Occupational Language

Easkin & Eakins 1976
In seven university faculty meetings, the men spoke for longer. The men's turns ranged from 10.66 to 17.07 seconds, the women's from 3 to 10 seconds.


Edelsky 1981
In a series of meetings of a university department, men took more and longer turns and did more joking, arguing, directing and soliciting of responses during the more structured segments of meetings. However, during the 'free-for-all' parts of the meetings, women and men talked equally, and women jokes, argued, directed and solicited responses more than men.


''This study into the nature of “the floor” inquiry into sex differences that might occur beyond the sentence level in the multi-party interaction of five informal committee meetings...In the analysis, “floor” and “turn” were distinguished on the basis of “participant-sense” rather than technical criteria. Two kinds of floors were subjectively identified: F1, a singly developed floor; and F2, a collaborative venture where several people seemed to be either operating on the same wavelength or engaging in a free-for-all''
As the men took more and longer turns etc, these are responses of F1's.
Women then used F2's, using turn length and frequency differences and language functions were used to a greater extent.


Herbet & Straight 1981
Compliments tend to flow from those of higher rank to those of higher rank to those of lower rank.


Herring 1992
In an email discussion which took place on a linguistics 'distribution list', 5 women and 30 men took part, even though women make up nearly half the members of the Linguistic Society of American and 36% of the subscribers to the list. Men's messages were twice as long, on average, as women's. Women tended to use a personal voice, e.g ''I am intrigued by your comment...''. The tone adopted by the men who dominated the discussion was assertive: ''It is obvious that...''


Holmes various studies from 1998
Women managers seem to be more likely to negotiate consensus than male managers, they are less like to just 'plough through the agenda', taking time to make sure everyone genuinely agrees with whats been decided.


Holmes and Marra 2002 2005
Contrary to popular belief, women use just as much humour as men, and use it for the same functions, to control discourse and subordinates to contest superiors,although they are more likely to encourage supportive and collaborative humour.


Hornyak 1994?
The shift from work talk to personal talk is always initiated by the highest-ranking person in the room.


Tracy and Eisenberg 1990/1991
When role-playing, delivering criticism to a co-worker about errors in a business letter, men showed more concern for the feelings of the person they were criticizing when in the subordinate role, while women showed more concern when in the superior role.


Various Studies 1998-2004
When giving a directive to an equal, workers tend to use more indirect devices, (such as we instead of you, hedged structures and modals).When giving directions to a subordinate workers are often more direct.




List of many language studies: https://quizlet.com/10969360/english-language-theories-flash-cards/