Insights into "genderlects" based on a sociolinguistically discourse analysis

Abstract

This paper analyses the social differences between male and female discourse strategies in common usage discourses. The purpose of this research is to demonstrate the gender differences in conversational interaction by the methods of DA (of a material from live language usage) and sociolinguistically discourse-complementary survey. This comparative analysis searches the answers to the following questions: (1) what kind of prestart, opening, discourse-organizer, recompleter and closing strategies are popular in male-female communication, (2) which kind of turn-taking are usually used by men and women, (3) how do they use different (locutionary and illocutionary) speech-acts, face-protector strategies and conversation and politeness principles (CP and PP) in their verbal behavior, and (4) how do the informants represent of male and female communicative features as gender-markers (for example „chattering” and „taciturn” vs. „a man of few words”) in their mental lexicon. Summing up this study aims at reply to the current question of daily gender-discourse: can we talk about sex-typed language or ”womanspeak” and “manspeak”, is the male-female conversation cross-cultural communication, consequently can we talk about “genderlects”?