still haunt our subconscious biases to this very day. The frightening takeaway from this study is that these effects were observed after only analyzing two hours’ worth of Conan footage. If we were to assume that these Conan celebrity interviews accurately represented and reflected the entire population of internet videos, it would indeed be a dangerous and unnerving precedent. Almost every young child in the Western hemisphere carries around a smartphone around with them and with that, internet access. Should you choose to believe Yokoyama (1999), these viral videos that your kids are watching everyday are casually and subconsciously influencing the way they think, particularly on their beliefs and opinions on the two sexes, based on the subtle linguistic differences that occur between the men and women in those videos. The language used in these videos, and consequently the beliefs that come along with it, will be emulated by our future generations unless we decide to make a change, now and today.

 

References

Park, G., Yaden, D. B., Schwartz, H. A., Kern, M. L., Eichstaedt, J. C., Kosinski, M., … & Seligman, M. E. (2016). Women are warmer but no less assertive than men: Gender and language on Facebook. PloS one, 11(5).

Thompson, S. K. (1975). Gender labels and early sex role development. Child Development, 339-347.

Yokoyama, O. T. (1999). Gender linguistic analysis of Russian children’s literature. PRAGMATICS AND BEYOND NEW SERIES, 57-84.

Introduction

I am going to study the Democratic presidential debate held on February 19, 2020 in Las Vegas, Nevada. This is an interesting opportunity to study gender dynamics, and the effects gender can have on the types of interruptions politicians employ during a debate. To understand this, it is important to study the portions of the debate where there is a lot of discussion and conversation between candidates. In these moments, we see different kinds of interruptions take place: some threatening while others are more supportive. It is expected that the evidence will point towards the following: that when men interrupt others, they are more likely to do it in a face-threatening or rude manner so that they can criticize and threaten the image of their opponent while women are more likely to interrupt in ways that are supportive and less face-threatening (thus communicating politely). This can be applied in the context of debates as male candidates will likely interject and interrupt other candidates in order to either make a threatening comment or to defend against a face-threatening act in order to damage their opponents’ image and position themselves in a better light. Women, on the other hand, are less inclined to jump in with the same assertiveness for fear of being deemed too aggressive or threatening by the public (Pfafman, 2014). During the course of this Democratic presidential debate, candidates frequently interrupt and challenge one another on stage by employing different kinds of interruptions (either more threatening or more supportive)—specifically looking at how these types of interruptions are utilized by each gender and how often they are used.

Methods

In watching the Democratic Presidential Debate that was in Las Vegas on February 19^th, 2020, I focused on portions of the debate where candidates entered into heated discussions and responses that resulted in a high frequency of interruptions. The portions studied were about 1-2 minutes in length and contained multiple interruptions of varying types. These interruptions span the range from face-threatening to supportive. I counted the number of interruptions of each type and kept track of who made them (whether the person was male or female). The following legend decodes the transcriptions below:

 

 

 

 

 

Results and Discussion

The following examples from the beginning of the debate depict interruptions between Buttigieg and Sanders that are considered to be face-threatening acts since they threaten the hearer’s positive face. In this example, Buttigieg is speaking about the campaign contributions he has received from his supporters and says the following:

Sanders interrupts Buttigieg in order to threaten Buttigieg’s face and self-image (in this case Buttigieg is the hearer). This interruption is an expression that negatively evaluates Buttigieg’s positive face as Sanders is criticizing who Buttigieg is receiving his campaign contributions from. It can also be understood that the speaker (Sanders) does not care about the hearer’s positive face because he is not only interrupting Buttigieg, but also criticizing him in the same moment in line 4. A few moments later, Sanders interrupts Buttigieg again in line 14.

This example of a face-threatening act is motivated by the desire to damage Sanders’s positive face and threaten his image. The interruption in line 11 comes as a response to this attack, so Sanders interrupts Buttigieg in order to defend himself and take back some control from Buttigieg. It is understood that communication style is shaped by many factors—one of the most important ones being gender (Pfafman, 2014). Thus, the relationship between the use of face-threatening acts and their frequency must at least in part be due to the differences in communication styles between the genders. Politeness strategies and politeness patterns differ based on gender: men are less likely to reduce the inherent harm of face-threatening acts while women are more likely to behave in ways that utilize politeness strategies in order to mitigate the harm of face-threatening acts (Ramadhani, 2014).

Interruptions may not always be face-threatening, sometimes interruptions can be more supportive. In this example, Warren attempts to interrupt Buttigieg in line 5:

In line 5, Warren interrupts Buttigieg but does so just as Buttigieg is wrapping up his response in line 4. This type of interruption is non-threatening as Warren is not attempting to criticize Buttigieg nor is she striving to defend herself; she is attempting only to insert her opinion in a moment when Buttigieg is done speaking. Her interruption was not disruptive, and it did not occur at a time in the conversation where it would have derailed the speaker’s train of thought. Therefore, it cannot be considered a deep interruption. The interruption also did not have any face-threatening qualities to it since there is no indication in line 5 that Warren was motivated to threaten Buttigieg’s image or attack him.  Since the interruption occurred right at the end of her opponent’s statement and was not meant to criticize; this interruption can be classified as non-face threatening because it does not threaten the speaker’s face or the hearer’s face. Women are challenged by the constructed notion that “they ought to communicate politely” (Rudman and Glick, 2001) so when female politicians interrupt others on the debate floor; it is less likely because they want to introduce criticism or threaten another individual and more likely because they want to “make requests or express ideas and opinions without threatening the other’s face” (Goffman, 1967). This is done so through the patterns of politeness that women are socially expected to present.          

Conclusion

In this blog, I studied the types of interruptions in presidential debates and how gender plays a role in these interruptions. I was specifically studying whether the interruptions were more supportive or more face threatening. There is evidence that politeness does have an impact on how each gender employs different types of interruptions in language. It is found that women, since they more commonly utilize politeness patterns and strategies, are less likely to produce interruptions that threaten or attack another person’s positive face. This is because there are societal expectations and standards in western culture that favor polite women, and in these situations, women will attempt to mitigate and reduce the harmful effects of face-threatening acts by using these politeness strategies to appear less assertive. This becomes especially important on the debate stage where the perception of the candidate is important to maintain a certain public image. The genders have different communication styles that allow them to use language in different ways—meaning that the types of interruptions as well as how and why they are used in conversation are also gender dependent.

 

If you are interested in learning more about politeness theory or face-threatening acts in general, the following links to videos may be of interest:

A Coursera video on the notion of face (free course)

A YouTube introduction to Politeness theory

References

Brown, P., & Levinson, S. C. (2006). Politeness: some universals in language usages. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The Discourse Reader (pp. 311-323). London & New York: Routledge.

Eelen, Gino (2001). A Critique of Politeness Theories. Manchester: St Jerome.

