Jennifer Coates

Jennifer Coates

1. Practical Methodology

   • 1989
   • Analysed part of a corpus of conversation between women friends
   • Corpus is small (135 minutes), approach used is qualitative rather than quantitative
   • Recorded her friends over a period of 9 months during 1983-4
   • The women were an established group - met once a fortnight at each other's houses in the evening to talk
   • Coates belonged to the group, recorded her friends surreptitiously each time the group was at her house

2. Analytical Methodology

   • 'Gossip Revisited: Language in all-female groups'
   • Wanted to establish what formal features were typical of all-woman discourse
   • Explored the notion of cooperativeness
   • Hoped to show that formal features, which are typical of women's language in all-female groups, could be explained by establishment and maintenance of social relationships and the reaffirming and strengthening of friendship

3. Formal Features

   • 1. Topic Develpment
     • The women develop topic of funerals collaboratively over turns
     • Juggle speaker and listener roles
   • Examined four features that are said by linguists to mark co-operative style
   • 2. Minimal Responses
     • Interpreted the use of minimal responses in two ways
   • 3. Simultaneous speech
   • 4. Epistemic Modality