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3.4 Differences in Topic Choice
Topic is the subject of a discussion, a talk and the like which focuses on the exchange of information and specific content. As men and women experience different work and life every day, they tend to focus on different topics in daily conversation and have different range of topics.
In the conversation, men like to choose the topic of political affairs, working regions, sports, news, military and religious. They seldom talk about something about private life or expose themselves.
Instead, generally speaking, females have a relatively narrow topic spectrum. Women prefer to talk more in private with female friends about topics often considered trivial and unimportant by men. Most of time, women will show great interest and respond actively to the familiar topics. They will not be interested in strange topics. Women often talk in private with friends such as housework, children，family relations，and even trifle things such as clothes, hairstyle, food and health. What’s more, they are more willing to express their feeling and desire.
The broad topic of male and narrow female topic is caused by many reasons. It is not only related to the nature of the work of both men and women but also to the secular traditions. Usually, men are engaged in the work of high technical requirements and well paid. More women work in the service industry and live in a family-centered environment. Their living space restricts to the narrow topic.
3.5 Differences in Communication Strategy
In conversation, the communicative style between the male and female differs widely in order to allow the topic to go on. Tannen (1993) claims that the female regard posing questions as an important way to encourage others to continue and finish the conversation. They focus on communication. While male differ greatly, they think it as a means to access information and narrate details. The communication strategy between male and female are reflected in three aspects.
Firstly, men frequently interrupt women but women much less frequently interrupt men in the cross-gender conversation. Interruption is defined by West and Zimmerman (1975:123) as “a violation of a current speaker’s right to complete a turn.” They claim that interruption is used as a strategy by powerful participants in discourse to gain the floor and to control the topic of conversation and their study on mixed-sex shows that almost all interruptions were made by males. In1983, they made another research on interruption behaviors of each gender and found out that in inter-gender conversations men frequently interrupt women but women much less frequently interrupt men. Speakers who interrupt others infringe others’ right to speak and in effect demonstrate their power. Interruptions have been described as a way of doing power in face-to-face interaction (West & Zimmerman, 1983). Men use interruption as a mean of dominating and controlling interactions, but women pay attention to remain the relationship in conversation, so they seldom interrupt others and do not occupy speaker’s role.
Secondly, men have a strong topic monopoly and always want to dominate the topic in conversation. They demonstrate their knowledge and ability and attract the attention of the listener. Men would not easily give up their right of speech. At the beginning of speak, men are less likely to mention what has talked before because they simply care about what themselves want to say. Thus, the topic of conversion presents a relatively abrupt and rapid jump in the conversation. Topic coherence is not strong. Instead, women always mention what others have talked or planned to say. They are closely linked with the previously mentioned so as to maintain the coherence of the conversation. They emphasize on the similarities between each other in the conversation. They share their own experiences with each other and pay more attention to the listeners’ reaction and participation in the course of the conversation.