The differences and similarities between Women and Men language used in Mixed-sex interviews

This thesis aims to analyze the language features used by men and women in mixed-sex interviews. There are three problems to be solved in this study: (1) What are the language features used by men and women in mixed-sex talk interviews? (2) What are the similarities and the differences in language features used by men and women in mixed-sex talk interviews? (3) What factors contributed to the differences in language used by men and women in mixed-sex talk interviews?. The descriptive qualitative method applied in this research focuses on contextualizing and interpreting the utterances that contain language features used by men and women in mixed-sex interviews. The researcher transcribed two interviews consisting of mixed-sex talk to collect the data, which was then analyzed by identifying the kinds of language features used by men and women using suitable code in the text. Furthermore, the data is classified to find the similarities and the differences. The researcher then found the factors that affected the differences in language usage between them and interpreted them. The findings show that men in the whole interview use seven language features. There are minimal response, hedge, tag question, question, command directive, swear taboo, and compliment. Women used only six out of seven, including minimal response, hedge, tag question, question, command directive, and compliment. Among seven language features, the highly used language feature by men and women is the hedge. On the other hand, none of the swear and taboo language used by women in the interviews. The researcher also found that men used the feature of command and directive two times more than women. Then, this study reveals the factors that affect the differences in language used in these mixed-sex talk interviews. There are dominance and control, masculinity and femininity, biological causes, understanding and conforming to communication rules.