Gender differences in the language of the Map Task dialogues

Abstract

A number of studies have revealed differences in distributions of linguistic features in the language produced by males and females and for a variety of text types (formal and informal prose, dialogue). A typical finding is a greater proportion of pronoun use among women than among men. Recently, HansJorg Schmid analyzed the Human Communication Research Center (HCRC) Map Task dialogues as a context in which topic of discussion is controlled and reports variations for a number of individual items. We report here on our own exploration of the HCRC Map Task data examining categories of lexical items, and in relation to the factors that are supported by the experimental design in the construction of the Map Task: speaker gender, partner gender, prior interpersonal familiarity, task-based role, eye-contact. We find that some of the trends that have been discussed in the past depend on interactions of these factors.