Gender Differences in Discourse Marker Usage: Insights from the SwDA corpus
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This study investigates gender differences in discourse marker (DM) usage using the Switchboard Dialogue Act Corpus (SwDA), a large dataset of 1,155 telephone-- mediated conversations between unacquainted speakers. Forty-two DMs were analyzed and grouped into six functional areas to examine how gender shapes interactional patterns in telephone talk. Findings reveal that female speakers use significantly more backchannels and acknowledgments such as “uh-huh” and “yeah,” reflecting greater engagement and affiliative strategies, while male speakers produce more statements and opinions, indicating a preference for assertive and informational styles. However, markers traditionally associated with female speech such as tag questions, thanking, apologies, and hedges, show no significant gender differences, suggesting that discourse patterns are highly context dependent. The study highlights the influence of communicative settings: telephone-based conversations with unfamiliar interlocutors and pre-assigned topics reduce the pragmatic pressures that often drive gendered language use in face-to-face interactions. By combining quantitative analysis with functional categorization, this research provides nuanced insights into gendered discourse strategies and underscores the need for context-sensitive approaches in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and language pedagogy.
Abstract
This study investigates gender differences in discourse marker (DM) usage using the Switchboard Dialogue Act Corpus (SwDA), a large dataset of 1,155 telephone-- mediated conversations between unacquainted speakers. Forty-two DMs were analyzed and grouped into six functional areas to examine how gender shapes interactional patterns in telephone talk. Findings reveal that female speakers use significantly more backchannels and acknowledgments such as “uh-huh” and “yeah,” reflecting greater engagement and affiliative strategies, while male speakers produce more statements and opinions, indicating a preference for assertive and informational styles. However, markers traditionally associated with female speech such as tag questions, thanking, apologies, and hedges, show no significant gender differences, suggesting that discourse patterns are highly context dependent. The study highlights the influence of communicative settings: telephone-based conversations with unfamiliar interlocutors and pre-assigned topics reduce the pragmatic pressures that often drive gendered language use in face-to-face interactions. By combining quantitative analysis with functional categorization, this research provides nuanced insights into gendered discourse strategies and underscores the need for context-sensitive approaches in sociolinguistics, discourse analysis, and language pedagogy.