Goffman, E. (2006). On Face-Work: an analysis of ritual elements in social interaction. In A. Jaworski & N. Coupland (Eds.), The Discourse Reader (pp. 299-310). London & New York: Routledge.

Janney, Richard W. and Horst Arndt (1993). Universality and Relativity in Cross-cultural Politeness Research: A Historical Perspective. Multilingual 12.1: 13-50.

Locher, Miriam A. and Richard J. Watts (2005). Politeness Theory and Relational Work. Journal of Politeness Research 1.5: 9-33.

O’Driscoll, Jim (2007). What’s in an FTA? Reflections on a Chance Meeting with Claudine. Journal of Politeness Research 3.7: 243-268.

Pfafman, Tessa M. “Polite Women at Work: Negotiating Professional Identity Through Strategic Assertiveness.” Taylor & Francis, 2014.

Ramadhani, Putri. (2014). Politeness Strategies And Gender Differences In Javanese Indirect Speech Acts. Jurnal Linguistik Terapan Pascasarjana Unimed. 11 (1): 24-33.

Introduction and Background

We’re in the midst of election season, and extensive debates between candidates constitute this component of our politics. Candidates come on stage to share their opinions, spread their ideas, and also to minimize their opponents and show that they are deserving of the party’s nomination. Like any conversation, gender influences the discourse in these debates, as one could easily argue that American politics are a man’s world, and thus the female candidates have to fight for their place on the stage. Looking at the role of gender in this form of political discourse could help us understand how gender influences elections, debates, and the power dynamic in politics as a whole.

In order to look specifically at the establishment of power and assertion of dominance, which are key outcomes of a debate⁶, the linguistic device of interruptions can be analyzed. Interruptions in gendered conversation have been extensively studied, and a multitude of theories surrounding the frequency of interruptions with gender have been established. I looked at studies done by Tannen, Lakoff, Anderson and Leaper, and James and Clarke to hypothesize how gender would influence frequency of interruptions by candidates based on gender. According to James and Clarke, who conducted a series of reviews between 1965 and 1991, there is no difference in the frequency of interruption between men and women, however the cause or function of the interruption can vary.⁴ Aligning with this theory, we can expect no drastic difference in the frequency of interruptions by any given gender group, in the context of the ongoing democratic debates starting from June 2019.

Methods

The study done on the ongoing democratic debates was two-fold, consisting of both a qualitative and quantitative analysis. The entire 2 hour debate from July 30th, between 7 male and 3 female candidates was analyzed and all instances of interruption, including the gender of the candidate who interrupted and the gender of the candidate who was interrupted were recorded. In addition, transcription on the 22-minute segment of the debate regarding healthcare was also executed. Transcriptions will help understand how the structure imposed by the Democratic National Committee for turn-taking is disturbed through linguistic features other than interruption.

For the purposes of this study, an interruption will be marked by a candidate speaking over, and successfully pausing the speech of another candidate, and interruptions of the moderator, silent interruptions, and non-intrusive interruptions will not be considered.

Results and Analysis

The quantitative analysis of interruption during a debate was conducted on the first night of the second 2019 Democratic Debate, seen below.

Throughout the debate, there were 24 occurrences of interruption, which are further broken down into four groups in the following tables.

As seen in the data above, when the number of interruptions instigated by males and females was normalized to the number of candidates per gender, there was no difference in the frequency of interruption by any gender group. This aligns with James and Clarke’s theory that interruption does not vary in frequency between genders, but rather in origin and meaning.

It is important to normalize these results, so that our understanding of interruption is not skewed by the imbalance in gender seen in this realm of politics.  Claims such as males interrupt more during debates, or males speak more during debates are not necessarily false, but prevalence of males and females in the conversation must be considered. To determine if females are responsible for fewer interruptions due to a characteristic of their gendered language, or simply because there are less women present at the stage during the debate, a comparison of the origin and execution of the interruptions can be done. Further detailed analysis of the marked occurrences of interruption can help explain the nature of the conversation in a more qualitative manner.         

Starting from the first two occurrences of interruption in the debate, of which one is by a female candidate and the other is by a male candidate, a great deal of discrepancy in the nature of interruption is observed.

In the first interruption, of a male candidate by a female candidate, she interjects to inform the speaker that she should get an opportunity to speak, as in accordance with the rules after one is name-checked in question response.

In the interruption by a male candidate, there are many differences. The interrupted, Delaney, takes this opportunity to address the audience regarding the flaws in Sanders’ opinion by saying “But now he’s talking.” This interruption is not confrontational, but rather argumentative in nature.

While both these intrusive interruptions, regardless of propagator, are similar in the way they impact the conversation, there are differences in why and how they are executed.

Conclusion

In this study, the frequency of interruption between male and female candidates was not drastically different, yet when qualitatively analyzing the nature of the interruptions it was apparent that gendered differences did exist. While the results of this study are informative about the power dynamics between different genders in politics, this study is quite possibly limited to the field.

It could be argued that women in politics may be a deviant case from a woman in other fields, as they have to use dominance-establishing discourse in the form of interruptions to assert their position in a debate. No one would doubt that a male candidate belongs in a debate for a presidential nomination due to his gender, but a female candidate would have to prove her belonging in that scenario.

Interruptions can help establish dominance or an imbalance of power, but when utilized by a population that historically has not held power on the platform of presidential debates, can result in a gendered view of this language. The repeated interruption by Senator Warren during the debate analyzed is just one example of this. Successive interruptions by Warren could be in an attempt to express equality in this playing field by asserting dominance in a conversation, but also indicate an acquittal from gender roles and thus are additionally marked. Her dominance is therefore interpreted as “pushiness” or “nastiness” in the political realm, as illustrated below⁹.

The gendered expectation is that women should behave and speak differently from men, and when this is contrasted, can lead to disruption of the hierarchy discussed in Tannen’s theory.⁷

While not many conclusions regarding how the frequency of interruptions influence the power dynamic in democratic presidential debates can be reached from this study, the understanding that a power imbalance can exist is quite evident. It is not only the frequency of interruptions but also their execution and response that influences who can assert dominance in these conversations.

 

References

1. Anderson, K.J., Leaper, C. Meta-Analyses of Gender Effects on Conversational

Interruption: Who, What, When, Where, and How. Sex Roles 39, 225–252 (1998).

2. Burns, A., Flegenheimer, M., Lee, J. C., Lerer, L., & Martin, J. (2020, February 7).

Who’s Running for President in 2020? The New York Times.

3. Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and Gender. Cambridge University Press.

4. James, D., & Clarke, S. (n.d.). Women, Men, and Interruptions: A Critical Review. In Critical Reviews of the Literature (pp. 231–277).

5. Lerer, L., Epstein, R. J., Goldmacher, S., & Glueck, K. (2019, July 30). 6 Highlights From Night 1 of the July Democratic Debates. The New York Times.

