The speech of men and women in contemporary French : the function of parenthetical remarks and the pragmatic particles c'est-a-dire, enfin, hein and quoi
This thesis sets out to test Lakoff's (1975) hypothesis that women's speech is more polite or tentative than men's through a detailed analysis of the usage, in a sample of contemporary spoken French, of parenthetical remarks (PRs) and the pragmatic particles (PPs) c'est-a-dire, enfin, hein and quoi. PRs and PPs serve both the repair requirements and the social interactional 'face-work' which are characteristic of spontaneous speech. Qualitative and quantitative investigations were conducted on the seventeen-hour corpus of orthographically-transcribed spontaneous speech. The aim of the qualitative analysis was to evaluate the contextual factors which may motivate the use of PRs and PPs. The quantitative analysis, by contrast, set out to measure the distributional frequencies of their usage according to the sex, age and educational background of the speakers. Whilst the detailed exploration of contingent factors such as the social roles adopted by the speakers demonstrates the value of a qualitative account, the fact that it is possible to make generalisable or falsifiable pronouncements on the basis of results found to be statistically significant in the data legitimises the adoption of a quantitative account.
Beeching, Kate
Language
The speech of men and women in contemporary French : the function of parenthetical remarks and the pragmatic particles c'est-a-dire, enfin, hein and quoi. This thesis sets out to test Lakoff's (1975) hypothesis that women's speech is more polite or tentative than men's through a detailed analysis of the usage, in a sample of contemporary spoken French, of parenthetical remarks (PRs) and the pragmatic particles (PPs) c'est-a-dire, enfin, hein and quoi. PRs and PPs serve both the repair requirements and the social interactional 'face-work' which are characteristic of spontaneous speech. Qualitative and quantitative investigations were conducted on the seventeen-hour corpus of orthographically-transcribed spontaneous speech. The aim of the qualitative analysis was to evaluate the contextual factors which may motivate the use of PRs and PPs. The quantitative analysis, by contrast, set out to measure the distributional frequencies of their usage according to the sex, age and educational background of the speakers. Whilst the detailed exploration of contingent factors such as the social roles adopted by the speakers demonstrates the value of a qualitative account, the fact that it is possible to make generalisable or falsifiable pronouncements on the basis of results found to be statistically significant in the data legitimises the adoption of a quantitative account.
speech men_woman contemporary french function remark pragmatic particle set_test lakoff hypothesis woman speech polite tentative men detail_analysis usage sample contemporary spoken french remark pragmatic particle pps pps serve repair requirement social interactional face work characteristic spontaneous_speech qualitative_quantitative investigation_conduct seventeen hour corpus transcribed spontaneous_speech aim qualitative_analysis evaluate contextual_factor may motivate use pps quantitative_analysis contrast set measure distributional frequency usage accord sex_age educational_background speaker whilst detailed exploration contingent factor social_role adopt speaker demonstrate_value qualitative account_fact possible make pronouncement basis find statistically_significant data adoption quantitative account