Jennifer Coates

Jennifer Coates

1. analysed women's conversation between a group of friends who met at each others houses once every fortnight to talk. Coates was a member of this group and recorded them evertime meetings were at their house. Corpus in 135 minutes long.

2. She found that women work together to develop topics by using questions to invite the other speakers to develop the topic and in the process the speakers deal with their own feelings.

3. Minimal responses were used to support the speaker and indicate the listener's active role in the conversation or they were used to signal agreement.

4. Simultaneous speech functions as a collaborative device: overlaps of enthusiasm, tailing off, question or comment function, collaborative thematic development.

5. Epistemic modality is used to indicate the level of confidence or lack of confidence in the truth of the statement, words like 'perhaps' show that there is uncertainty. It's also used to respect face needs.