6. McLeod, J. (1999). The Sociodrama of Presidential Politics: Rhetoric, Ritual, and Power in the Era of Teledemocracy. American Anthropologist, 101(2), 359-373. Retrieved March 4, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/683206

7. Tannen, D. (1994). Gender and discourse. New York: Oxford University Press.

8. Trucotte, J., & Paul, N. (2015). A Case of More Is Less: The Role of Gender in U.S. Presidential Debates. Political Research Quarterly, 68(4), 773-784. Retrieved February 11, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/24637815

Links

9. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump

10. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r8dHaIN1Rds

Introduction

Interruption is described by O’Canaill and Frohlich (1995) as “a synchronous interaction which was not initiated by the subject, was unscheduled and resulted in the recipient discontinuing their current activity” (p. 262). In this study, I decided to focus on the use of deep interruptions, which disrupts the flow of the conversation and ultimately changes the topic of the discussion. According to Lakoff (1975), the idea of male dominance signifies a more hierarchical status that men hold, throwing women under their dominance, even linguistically. Since the male dominance model has been affecting the performance of women’s speech negatively, I conducted this test to prove whether or not this objective applies to my subject of study and whether the difference is significant. In addition, the role of eye contact in human interaction is crucial for the delivery of information from one another (Russon, Bard & Parker, 1998). Therefore, I would like to see if deep interruptions would affect the absence of eye gaze depending on who and to whom it is applied to.

Methods

I separated this study into two distinct cases: mixed-sex interaction and same-sex interactions and in each case, I observed five different videos to determine the frequency of successful interruptions as well as the avoidance of eye contact while deep interrupting. Unfortunately, due to the limited number of video availability, there are only three videos of female-female interactions that can be used for this analysis. Throughout watching each video, I tallied up the number of deep interruptions that occur, including the frequency of eye contact avoidance which takes time during the deep interruption itself. Since all of the videos that were observed have various time intervals, I divided the number of deep interruptions observed by the length of the video to obtain the number of deep interruptions per minute. Once I gathered the numbers from all of the sample data, I calculated the average frequency per minute for each gender in each type of interaction. Next, I would find the p-value for each combination of gender and the type of interaction to dictate the significance of these differences. Similarly, I would do the exact same thing with the frequency of avoiding eye contact while successfully interrupting. The only difference is that I divided the number of eye contact absences by the number of deep interruptions that was previously calculated to obtain its percentage. The succeeding steps remained the same.

Results

After gathering all of the data and quantifying the number of deep interruptions that arises in each interaction, I have found the average number of incidents in both cross-sex and same-sex interactions

 

 

 

 

 

Looking at the table above, it is obvious that men from the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen successfully interrupt more in a mixed-sex conversation, where the difference is twice as much as the women’s behavior. However, using R Programming, I discovered that the p-value for this particular situation (0.1276) is larger than 0.05, which means the difference between the use of deep interruptions in a mixed-sex conversation between men and women from this sample data is not significant. Likewise, this insignificance also occurs in any other combination of gender and type of interruption of the Bon Appetit Test Kitchen Members.

Successful interruptions that occur in this particular setting are oftentimes denoted by a pattern of eye contact avoidance between the speakers prior to or while interruption takes time. Below is one of the examples that can be found in cross-sex interaction between Brad and Priya regarding the steps of making home-made yogurt.

From the example above, a successful interruption occurs at line 14 when Brad is justifying his use of the term ole man. Being worried that people misheard him for calling Priya’s dad an old man, he cuts Priya off with his explanation without making any eye contact. This absence of eye contact allows him to share his opinions without getting interrupted. A similar situation also arises prior to the successful interruption, which occurs in lines 1 through 4. While Brad is asking a question to Priya, their eyes do not meet and this, too, enables Brad to talk at a longer period of time without being cut off by Priya.

To give a better insight related to the evidence shown above, I have observed the mean percentage of eye contact avoidance in each type of interruption.

 

 

 

 

Merely from the table above, there are a few apparent deviations that stand out, like the difference between men and women in mixed-sex interaction and the difference between mixed-sex and same-sex interactions in women’s speech. Nevertheless, by applying the same statistical method as I did for the frequency of deep interruptions, I found that the only significant difference results from the latter one.

Discussion & Results

After thorough analysis, I have found that there is no power dominance in the community of Bon Appetit Test Kitchen in which one gender successfully interrupts more than the other while conversing. Perhaps due to time development, there has been a lot of positive improvements towards the approach that society provides to women, thus refining the way women construct their speech. Moreover, in regard to the pattern of avoiding eye contact while successfully interrupting, I found that there are patterns in which this action is not merely a subconscious gesture. Just like the example shown in the results section, the absence of eye contact gives the speaker the ability to talk in a longer period of time without any interruption. Other than that, in other observations, I found that speakers tend to break eye contact while deep interrupting the other person to shift his/her focus to the object that is being discussed. Finally, for the members of Bon Appetit Test Kitchen alone, considering they make videos to be uploaded to YouTube, they often successfully interrupt the other to engage more with the audience by looking straight to the camera.

 

References

Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (2013). Language and gender. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

James, D., & Clarke, S. (n.d.). Women, Men, and Interruptions: A Critical Review. In Critical Reviews of the Literature (pp. 231–277).

Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and women’s place. New York: Harper and Row

O’Conaill, B., & Frohlich, D. (1995). Timespace in the workplace. Dealing with Interruptions. doi: 10.1145/223355.223665

Russon, A. E., Bard, K. A., & Parker, S. T. (1998). Reaching into thought: the minds of the great apes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Background

The presidential democratic debates are tightly structured and the rules are stated directly by a moderator at the start of each debate, where amounts of time are set for answers and rebuttals, and a warning is given against interruptions. Despite the tight format, as illustrated in video compilations like this one, there are many instances when rules are broken and there is a lot of overlap and interruptions as candidates attempt to get a chance to speak. This is where we can see examples of overlap and interruptions, as well as the use of polite requests and demanding directives.  The way in which candidates either demand or request time reflect overarching societal expectations of politeness on gender and power. 

The two debates I have analyzed interactions from are the September 12^th, 2019 debate at Texas Southern University in Houston (Fig. 1), and the October 15^th, 2019 debate at Otterbein University in Westerville, Ohio (Fig. 2). 

