| Gender differences in oral English are an important research topic in Critical Discourse Analysis. Most of its relative researches concern about the gender differences among English native speakers. The achievements they made are abundant. Unfortunately, there still exist many limitations, for example, they did not systematically study the ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning of the female and male language. They also did not make a three-dimensional study of language, culture, and ideology. This thesis aims at discovering Chinese college students’ conversational styles in interpersonal communications, and revealing the struggle and transference of ideology and discourse hegemony hidden behind their conversational styles. This thesis also proposes four main conversational strategies for interpersonal communications.This thesis mainly uses the synthesis method of the qualitative analysis, and the measures of collecting materials include inspection, the field live recording, and the free conversation and so on. As a very important theoretical framework, Critical Discourse Analysis regards Systematic Functional Grammar as its important source of discourse analysis. This thesis breaks through the researches of grammar and pronunciation, emphasizing the study of the relationships among language, culture and ideology. The specific steps including inheriting the thoughts of "rank scale","delicacy" and "context" in Systematic Functional Grammar, and systematically studying the ideational meaning, interpersonal meaning and textual meaning of female and male discourse. The second step is to interpret discourse production, distribution, and consumption. Eventually, combining the background knowledge, such as the gender differences in psychology, social cultures, social order and concrete situations, this thesis explains the struggle and transference of ideology and discourse hegemony hidden behind their discourse practice.Inter-gender communications impress us the existence of heterogeneity between female conversational styles and male conversational styles. Male English learners favor describing their world experiences with Relational processes, complicated clauses and difficult glossary. They always initiate topics by asking questions. The frequencies of application of conjunctions are lower. Female English learners tend to describe their experience with Mental processes, Verbal processes, complicated clauses and simple glossary. They often initiate topics by utilizing statement. More minimal responses and non-verbal actions are found in females’language.Along with the background knowledge of discourse practice, this thesis reveals the hidden struggle and transference of ideology and discourse hegemony. The result is that males are more objective and rational. They concern more about controlling and overthrowing discourse hegemony, but they are subordinate to female English learners; female English learners are dominant group, but they often overlook holding and control discourse hegemony. These conclusions are different from the results found among English native speakers. Discourse hegemony is controlled by females in English native speaking countries.Based on the discovery of the gender differences in conversational styles and ideology, this thesis proposes four main conversational strategies, each of them has some subcategories. The proposal of interpersonal strategies will help college students making clear the roles they play in interpersonal communications. Also, it can help reducing failures in interpersonal communications and promoting their oral English. |
