• interrupt
• disproportionate
• frequency
• significant
• power
• power
• patriarchal
• insecurity
• dominance
• interest

Dominance theory

This is the theory that in mixed-sex conversations men are more likely to than women. It uses a fairly old study of a small sample of conversations, recorded by Don Zimmerman and Candace West at the Santa Barbara campus of the University of California in 1975. The subjects of the recording were white, middle class and under 35. Zimmerman and West produce in evidence 31 segments of conversation. They report that in 11 conversations between men and women, men used 46 interruptions, but women only two. As Geoffrey Beattie, of Sheffield University, points out (writing in New Scientist magazine in 1982): "The problem with this is that you might simply have one very voluble man in the study which has a effect on the total." From their small (possibly unrepresentative) sample Zimmerman and West conclude that, since men interrupt more often, then they are dominating or attempting to do so. But this need not follow, as Beattie goes on to show: "Why do interruptions necessarily reflect ? Can interruptions not arise from other sources? Do some interruptions not reflect and involvement?"

Dale Spender advocates a radical view of language as embodying structures that sustain male . She refers to the work of Zimmerman and West, to the view of the male as norm and to her own idea of order. She claims that it is especially difficult to challenge this power system, since the way that we think of the world is part of, and reinforces, this male power:

"The crux of our difficulties lies in being able to identify and transform the rules which govern our behaviour and which bring patriarchal order into existence. Yet the tools we have for doing this are part of that patriarchal order. While we can modify, we must none the less use the only language, the only classification scheme which is at our disposal. We must use it in a way that is acceptable and meaningful. But that very language and the conditions for its use in turn structure a patriarchal order."

Fortunately for the language student, there is no need closely to follow the very sophisticated philosophical and ethical arguments that Dale Spender erects on her interpretation of language. But it is reasonable to look closely at the sources of her evidence - such as the research of Zimmerman and West. Geoffrey Beattie claims to have recorded some 10 hours of tutorial discussion and some 557 interruptions (compared with 55 recorded by Zimmerman and West). Beattie found that women and men interrupted with more or less equal (men 34.1, women 33.8) - so men did interrupt more, but by a margin so slight as not to be statistically . Yet Beattie's findings are not quoted so often as those of Zimmerman and West. Why is this? Because they do not fit what someone wanted to show? Or because Beattie's work is in some other way less valuable?

Pamela Fishman argues in Interaction: the Work Women Do (1983) that conversation between the sexes sometimes fails, not because of anything inherent in the way women talk, but because of how men respond, or don't respond. In Conversational Insecurity (1990) Fishman questions Robin Lakoff's theories. Lakoff suggests that asking questions shows women's and hesitancy in communication, whereas Fishman looks at questions as an attribute of interactions: Women ask questions because of the of these, not because of their personality weaknesses. Fishman also claims that in mixed-sex language interactions, men speak on average for twice as long as women.