On the topic of linguistics and gender, we know that there are traditional differences in the way women and men speak, due to differences in how we are raised and taught. Robin Lakoff (1973) examines how women speak and the effect that is produced, which is a position of subordination to men because of politeness and an unsureness. However, a more recent and properly conducted study by O’Barr and Atkin’s chapter on women’s language as powerless language (1998), examines courtroom dialogue to look at language variance due to gender differences in a courtroom. They classify the features as a language of powerlessness, which can apply for men, not only women, and depends on power relationships between participants (1998, 24). Something that Lakoff (1973) examines is the use of requests and politeness, which I have examined in this study. While being wary of Lakoff’s view on classifying requests as women’s language, the use of simple requests on the debate stage is predominantly exemplified by women, whereas direct orders are rare, and are more often used by male candidates.  Requests with please are described as “distinctly unmasculine” (Lakoff, 57) in a way that allows women to prevent expressing a strong statement. However, the point of the presidential debates is to make strong statements when conveying views on topical issues in order to gain attention from the public. The use of “please” and forming polite requests thus relinquishes a candidate’s ability to appear compelling and strong to viewers. In Carroll and Fox’s book (2018) on gender in elections, they note that language used in the public’s expectations about politicians and candidates illustrate a very stereotypically masculine space, where “tough, dominant, and assertive” are used to describe ideal leaders; typically gendered as male words (Carol & Fox, 2018). Gender also operates within the public’s approval of political candidates and how they should act. This traps female candidates in a traditionally feminine box, where they must act out certain womanly stereotypes and expectations in order to earn favor with implicitly biased citizens who are socialized with these ideals about gender. By examining these debates, it will help show what extent gendered speech strategies have on male and female candidates’ ability to take the floor.

Methods

I used conversational analysis conventions to transcribe the excerpts of the debate where there are significant overlap or interruptions occurring, as well as opportunities for interjection during pauses and lowering pitch, which normally occurs when someone is ending a sentence. I will also look at word choice by candidates when making attempts to get the floor, and whether or not they are successful by looking at whether or not the moderator grants them time to answer. 

Analysis

In two excerpts from the September Debate, Amy Klobuchar and Joe Biden both attempt to grab the floor, following the end of another candidate’s answer. They both engage in overlap with moderator George Stephanopoulos—who is supposed to choose the next speaker by name. These contrasting attempts at self-selection and the reaction from the moderator illustrate the importance of demands, rather than requests, when commanding authority.

We can see that in Example 1, Klobuchar attempts to enter the debate after Bernie Sander’s starts to finish his response, but she was unsuccessful. Klobuchar’s word choice in line 7 indicates politeness, using an “if I could” request to interject, instead of a demand.  This request is contrasted by Joe Biden’s response in example 2 when he attempts to get the floor using a directive.In line 8, Biden says “fifteen seconds;” he is not asking, he is demanding. The strategy employed by Biden is successful, and the moderator changes his mind in line 10 to give the floor to give him the floor instead of O’Rourke. Klobuchar’s use of politeness toward the moderator designates respect, and illustrates the power to which moderators have over the candidates, as they are the ones choosing speakers and deciding when rules can be broken. Biden does not use respect, and he is ultimately successful.

 

Once in both debates, Kamala Harris unsuccessfully attempts to enter the conversation after another candidate’s turn is over by using phrases “could I” and “I’d like.” Both times the moderator denies her request by choosing a different speaker. 

 

In example 3, Harris is ignored. In example 4, Harris is ignored again, but her persistence in requesting to answer results in her microphone volume being shut off. She can still be heard speaking as Lacey then refers to Biden for the next question. This transcription exemplifies the quieting of women in political arenas. 

 

In the next examples, we see the candidates verbally deny the moderator’s request to choose a new speaker by using masculine, demanding tones. 

 

In example 5 from the September Debate, Biden does not allow Lindsey Davis to fulfill her role in choosing the next speaker because he was not done answering. Instead, he references the previous candidates who also overlapped with moderators and continued answering despite attempts to give the floor to someone else. Biden is direct and firm in his speech in line 3, saying “No no” to the overlap by Davis, to which she allows. In example 6, from the October Debate, Elizabeth Warren also states “no” and raises her voice when moderator Burnett starts to overlap her speech and firmly denies the attempt at selecting a new speaker and is eventually successful in standing her ground. However, she ends her firm statement by using “please” in line 3 to prevent the command from sounding too assertive. This goes back to the idea in Gender and Elections that female candidates cannot adopt the demeanor of male politicians to become equals (Carrol & Fox, 2018). Rather, they have to play into public ideas of women in power and what normal citizens expect to see and hear from a woman.

 

Conclusions

The goal of the debates is to allow Americans to hear the candidates’ platforms, as well as assess their ability to command respect on stage through articulate speech. As seen in the transcription examples, it appears that male candidates tend to speak with more demand than the female candidates, and are also able to take the floor more often than women. This goes back to the theme of politeness, and the societal expectation that women use “feminine” speech that projects a tentative and unsure quality.

 

The ability of each candidate to select themselves when a new turn is beginning is not exactly reflected in the overall time spoken during these debates. In Fig. 3 and Fig. 4, there is varied distribution for speaking time between the female and male candidates, with Biden and Warren switching off between the top two spots for both debates, so we cannot explicitly correlate gender and gender strategies of speech with ability to get time on the stage, since both candidates show different approaches to turn-taking in the above examples and had different success rates in interrupting.  However, we can use these transcriptions to show that gender stereotypes in language do persist and are evident in formal, traditionally male settings like these debates. As the democratic debates and primary elections end, the persistence of misogyny and scrutiny over female politicians is exemplified in the two last candidates standing; heteronormative, white male candidates Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden. As more women run for elections in the future, methods of speaking and taking the floor may become more similar between male and female politicians, and will hopefully allow women leaders to contribute to changing power dynamics, shifting stereotypes about women in leadership roles, and thus affect linguistic strategies and norms.  

 

References

Carrol, Susan J. & Richard L. Fox. (2018) Gender and Elections: Shaping the Future of American Politics. Cambridge University Press.

Lakoff, Robin (1973). Language and Woman’s Place: Language in Society 2 (1): 45–80.

O’Barr, William M., and Bowman K. Atkins. (1998) Language and Gender, A Reader: Women’s Language or Powerless Language? Malden, MA: Blackwell. 377-387.

Introduction

A previous study on gender and expertise found that in group settings, even when men and women possessed similar levels of expertise, women were perceived as less expert than men, were less influential, and were less confident about their impact (Thomas-Hunt & Phillips, 2004). Another study found a difference in the styles of interaction used by male and female graduate students, namely that male students were much more likely to use styles that highlighted their expertise (Hirshfield, 2017). Though the culinary field seems to subvert many of the age-old gender stereotypes, previous work has shown that in foodie culture, men are more likely to focus on the theme of knowledge and expertise when describing their relationship with food (Cairns et al., 2010). This study will focus on gender-related linguistic differences pertaining to expertise and how they present themselves in an interview setting, specifically within the culinary field. 

Filler phrases like uh and um are commonplace in our everyday language. However, these simple terms can have large effects on the way speakers are perceived by their audiences. One study found that though these phrases can be used by speakers to “hold the floor” and give them time to continue their thought, they may not always be interpreted as such (Clark & Fox Tree, 2002). In fact, another study found that people often interpret use of filler phrases as a sign of nervousness or inadequate preparation (Christenfield, 1995). The present study seeks to find any gendered difference in the way the use of filler phrases is interpreted, and if this difference in interpretation can affect the occurrence of interruptions.

