Influence of Communication Partner’s Gender on Language

Abstract

Forty participants (20 male) had 3-minute conversations with trained male and female communication partners in a repeated-measures, within-subject design. Eighty 3-minute conversations were transcribed and coded for dependent clauses, fillers, tag questions, intensive adverbs, negations, hedges, personal pronouns, self-references, justifiers, and interruptions. Results suggest no significant changes in language based on speaker gender. However, when speaking with a female, participants interrupted more and used more dependent clauses than when speaking with a male. There was no significant interaction to suggest that the language differences based on communication partner was specific to one gender group. These results are discussed in context of previous research, communication accommodation theory, and general process model for gendered language.