Gender Differences In Conversational Style Of Chinese Talk Shows

Since 1960s, with the development of modern linguistics, pragmatics and psycholinguistics, many researches on language have been inclined from theoretical studies to practical ones. The idea that males and females communicate in different ways has gained increased attention, and the study of style differences, too, have been potentially seen as gender-linked. To examine this subject, there are mainly three approaches: sociolinguistic, pragmatic and conversation analytic. The first one emphasizes the men's dominance and women's subordination as well as their different subcultures. The second one focuses on the observing and violating pragmatic principles, and the last approach is based on the model of turn-taking system proposed by Sacks, Schegloff & Jefferson, and which is employed as the main framework of present study.The same phenomenon of conversational features has different implications to be interpreted in different subcultures of males and females. Conversation, of course, always requires at least two participants. More importantly these two participants must "take turns" speaking. Males and females have different thought process; accordingly, the ways of organizing their turn-taking system are also different. That's just one of the most distinctive features of conversational style between males and females, and in the present study, the analysis will focus on investigating the organization of turn-taking systems to reveal the gender differences in conversational style.There are already some frameworks concerning with gender-linked differences of conversational style in English; domestic scholars have done many researches to explore gender differences in language, most of which focus on classifying, explaining and summarizing data collected by western scholars in western conversation context. Little empirical work has been conducted in this field based on the data gathered from Chinese conversation, especially from the Chinese talk shows.A talk show can be regarded as an entertainment program which is comparatively casual and informal. However, as a multi-party participants institutional program, it has its own varying turn-taking system which is different from natural spontaneous conversation. Because the host is entitled to manage the initiating, conclusion and the whole process of the conversation, a distinctive feature is its host-monitoring pattern.In the present study, based on the methodological framework of conversation analysis, the data gathered from two TV talk shows namely Lu Yu You Yue and Dialogue will be analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively, the correlative gender-linked differences of conversation style will be better understood through investigating the organization of turn-taking system, in terms of: the amount of speeches, minimal responses and turn allocation, interruptions and overlaps. The findings show that men are more competitive while female are more cooperative in talking; men talk more than women in the conversation as well as tend to interrupt women with more frequencies. The using of overlaps implies the strategy to control topics. The findings can be served as supplements to the existing ones. Meanwhile, it helps to further understand these linguistic features from Chinese culture.