Language_and_Gender

Language and Gender Critique of Pilkington*’*s Study *‘“Don*’*t try and make out that I*’*m nice!*”* The different strategies women and men use when gossiping*’ Sun Kyung Lee K0737800 * Aim…………………………………………………………*.1 * Results …………………………………………………*..2 * Pilkington’*s and other studies*…………………………*..5 3.conclusion…………………*..*…………………*……………………………*6 4. Reference *………………………………………………………………*... 8 Critique of Pilkington*’*s Study 1. Summary Aim Pilkington’s study aimed at defining and describing the features of gossip. Furthermore she attempted to identify the differences in the gossip of the women’s and men’s single-sex groups. Additionally she tried to find the different aims of the gossip of each groups. Thus she studied a number of previous studies about gossip and suggested the functions of it. For example the gossip is a kind of entertaining among the members of group and enjoyed by close social relationships with one another (Gluckman 1963: p311 as cited by Pilkington 1992) However she said such gossip is widely regarded as trivial and meaningless because it is focused on the personal rather than global, private rather than public Methodology Eventually, she obtained about 250 minutes of data from the group of women and 210 minutes of usable data from the group of men and found interesting results of each groups. Results By contrary, for the male talk the most noticeable feature were the long silences and much longer pauses between turns, and sometime the pauses occurred even when the speaker invited a response by using questioning intonation. Furthermore there were the lack of response among the speakers and long monologues were often appeared with very long pauses between utterances. Additionally Pilkington noted how direct and specific the male criticism and abuse were, furthermore males appeared to switch topic without regard for the previous speaker’s topic. Through these results she concluded that the women and men in same-sex interaction behave very differently when they gossip. Women are cooperative and positive during conversations while men are negative and unsupportive. 2. Comments and Analysis Jane Pilkington has done interesting research in same-sex conversations and analysed it clearly with evidences of recorded talks. However there were several weaknesses which will be considered now. Weaknesses Example 12 Jim : Remember that Wales ad! Jim : (laughing) obviously nobody does. (Pilkington 1992 as edited by Coates 1998 p 267) Strengths Although the whole data was quite extensive, included a whole day of recording, she managed to select small sections of gossip which are related to her study and each section of examples were clearly analysed. Furthermore she found many linguistic characteristics in same-sex speech groups and provided appropriate information about the feature of gossip and different gender conversation for whom knew nothing about the topic. Through this research, she achieved her aim to find the differences in gossip of male and female talks. Additionally she suggested such differences have one common goal which is the solidarity of group membership. These results and interpretations indicate that Pilkington’s study was successful and valuable. Pilkington’*s *and other studies Also Aries and Johnson (1983) studied the talk of women friends and found that females engage in more intimate association involving mutual exploration while males less concern for the relational aspects of friendship. (edited by Coates 1998 p222) This conclusion can explain why female participants did not state disagreement directly to others and remained supportive and positive position among the group in Pilkington’s finding. As Pilkington’s research, many linguists agreed that the feature of female single sex conversations are different contrast to male’s talk. Women build closer relationship based on cooperate conversations while men less concern for the relational aspects of friendship. These different features between men and women talk can lead misunderstanding and miscommunication among mixed-sex speakers. Similar to Pilkington’s study, Tannen (1990) claimed, for instance, that women would be irritated by men who interrupt to switch the conversational topic; on the other hand, men may be interrupted by women who overlap their speech with minimal responses of agreement and support. Thus it is important to understand that women and men are attempting to do different things as they talk. (at cited by Mesthrie et al 2000 p233) Conclusion Pilkington’s research of the single-sex talk in gossip found that how men and women talk differently among same-sex groups and how each group adopts very different strategies to accomplish the same goal of solidarity. This finding is supported by other sociolinguists who also found similar features. Women communicate in cooperative and positive manner while men prefer single floor and monologues during conversations in same-sex talks. Although this research has some weaknesses it concluded valuable, clear linguistic features in same-sex conversations and was harmonised by other studies. References Mesthrie, R. Swann, J. Deumert, A and Leap, W L. (2000) Introducing Sociolinguistics. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press Coates, J. (1996) Women Talk. Oxford : Blackwell Publishers Coates, J. (ed.) (1998) Language and Gender. Oxford : Blackwell Publisher Johnson, F. L. and Aries, E. J. (1983) ‘The talk of women friends’. In C. During (ed.)._ Language and Gender. _Oxford : Blackwell Publisher Coates, J (1989) ‘Gossip Revisited : Language in All-Female Groups’. In C. During (ed.). Language and Gender. Oxford : Blackwell Publisher Pilkington, J (1992) ‘’’Don’t try and make out that I’m nice!’’ The Different Strategies Women and Men Use When Gossiping’. In C. During (ed.). Language and Gender. Oxford : Blackwell Publisher