When looking at interruptions, the present study classifies them based on their purpose; interruptions can serve to either change the topic, express disagreement, or obtain the conversational floor (Murata, 1994). These interruptions will be distinguished from other types of speech overlap, such as backchanneling, which is often used to show encouragement by the listener, rather than to change the topic or take control of the conversation (Murata, 1994). 

This study found that women’s use of filler phrases such as uh and um were more likely to be interpreted as a cue for interruption, and thereby followed by subsequent interruption, while men were able to use these phrases to extend their conversational turn. This phenomenon may be a potential mechanism through which women’s expertise is undermined.

 Methods

The analysis was performed on a viral interview series called “Hot Ones,” posted by the First We Feast channel on the streaming platform YouTube. In these videos, the interviewer, Sean Evans, a 33-year-old male, interviewed celebrities while they ate hot wings in order of increasing spice level. Four interviews with famous culinary experts, two males and two females, were chosen in order to look at differences in language use between genders. The focus of the study was on gender and expertise, so only portions of the interview in which the interviewees were discussing their respective areas of expertise were transcribed.

Results

 Before delving into a more detailed conversation analysis of each interview, the first metric that was recorded was the frequency of the use of filler words. Filler words are a feature of “women’s language” (Lakoff, 1973) so the default assumption would be that they would be more present in the interviews with female interviewees than with male interviewees. To measure this, the total number of filler word usages was divided by the total number of words spoken by the interviewee during the clips of interest. This gave a measurement of how frequently each interviewee used filler words, which is presented in the table below.

Surprisingly, both of the male interviewees used filler phrases much more frequently than either of the female interviewees in these data.

The first interviewee that was looked at was Rachael Ray, a 51-year-old Caucasian woman. The following is a transcription from the opening clip of her interview:

This interruption is particularly interesting because it coincides with the use of the filler phrases um and uh in lines 18-19. The interviewer appeared to have read these filler phrases as a cue for him to comment, as he proceeds to interrupt her in line 20. However, she then proceeds to interrupt him to continue her thought, reclaiming the conversational floor, which could indicate that her use of filler phrases in previous lines were not intended as a cue to interrupt.

However, it is important to note that female interviewees were still interrupted in other scenarios when they did not make use of filler phrases. This becomes apparent through the interview with Padma Lakshmi, a 49-year-old South Asian woman.

When Sean interrupted Padma in line 7, he shifted the focus of the conversation from Padma to himself, and “took the floor” of the conversation. This shift in focus persisted until line 10, where she then interrupted him to bring the focus of the conversation back to herself. Also, in that same statement, she emphasized the word I, which also could have been an attempt to reclaim the conversational floor.

 As seen in Figure 1, both male interviewees use filler phrases more often than the female interviewees. Alton Brown, a 57-year-old Caucasian male who used filler words the most frequently, was actually interrupted less often and less disruptively than either of the female interviewees. In the opening clip of his interview, there was only one instance of overlapping speech between Alton and the interviewer.”

The speech overlap in line 14 could be classified as a form of back-channeling, as the interviewer is trying to express his agreement, rather than change the topic or take control of the conversation. Note that in lines 12 and 15, Alton is making use of the filler phrases um and uh, but the interviewer does not seem to interpret this as a cue to interrupt. This is different than what occurred in the interview with Rachael Ray, where her use of filler phrases were often met with subsequent interruptions.

This same trend was present for the interview of Gordon Ramsay, a 53-year-old Caucasian man. During his clip of the interview, there was not a single successful interruption by the interviewer.

The overlapping occurrence of “oh” in the above transcript was the only time there was an incidence of overlapping speech during this portion of the interview. Again, though compared to Rachael Ray, he used more filler phrases and took longer pauses, the interviewer did not seem to interpret these as a cue to interrupt.

Discussion

This analysis suggests that there could potentially be a relationship between the way women’s use of filler phrases are interpreted and the negative stereotypes that undermine female authority and expertise. In conversations, the person who is doing the interrupting can come off as the more powerful, dominant party, leaving the person who is being interrupted as their less-powerful counterpart. In situations where a woman is sharing her expert opinion, this dynamic can function to undermine the perception of the woman as an expert.

However, there are a few study limitations that should be kept in mind. First and foremost, these interviews are from an online streaming platform, and were edited and put together by the Hot Ones team before being uploaded. Additionally, this study only looked at portions of the interview where interviewees were discussing their relevant areas of expertise; future work could be done to see if and how these portions differ from those where other topics are being discussed.

 

References

Cairns, K., Johnston, J., & Baumann, S. (2010). Caring About Food: Doing Gender in the Foodie Kitchen. Gender and Society, 24(5), 591-615. Retrieved February 10, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/25741206

Christenfeld, N. (1995). Does it hurt to say um? ​Journal of Nonverbal Behavior​, ​19​(3), 171–186.doi: 10.1007/bf02175503

Clark, H., & Fox Tree, J. E. (2002). Using uh and um in spontaneous speaking. ​Cognition,​ ​84(​1), 73–111. doi: 10.1016/s0010-0277(02)00017-3

Hirshfield, L. E. (2017). “I Don’t Know Everything, But Ethan Would Know”: Language, Expertise, and the Cultural Mismatch for Women Scientists. NASPA Journal About Women in Higher Education, 10(1), 118–137. https://doi.org/10.1080/19407882.2016.1268167

Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and woman’s place. ​Language in Society,​ ​2​(1), 45-79.doi:10.1017/S0047404500000051

Murata, K. (1994). Intrusive or co-operative? A cross-cultural study of interruption. ​Journal of Pragmatics​, ​21​(4), 385–400. doi: 10.1016/0378-2166(94)90011-6

Thomas-Hunt, M. C., & Phillips, K. W. (2004). When What You Know Is Not Enough: Expertise and Gender Dynamics in Task Groups. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 30(12), 1585–1598. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167204271186

Introduction & Background

Jim Beggs once said, “What we say is important…for most cases the mouth speaks when the heart is full.” The way we talk is tightly connected to social norms that motivate our choices. As humans we reflect upon the community we surround ourselves to. A lot of research has shown connections to cognitive differences with speech fluctuations. Interestingly enough, the Social Affective Neuroscience and Development (SAND) Lab at UCLA shows that adopted adolescents seem to show the highest level of cognitive variances and therefore are a vital group to conduct a study on. While a stressed-induced situation may vary, for the purposes of this paper a stressful situation is defined as the adoption of children. This experience has been proven to show markers that indicate adopted children deal with more trauma in their childhood and therefore have more fluctuations in the way they speak (Silvers et. Al, 2017). With this in mind, this paper identifies linguistic differences within these groups of children by looking at their volume of speech and word usage. Beyond this, gender may play a role in the interactions of male and female adopted and non-adopted children as topic of conversation may vary and volume of voice can be lower for females than males.

