A Research Proposal on Gender Differences of Conversational Repair Makers

Introduction

Language and gender， as the major topics in sociolinguistics， have experienced a long history with the earliest origin back to 17th and 18th centuries. The great work Language and Women’s Place published in 1975 by Robin Lakoff， as a solid foundation for the later researches， initiates a dramatic exploration of linguistic differences.

Conversational repair is a frequent phenomenon in conversation interaction， which refers to the way that the speaker or listener corrects the expression when they encounter the language is unreasonable， unintentionally misused or misunderstanding during the conversation. （王宗炎， 1988） Conversational repair usually consists of three parts： the trouble source， the initiation of repair， and the completion of repair. With the effort of Scheglof （1979）， there are many forms of initiating repairs， such as non-lexical speech perturbations and lexical expressions. Non-lexical expression usually involves interruption of words and short intervals after interruption. Lexical initiation refers to the use of words such as “no”， “sorry”， “well”， “OK”， “you know” and so on. Discourse markers marking the initiation of repair， which are called conversational repair makers， belong to the pragmatic functions of discourse markers （Schifrin， 1987）， （何自然， 2006）.

Research Questions

This thesis is a study of gender differences with gender as a social variable in conversational repair markers， which is helpful to enhance the coherence of the discourse and strengthen the interactivity of the two sides of the conversation. So the analysis of conversational repair markers is of great importance. This dissertation devotes to answer the following two questions：

1. What are， if there are any， the differences on the frequency of conversational repair markers employed by the same gender in The Amazing Race？

2. What are， if there are any， the differences on the frequency of conversational repair markers employed by the mixed gender in The Amazing Race？

Data Collection

The collected data in this research comes from an American reality competition show The Amazing Race，and the scripts of the 27th season will be considered as the corpus. The author builds a small database by the text and identify the markers through search engines. The final research objective conversation repair markers will be determined with the research method of Conversation Analysis.

Research Method

For the quantitative method， the statistics is classified and analyzed. The data are collected through the scripts of five-hour video in The Amazing Race 27th season. The corpora are divided into 3 groups according to the gender difference. Then the analysis of Descriptive Analysis and Chi-Square Test of SPSS are used to make a quantitative analysis of the data to test if there is gender difference. Qualitative analysis is conducted to provide tentative explanations， which helps us understand how gender differences of the usages of conversation repair markers occur.

Significance

The significance of this study can be seen from the following three points. Firstly， it provides sufficient evidence through empirical study to verify whether there are indeed gender differences in conversation repair markers in real context. Secondly， according to the study on gender differences in conversation repair markers， which is helpful to enhance the coherence of the discourse and strengthen the interactivity of the two sides of the conversation. Thirdly， the data collected from TV series is closer to naturally occurring data compared with the Discourse Completion Task， thus the results of the study are more persuasive and trustworthy.

References：

[1]Schegloff，E.A.，Jefferson，G.，Sacks，H.The Preference for Self-correction in the Organization of Repair in Conversation[J].Language， 1977，2：361-382.

[2]Schiffrin，D.Discourse Markers[M].New York：Cambridge University Press，1987.

[3]何自然.語用學概論[M].長沙：湖南教育出版社，2006.

[4]王宗炎.英漢應用語言學詞典[M].長沙：湖南教育出版社，1988.

【作者簡介】鄭占寧（1992-），女，漢族，河北保定人，華北理工大學，研究生，外國語言文學；王顯志（1969-），男，漢族，河北唐山人，現任華北理工大學外國語學院院長，博士，教授，碩士生導師，全國先進社科工作者，唐山市社會科學優秀青年專家。