Interruptions - Zimmerman & West
English Language: AQA A Level, topic 3.1.3
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:
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.
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.
Level 5 - evaluating this
- Zimmerman and West (1975) examined a small number of subjects, all of whom were white, middle-class adults 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.
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.
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’.
Test yourself on Interruptions - Zimmerman & West
How much more likely are men to interrupt in mixed-sex conversations according to Zimmerman and West (1975)?
Why does the unrepresentative sample of participants in Zimmerman and West's study matter?