3.1.3

Interruptions - Zimmerman & West

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Interruptions - Zimmerman and West

One area of gendered language that linguists continue to debate is the topic of interruptions. This section will show you how to write a level 5 answer for AO2:

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Level 3 - showing detailed knowledge

  • Zimmerman and West (1975) studied interruptions in conversations between men and women. They found that men interrupted 96%-100% more of the time.
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Level 4 - challenging this

  • Beattie’s research considered over ten times the corpus of Zimmerman and West (1975) and discovered that there was pretty much an equal number of interruptions by men and women alike.
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Level 5 - evaluating this

  • Zimmerman and West (1975) examined a small number of subjects, all of whom were white, middle-class men under the age of 35.
  • This is not a representative sample. This means their research is flawed and not necessarily investigating what they think they are investigating.
  • It is entirely possible that the research shows traits typical of middle-class conversations, but this may be atypical of all other conversations.
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Level 5 (cont.)

  • As Beattie’s research is based on a much larger and representative corpus, it is likely to be more accurate than Zimmerman and West’s study.
Illustrative background for Additional study - __Pamela Fishman__Illustrative background for Additional study - __Pamela Fishman__ ?? "content

Additional study - Pamela Fishman

  • Pamela Fishman’s research discovered that conversations between men and women often fail because of how men act.
  • She details that men use a third of the number of questions as women and gave minimal responses.
  • This leads to, as Fishman describes, women doing the ‘conversational shitwork’.

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3Language Diversity & Change

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