| Despite the recommendations of Maltz and Borker (1982), most gender and conversation research is based on a homogenous group of women and men (i.e., heterosexual, white, middle-class, college educated and Western). As a result, many assumptions in language and gender research and claims about the conversational priorities of men and women are based on observations of only these speakers.; One such study (Rundquist 1991, 1992) focuses on the frequency and functions of flouting Grice's maxims in conversation involving heterosexual married couples. The results show that the men flout maxims more than the women, and flout to serve a variety of functions, including to be humorous and criticize others. Rundquist (1992) suggests this flouting serves the men's competitive priorities in conversation.; This and other such gender and conversation studies leave questions unanswered about conversations involving couples who are not heterosexual. Thus, my study also analyzes the flouting of Grice's maxims in conversation, but focuses primarily on the conversations of gay male and lesbian couples. The analysis is based on data from natural conversations tape-recorded by eleven couples, and data from the literary discourse of plays portraying fictional couples in conversation.; The results of the analysis show that in the natural conversations the women flout as often or more often than the men. The women, like the men, also flout to serve a variety of functions, but in the lesbian couples more often do so to be supportive. The gay men share some rapport-creating characteristics with the lesbian women, including flouting to make reference to gay experience—a practice that I argue creates interpersonal involvement with the hearer (Tannen 1989). The results of the literary discourse analysis show that despite some differences, the flouting done by these fictional couples shares a surprising number of characteristics with the flouting in the natural conversations.; These results are argued to have significance for gender and language research, and particularly for the models used to explain the basis of gender-based language differences. I show unlike the DOMINANCE and CULTURAL DIFFERENCE models, only the SOCIAL CONSTRUCTIONIST model fully accounts for my results. |
