DOMINANCE, DIFFERENCE AND DEFICIT MODEL

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DOMINANCE

In mixed-sex conversations, men were more likely to interrupt than women.

STUDY - Zimmerman and West (1975) : 11 mixed-sex conversations, found that interrupted 46 times more than women's twice, 80% of interruptions were made by men.

STUDY - Spender () : Power is due to being in a male patriarchal society, language structures maintain this.

Pragmatics and context have a significant influence on these aspects.

(Links to Tannen's Functions)

CRITICISM - Interruptions don't necessarily represent dominance - context dependent.

STUDY - Beattie () : Believes the dominance model doesn't always have validity (it's mostly based on interruption studies), men and women have equal interruptions.

STUDY - O'Bar and Atkin (1980) : Courtroom case study, female lawyers were assertive and would interrupt both male and female witnesses, opposes Lakoff's idea of weak feminine language, power comes from the status not their sex.

Personality and Social Psychological Review (2007) : Found that men spoke more in conversations with their spouses, about certain topics.