As seen from Eckert, construction of an identity is based on obligations and rights that one has, and based upon the expectation they have within a society (Eckert et.al, 2013). As human beings we are subjugated to indexicality ¹ as we are constantly constructing to build new personas based on the experiences that occur around us. Gender can have different responses and the context that individual places themselves in will allow one to make choices and choose which face they want to display. The environment we are in shapes us and the outcome is the communicative style we put forward. In other words, people use different performative displays to communicate aspects of their moment-to-moment identities (Butler, 1990).

In considering speech differences between genders, Debora Tannen’s viewpoint on gender is that men portray their speech behavior as hierarchical, meaning that they are actively trying to assert dominance, whereas women are seen as more supportive and less demeaning (Tannen, 1990). In simpler terms a man is deemed in society to be more assertive, whereas women are not. This study demonstrates how adolescents’ use of volume and word choice become stylistic resources to convey momentary identity displays consistent with gender expectations as a response to authority.

Methods

For this paper, language differences are being analyzed from a YouTube series called, “The Cut”. These short six-minute videos adequately provide interactions that happen between adopted children and their parents as well as biological kids and their parents. The set-up of the conversation involves answering questions from a deck of cards (Figure 1), and those questions that go unanswered elicits the individual taking a shot of alcohol.

This behavior can act as a type of identity display, for sake of understanding it deems to see whether the act of taking alcohol, i.e. not answering the question, is a nature seen in one group of kids over the other. The reason this behavior is of importance is because the individual forgoes from talking and therefore indicates a level of deviance from a normal conversation that should occur. On top of linguistic differences in speech orientation, it seeks to answer whether this identity display of taking a shot of alcohol is seen more heavily between adopted kids or not, or if this behavior is more often associated with males or females which would highlight important differences between gender. These videos also deem to answer and compare occurrences of behavior that may be expected by society when in reality there could be occurrences that may not adhere to an anticipated outcome.

Results

This is one example of a conversation between an adopted daughter and her father. This analysis is unique because it highlights an occurrence of negative face ² when the daughter answers no to adopting any children, which in itself shows a response unlikely to be perceived as a decent one in any community. As seen in line 3 of the transcription above, there are some serious differences in both language and body behavior (Figure 2) when the father asks his adopted daughter the question and the response he gets from her. Even more so, the adopted child seems more alert when answering this question and answers it quite thoroughly without any hesitancy to show some remorse or compassion. This interaction seems very deviant because the adopted child then seems to go on about her real parents in which the father seems to have a reaction to, as he starts to shift in his chair and becomes unsure on how to respond. The daughter displays a face threatening act as she is critiquing her father. We believe that adopted children seem to avoid this subject but this participant also uses a higher pitch which is a behavior more associated with a biological child. Indexicality in this example is outwardly defiant as the daughter displays herself as someone who is unable to be affected by her past, and goes to the extent in which she seems disapproving of her dads choice in adopting children.

One other example, that seems more cohesive and supportive of the hypothesis is an interaction between an adopted daughter and her mother. In this example, the daughter is extremely hesitant to ask her mother a question, as seen in line 3, whereas biological children in the other interactions in the same videos had no problem in doing so. Her shyness comes off as peculiar as the question, although personal, is not anything to be hesitant from. This highlights an identity face that could have been developed due to strenuous conditions from her childhood that makes this child unsure of her actions. As Tannen also proclaimed, women tend to be less assertive as compared to men so a gender difference could be in effect in this example as well. However, that is not to say that all adopted children act in one way as there are some cases where the adolescents are actually more geared to raise their volume and use proactive language to purposefully exhibit bad behavior. Children are often times a tricky group to study as their development can be easily altered by what they face and respond by displaying different indexicalities (Umberson et. al, 2014).

Conclusion

In conclusion, differences in behavior can be well associated with how the world perceives certain people to behave. Even though this paper points out various examples of behavior that elicit differences in gender and language, there is no guarantee that this is a product of how these young children believe that they should behave versus the way they truly want to. Both word usage and speech volume showcase a wide variety of implications that can still vary by situation. Adopted children are faced with an early childhood adversity and the way they behave can be the product of their hardships (Juffer et. al, 2011). Kids are often times neglected, especially adopted children, so they develop to pick up on cues around them which they are seldom aware of and this leads to speech and gender differences which coincidently arise from their identity displays they have inherently adapted (Silvers et.al, 2017).

 

Useful YouTube links

A Crash Course on Language and Meaning

Politeness Theory

 

Academic references

Butler, J. (1990) Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity. New York: Routledge.

Eckert, P., & McConnel–Ginet, S. (2013). Speech situations, events, and activities. Language and gender (2nd edition).

Juffer, F., Palacios, J., Le Mare, L., Sonuga-Barke, E., Tieman, W., Bakermans-Kranenburg, M., Verhulst, F. (2011). II. Development Of Adopted Children With Histories Of Early    Adversity. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 76(4), 31-61. Retrieved February 25, 2020, from  www.jstor.org/stable/41408756

Silvers, J.A., Goff, B., Gabard-Durnam, L., Gee, D.G., Fareri, D.S., Caldera, C., & Tottenham,    N. (2017). Vigilance, the amygdala, and anxiety in youth with a history of institutional care. Biological Psychiatry: Cognitive Neuroscience and Neuroimaging, 2, 493-501.

Umberson, D., Williams, K., Thomas, P., Liu, H., & Thomeer, M. (2014). Race, Gender, and Chains of Disadvantage: Childhood Adversity, Social Relationships, and Health. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 55(1), 20-38. Retrieved February 25, 2020, from www.jstor.org/stable/43186878

Tannen, D. (1990). You Just Don’t Understand: Women and Men in Conversation. New York, NY: Morrow.

YouTube Videos

Cut. (2019, March 7). Adopted Kids & Their Parents (Frederick & Marisa)|Truth or Drink [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ob1m8CU70E0&t=83s

Cut. (2019, March 14). My Adopted Daughter & I Play Truth or Drink (Cynthia & Tabitha |Truth or Drink [Video].YouTube.             https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0z6gznGsfBM&t=98s

 

Introduction/Background

One context in which gender roles and masculinity often play a significant role is dyadic interactions. Although much research has been done on mixed-sex interactions, research on same-sex interactions, specifically focusing Asian American males, is lacking. The current literature on same-sex interactions between Asian American males involves studies on father-son relationships, but there has not been extensive research on how the degree to which a male identifies with his Asian heritage affects his use of language. Looking at the linguistic units of profanity, interruptions, and speaking volume, this study explores how an Asian American male’s perceived connectedness to his cultural identity manifests itself in the form of aggressive behavior through language. By doing so, this study posits that within a competitive game setting, aggressive displays such as speaking at a higher volume and using both more profanity and non-supportive interruptions at a greater frequency during male-male interactions, are indices of sociocultural expectations that Asian American males who are strongly connected to their heritage might feel pressured to conform to. While this correlation may exist in certain settings such as in a competitive game setting, this hyper masculine behavior may, instead, be a product of a male’s relational proximity or perceived closeness to his audience, or a way for a him to demonstrate camaraderie by maintaining in-group norms.

