A Theoretical and Practical Approach to Gendered Talk-in-Interaction

This book focuses on the construction of meaning within the framework of cross-gender talk-in-interaction among Romanian language speaking participants and aims at identifying the importance of the variable of gender in the determination of different conversational styles for men and women. It includes an ample inquiry into language and gender, linguistic sexism and stereotyping, an extensive survey of traditional and most recent views of feminism. Following a case-study using the Conversation Analysis and Critical Discourse Analysis approaches, the conclusion is that, although there are recurrent features, such as conflict talk for male speakers and cooperative verbal interaction for female speakers, generalizations regarding the variable of gender are impossible when analysing conversational styles. The findings of this research might be of help for both Romanian and other language scholars belonging to a multiplicity of domains such as linguistics, sociology, psychology, who are interested in the male/female interactional construction of meaning.