Gender Language Analysis In How I Met Your Mother

Gender language research has been one of the hottest topics in the field of sociolinguistics.Previous studies on gender language focused on language levels such as phonetics,vocabulary and grammar.With the deepening of research and social development,the scope of gender language research is expanding,and research methods and research theories are also constantly innovating.The focus of research is gradually shifting to the conversational level.Based on the previous research achievements,this study explores gender language in the modern sitcom How I Met Your Mother drawing on conversation analysis as the theoretical basis.The language of sitcom is close to reality and has its own different characteristics.In addition,its research will help to deepen people's understanding of gender language.This thesis takes the English sitcom How I Met Your Mother as research data.The author analyzes 50 two-party dialogues(12 male-male,13 female-female and25male-female)from three aspects: conversational structure,conversational strategy and conversational style,that is,interruption,overlaps,minimal responses,hedges,topic choice and amount of speech.All of the conversations are randomly selected out of 208 episodes of How I Met Your Mother.The result shows that in the aspect of conversational structure,men use interruptions more often than women do,while women do not easily interrupt others;males use more overlaps to express support for each other.In terms of conversational strategy,females use more minimal responses to make active short feedback than males do.And women use more hedges to show their uncertainty than men do.In the same gender conversation,women tend to talk about children,the opposite sex,marriage and friendship;men talk more about the opposite sex,cars,sex,work,and dream.In cross gender communication,topics range widely.In amount of speech,there is no obvious difference between men and women.This thesis not only validated the previous research findings by scholars like Lakoff,but also challenged some research findings,which enriched the research ofgender language.Then the author probed into the underlying reasons for the differences of gender language in light of biological,physical and social factors.