Methods

Target population

Participants included four Asian American males and one, non-Asian male who were all part of the same friend group. All of the participants were college students, also known as emerging adults, with ages ranging from 18 to 22 years. Likewise, homosexual males were excluded from this study because sexual orientation was a potential confounding variable. Participation in this study was voluntary. 

Data collection

Data collection involved collecting audio recordings of participants playing the competitive board game, Taboo, where partners were tasked with describing and guessing words. In each round, the non-Asian friend was tasked with being the guesser while the describer would rotate amongst the Asian American friends until all had participated. At the end of the rounds, the Asian American participants were asked to complete an exit survey to be kept and used for later analysis. The recordings were then compiled and analyzed for each pairing using an online software, and then subsequently transcribed for further analysis.

Linguistic units

This study focused specifically on the linguistic features of interruption, profanity, and volume as units for analysis. In the study, interruptions were defined as either cooperative/supportive or competitive/non-supportive. Cooperative interruptions, as described in Yang (1996) involves interruptions that are more supportive of a speaker’s hold of the floor and serve to draw focus on the speaker’s claims or statement. Likewise, Yang (1996) characterizes competitive interruptions as interruptions that attempt to take the floor away from a main speaker when another speaker feels that their ideas are more valuable. Additionally, profanity was categorized as mild, medium, or strong, with mild profanity being words that one could use in everyday conversations without much offense or words that are acceptable on nationally broadcasted media, strong profanity being words that most individuals would not use in a school setting without some sort of disciplinary consequence, and medium falling roughly between the two. Lastly, volume in this study was differentiated into categories of normal, loud, and soft. Normal volume was defined as a speaking volume appropriate in a café, soft volume was defined as the speaking volume appropriate in a library, and loud volume was defined as the speaking volume appropriate in a noisy environment.

Results

The data collected was comprised of both qualitative and quantitative data. In four different conversations, the frequency of interruptions, profanity, and speaking volume were recorded to assess displays of aggression. The results on interruptions and profanity were further stratified, with interruptions separated between the categories of supportive and non-supportive, and profanity separated between strong, medium, and mild. These results were then compared with results from the exit survey on the participants’ perceived level of connectedness with their Asian heritage to determine if there was a correlation between each of the two variables. A 5 on the survey would indicate a strong connection to a one’s Asian heritage and a 1 on the survey would indicate little to no connection to one’s Asian heritage.

 

 

As indicated in Figure 1, there is no clear difference between the overall use of profanity between males with varying levels of connectedness to his Asian heritage. The average use of profanity in each of the four scenarios was around 3.5 times per the 1.5-minute span of the conversation. However, when stratifying the data to differentiate between the 3 levels of profanity: strong, medium, and mild (Figure 2), there is a clear contrast between each of the participants. Excluding the outlier DAN, it seems like there is a positive correlation between the variables of strong profanity use and perceived connectedness to one’s Asian heritage.

 

 

Likewise, in Figure 3, there is also no clear difference between the overall number of interruptions between males with varying levels of connectedness to his Asian heritage. The average number of interruptions in each of the four scenarios was around 2.5 times per the 1.5-minute span of the conversation. However, when stratifying the data to differentiate between the supportive and non-supportive interruptions (Figure 4) there is a clear contrast between each of the participants. Excluding the outlier DAN, it also seems like there is a positive correlation between the frequency of non-supportive interruptions and perceived connectedness to one’s Asian heritage.

Discussion & Conclusions

Examining the results from the surveys and recordings, there were discrepancies between an Asian American male’s perceived connectedness to his own culture and his expected display of aggression through language during male-male interactions. In some instances, it seemed as if the degree to which a male identified with his Asian heritage was a strong predictor of his displays of aggression. However, this correlation was not applicable to every scenario in the study. What is important to note is that all of the conversations occurred within the parameters of a competitive game amongst a group of friends. As such, regardless of the degree to which an Asian American male identifies with his heritage, this does not mean that this is an identity that is static or present in every situation. The in-group solidarity that Kiesling (1998) calls “camaraderie” could ultimately be the underlying/confounding factor that could also inform the observed results. By constructing their identity within the constraints of heteronormative masculinity, males are pressured to perform in a way that expresses or exerts dominance with others. Yet amongst other males, this shared experience is what ultimately fosters community relationships, something that may have played a role in each of the conversations.

There were several limitations to this study. One of these limitations involved sample size, which was quite small for this study. Likewise, although having a non-Asian male assume the position of a guesser for each round did control for the variable of familiarity to the describer, it may have been more conducive to have participants play multiple rounds of Taboo and then take the average of the results. Additionally, although the study did define the various operational variables, it would have been better if they were defined quantitatively as opposed to qualitatively. Future studies could possibly benefit from taking a look at the effect of racial identity of a partner in a conversational dyad on the level of aggression displayed in language used by Asian American men.

The main takeaway of this study was that, although there seems to be somewhat of a positive correlation between an Asian American male’s feelings of connectedness to his culture and the level of aggression he displays in his language, this does not hold true for all Asian American males. There are likely a multitude of factors which could possibly contribute to such an observation, one of which could be due to the desire for such males to maintain in-group norms by performing hyper masculine acts such as displaying aggressive behavior.

 

Other Informative Works    

How Men Talk (an opinion piece on Medium)

Male Friendships Are Just Bullying (a YouTube episode by CollegeHumor)

The Comedians Challenging Stereotypes About Asian-American Masculinity (The New York Times article)

 

 

References

Kiesling, S. F. (1998). Men’s identities and sociolinguistic variation: The case of fraternity men. Journal of Sociolinguistics, 2(1), 69-99.

Yang, L. C. (1996, October). Interruptions and intonation. In Proceeding of Fourth International Conference on Spoken Language Processing. ICSLP’96 (Vol. 3, pp. 1872-1875). IEEE.

Introduction and Background

Often, common vocabulary is marked for one specific gender but is continually used as the default word, allowing for gendered language to exist. The gradual shift to include gender-neutral words involves altering words like “fireman” to a more inclusive term, “firefighter”. However, because the word “fireman” originated to specifically describe men that put out fires for a living, and has been in constant circulation since, it is typical to use the gendered word regularly, without even realizing it. Another side effect relies on the implicit associations that brains make when hearing the word “firefighter”, a traditionally male occupation. Although the gender-inclusive word is being used, because of its institution, it is common for it to directly index a male firefighter.

