An Observation Of Gender Differences In TV Dating Show From The Perspective Of Interruption

The relationship between gender and language has been the hot discussion topic of thelinguists. Both abroad and at home, the scholars pay their attention to the gender difference inlanguage communication. Many researches have already been made by the scholars. Theresearches not only have a far-reaching effect on the following study but also provide thetheoretical basis and lay the foundation for the gender communication. This paper studies thegender difference from the perspective of interruption. It involves three aspects: the totaltimes of the interruptions of two genders, the purposes of the interruptions and the reactionsof the current speakers. The thesis adopts the qualitative and quantitative analysis method toinvestigate the gender difference. In order to present the distinct gender difference, the authortakes the American famous TV Dating Show, Take Me Out, as the corpus.Through the data analysis and investigation, the author finds that, in terms of the totaltimes of interruptions, males are more likely to lead off interruptions than females. During theinter-gender conversation, males make fewer interruptions than females. Nevertheless, in thecross-gender conversation, males make more interruptions than females. In the second place,in terms of the purposes of the interruptions, we find that most of the males and femalesinterrupt others to show their agreements, and they may adopt different ways to interruptothers. And latter, we find out that when interrupted by others, different people will reactdifferently. Most of them will adopt the cooperative way and yield the speech right to theothers. On the contrary, some of them will strive for the talk floor to achieve differentpurposes.In a word, interruption can make the two sides involved in the conversation know moreabout each other. In the cross-gender conversation, males try to control over the talk floormore than females. Hoping the present research can bring some new insight in study ofgender difference from the view of interruption.