DEMYSTIFYING WOMEN’S AND MEN’S TALK IN MARITAL INTERACTIONS

Abstract

Former studies on gender and language have sustained male-female binary dichotomy (FISHMAN, 1978; FISHMAN, 1983; TANNEN 1990 AND DE FRANCISCO 1991). These authors have stated the idea that, in comparison to men, women tend to engage more in conversations, talk more and produce continuers such as ‘mhm’ to offer support to narratives, whereas men tend not to engage in conversations as women do, they talk less than women and produce continuers in order to silence their interactional partners. Nonetheless, more recent studies have opposed the idea of having male-female dichotomy as a starting point to analyze language data. (SCHEGLOFF 1997; WEATHERALL 2000; SWANN 2002 AND FREED 2008). The objective of this paper is to investigate marital’ interactions, as well as fill in a gap in the linguistic-interactional studies by analyzing marital’ interactions with the perspective of talk-in-interaction studies in the Brazilian Portuguese language since there are no news of studies on male-female interaction in this language. The analyzed data derive from recorded conversation among two heterosexual couples aged between 24 and 32 years old who were living together for 3 years by the time of the data collection. The data was transcribed and analyzed from the perspective of talk-in-interaction/conversation analysis studies. Four analytical categories were set: Production of second pair parts, Topic initiation, Use of Continuers and Talking time. The results indicate that the interactional strategies used by the analyzed couples are not regarded to pre-established gender categories as more traditional studies on language and gender claim.

Key words: Language and Gender. Couples’ interactions. Interactional strategies. Talk-in-interaction.