Within this research experiment, the focus is surrounded upon whether shifting to gender-inclusive language reduces implicit associations and removes mental assumptions. In doing so, two experimental groups were composed of multiple groups of UCLA students and their responses and reactions to gender neutral language were recorded. Because the participants share a common concern for gender equality, as do most people, they will learn how to promote gender equality better as they interact regularly.

Through the introduction of gender inclusive language in conversation, understanding the impact of making illogical, implicit associations is revealed and correction of language is made. Demonstrated through implicit bias tests, the phenomenon of those who understood their gendered mistake showed less automatic association towards a specific gender regarding professions was created. Thus, due to the prior exchange, adopting gender neutral language into one’s vocabulary helped intentionally shape others’ implicit associations.

Methods

Multiple groups of UCLA students were randomly sampled from the specific population of the track and field team. They were given the task of formulating a story about the images placed in front of them. The set of images included: a house on fire, a person on the phone, a fire truck, a firefighter with a hose, a firefighter carrying a person to safety, an EMT using a defibrillator, and a person thanking a firefighter. The first set of groups (3) will be asked to formulate a story about the sequence of images and then asked to complete an implicit bias test centered around gendered professions. The purpose of the implicit test is to evaluate attitudes or beliefs that are not normally exposed or reported willingly. For this experiment, participants will be tested on the speed and accuracy of their associations when pairing words like children and business with either men or women, as directed.

Within the next set of groups (3), participants were asked to formulate a story about the same sequence of images, however, a “secret agent” was selected to participate within all the different groups. The secret agent was tasked with the objective of only using gender-neutral language when formulating the story. The other conversationalists were recorded to see if they followed suit with the gender-neutral language and if they applied certain gendered words or pronouns to the person they were describing. Shortly after, the participants were asked to complete the same implicit bias test as described above. The results were focused towards how many more women/men show implicit bias over men/women, and how many people exposed to the gender-neutral conversation completed the test with less or no bias over those who were not. My hypothesis is as follows, the use of gender-neutral language will promote the increased cognitive involvement of women which, in turn, will remove male bias in mental associations. By coming to this conclusion, or one similar, the importance (if any) of adopting gender neutral language into common vocabulary can be understood.

Results and Analysis

Throughout all groups, male implicit bias was assessed through the gender and career Implicit Association Test (IAT). Out of 14 people, half men and half women, males showed more automatic preference toward male and career than did females (Figure 1, Figure 2). As in Experiment 1, male implicit bias was assessed through the IAT after recording a previous exchange about the sequence of images while solely using gendered language. Compared to Experiment 2, where participants took the IAT test after having been exposed to gender-neutral language through the secret agent. As illustrated in Figure 3, people exposed to the gender-neutral language (Experiment 2) demonstrated less male implicit bias than those in Experiment 1.

This example is an excerpt from a group in Experiment 2 after being presented with the images and asked to formulate a story. One member is asked to be the secret agent and is privately told to only use gender-neutral language when telling the story and to correct those who automatically associate a certain person with a certain gender. All members of the group are friends and are comfortable interacting with each other.

The initial person, Cameron, immediately assumes and assigns the gender of the figure he is looking at in the picture to male (line 1).  Jade interrupts him (line 3), presumably because she disagrees with how the story is supposed to begin. The secret agent agrees with Jade and prompts the continuation of her storytelling. Again, the gender of the figure is assumed and assigned male. The secret agent initiates repair, which indicates that the word used was problematic. The secret agent questions Jade about her reasoning behind referring to the person as a “guy”. The question does not signify a lack of understanding between the two conversationalists nor does it ask for clarification, instead the question is a means of conveying that using the term “guy” is problematic. Afterwards due to the silence, Jade understands that she may have mislabeled the figure’s gender, realizing that there are no significant distinguishing marks that allow her to label the figure a man. The secret agent has therefore created a conversation in which the terms that are considered problematic are avoided. The act of simply conveying issue with the use of gendered terms, prompts the other person to understand the problematic feature of their choice of words and correct any of their supplementary language. Because of the secret agent’s stance, Jade continues to solely use gender-neutral terms (lines 9-16) to describe the rest of the people involved in the story. Because the secret agent initiates repair about using the term “guy”, and Jade’s subsequent language avoids using gendered terms, a phenomenon is created that is effective in reducing male associations.

Discussion and Conclusions

Within discourse and conversation, people may be completely unaware of the implicit male bias they possess, especially when asked to draw their own conclusions about a nondescript person or thing. For many, it is an instinct to attribute certain words or images with a certain gender. But with the incorporation of gender-neutral speech styles, there can be a decrease in implicit male bias and thus an increase in the cognitive awareness of women. Along with the introduction of gender-neutral language, the recognition of a person’s own incorrect, automatic association reduces further male bias. As shown in Experiment 2, each member of the group begins with automatically assigning the male gender to the person in the sequence of images, but when their claim is disputed, each person recognizes their false assumption and changes their approach. From then on, most people were recorded to continue telling the story but now with the adoption of gender-neutral speech. So, with the understanding of their careless, implicit male bias, people open their minds to allow the possibility that both genders could suffice as the “person” or “firefighter”. Shortly after having been exposed to gender-neutral language within the conversation, those that followed suit performed better on the implicit bias test afterwards. Because of this, the importance of adopting gender neutral language into our common vocabulary becomes evident.

 

References

Gauhar, Z., Anderson, J., Li, S., & Fox, S. P. (n.d.). Why gender-inclusive language is important. Retrieved from https://www.dailyprincetonian.com/article/2016/09/why- gender- inclusive-language-is-important

Gender-Inclusive Language. (n.d.). Retrieved from https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/gender-inclusive-language/

Harris, C. A., Blencowe, N., & Telem, D. A. (2017, December). What is in a Pronoun?: Why Gender-fair Language Matters. Retrieved from https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5774006/

Jennifer, L, A., Ali, Bhardwaj, S., Burgh, G., Glen, … Portilla, L. (2014, January 16). BU Research: A Riddle Reveals Depth of Gender Bias: BU Today. Retrieved from http://www.bu.edu/articles/2014/bu-research-riddle-reveals-the-depth-of-gender-bias/

Lingquivst, A (2019, July 15). Reducing a Male Bias in Language? Establishing the Efficiency of Three Different Gender-Fair Language Strategies. Retrieved from https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-018-0974-9

Rogers, A. (2019, August 15). Actually, Gender-Neutral Pronouns Can Change a Culture. Retrieved from https://www.wired.com/story/actually-gender-neutral-pronouns-can-change-a-culture/

Tavits, M., & Pérez, E. O. (2019, August 20). Language influences mass opinion toward gender and LGBT equality. Retrieved from https://www.pnas.org/content/116/34/16781

 

Appendix

 

The implicit bias test administered to the participants:

Gender and Career: https://implicit.harvard.edu/implicit/takeatest.html

 

The sequence of images for the formulation of the story: