Do women and men use language differently in spoken face-to-face interaction? A scoping review

Review of Communication Research

Volumn 9, Issue , 2021, Pages 43-79

  Plug, Ilona ^a   Stommel, Wyke ^a   Lucassen, Peter L B J ^b   olde Hartman, Tim C ^b   van Dulmen, Sandra ^b   Das, Enny ^a  

^a RADBOUD UNIVERSITY NIJMEGEN   (Netherlands)

^b RADBOUD UNIVERSITY MEDICAL CENTER   (Netherlands)

Author keywords

communication; discourse; face to face interaction; gender; language use; Sex

Indexed keywords

EID: 85103500299     PISSN: None     EISSN: 22554165     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.12840/ISSN.2255-4165.026     Document Type: Review

References (101)

1. Andersen, P. A. (2006). The evolution of biological sex differences in communication. In D. J. Canary & K. Dindia (Eds.), Sex differences and similarities in communication (2nd ed., pp. 117-135). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
2. Anderson, K. J., & Leaper, C. (1998). Meta-analyses of gender effects on conversational interruption: Who, what, when, where, and how. Sex roles, 39(3-4), 225-252. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1018802521676
3. Arber, S., McKinlay, J., Adams, A., Marceau, L., Link, C., & O’Donnell, A. (2006). Patient characteristics and inequalities in doctors' diagnostic and management strategies relating to CHD: a video-simulation experiment. Social science & medicine, 62(1), 103-115. https://doi.org/10.10167j.socscimed.2005.05.028
4. Aries, E. (1996). Men and women in interaction: Reconsidering the differences. Oxford University Press.
5. *Ashenfelter, K. T., Boker, S. M., Waddell, J. R., & Vitanov, N. (2009). Spatiotemporal symmetry and multifractal structure of head movements during dyadic conversation. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Human Perception and Performance, 35(4), 1072. https://doi.apa.org/doi/10.1037/a0015017
6. Bayard, D., & Krishnayya, S. (2001). Gender, expletive use, and context: Male and female expletive use in structured and unstructured conversation among New Zealand university students. Women and Language, 24(1), 1-15.
7. Bergvall, V. (2014). Rethinking language and gender research: Theory and practice. London: Routledge.
8. Bertakis, K. D., & Azari, R. (2012). Patient-centered care: the influence of patient and resident physician gender and gender concordance in primary care. Journal of Women's Health, 27(3), 326-333. https://doi.org/10.1089/jwh.2011.2903
9. Beukeboom, C. J., & Burgers, C. (2019). How stereotypes are shared through language: a review and introduction of the social categories and stereotypes communication (SCSC) framework. Review of Communication Research, 7, 1-37. https://doi.org/10.12840/issn.2255-4165.017
10. Blackless, M., Charuvastra, A., Derryck, A., Fausto-Sterling, A., Lauzanne, K., & Lee, E. (2000). How sexually dimorphic are we? Review and synthesis, American Journal of Human Biology: The Official Journal of the Human Biology Association, 12(2), 151-166.https://doi.org/10.1002/(SICI)1520-6300(200003/04)12:2%3C151::AID-AJHB1%3E3.0.C0:2-F
11. *Bortfeld, H., Leon, S. D., Bloom, J. E., Schober, M. F., & Brennan, S. E. (2001). Disfluency rates in conversation: Effects of age, relationship, topic, role, and gender. Language and speech, 44(2), 123-147. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F00238309010440020101
12. Bramer, W. M., Giustini, D., de Jonge, G. B., Holland, L., & Bekhuis, T. (2016). De-duplication of database search results for systematic reviews in EndNote. Journal of the Medical Library Association: JMLA, 104(3), 240. https://dx.doi.org/10.3163%2F1536-5050.104.3.014
13. Broadbridge, J. (2003). An investigation into differences between women’s and men’s speech. Module, 5 Sociolinguistics, The University of Birmingham Centre for English Language Studies, 1-26.
14. Brouwer, D., Gerritsen, M., & De Haan, D. (1979). Speech differences between women and men on the wrong track?. Language in Society, 8(1), 33-50. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500005935
15. Butler, J. (1988). Performative acts and gender constitution: An essay in phenomenology and feminist theory. Theatre jornnal, 40(4), 519-531. https://doi.org/10.2307/3207893 Butler, J., (1993). Bodies That Matter. New York: Routledge.
16. Canary, D. J., & Hause, K. S. (1993). Is there any reason to research sex differences in communication?. Communication quarterly, 41(2), 129-144. https://doi.org/10.1080/01463379309369874
17. Carli, L. L. (1990). Gender, language, and influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59(5), 941-951. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.59.5.941
18. Claréus, B., & Renström, E. A. (2019). Physicians’ gender bias in the diagnostic assessment of medically unexplained symptoms and its effect on patient-physician relations. Scandinavian journal of psychology, 60(4), 338-347. https://doi.org/10.1111/sjop.12545
19. Coates, (2016). Women, men, and language: A sociolinguistic account of gender differences in language (3rd ed., Studies in \anguage and linguistics). New York: Routledge.
20. Crenshaw, K. W.(1994). Mapping the margins: intersectionality, identity politics, and violence against women of color. In M.A. Fineman & R. Mykitiuk, (Eds.), The Public Nature of Private Violence (p. 93-118). New York: Routledge.
21. Dindia, K. (1987). The effects of sex of subject and sex of partner on interruptions. Human Communication Research, 13(3), 345-371. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1468-2958.1987.tb00109.x
22. Dubois, B. L., & Crouch, I. (1975). The question of tag questions in women’s speech: They don’t really use more of them, do they? Language in society, 4(3)，289-294. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500006680
23. Eckert, P. & McConnell-Ginet, S., (2003). Language and gender. Cambridge University Press.
24. Ehrlich, S., Meyerhoff, M., & Holmes, J. (Eds.). (2014). The handbook of language, gender, and sexualit；y. Malden, Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell.
25. Ekberg, K., & Ekberg, S. (2017). Gendering occupations: persistence and resistance of gender presumptions about members of particular healthcare professions. Gender and Language, 11(1). https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.24082
26. Ellemers, N. (2018). Gender stereotypes. Annual review of psychology, 69, 275-298. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011719
27. Fandrich, A. M., & Beck, S. J. (2012). Powerless Language in Health Media: The Influence of Biological Sex and Magazine Type on Health Language. Communication Studies, 63(1), 36-53. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2011.598600
28. FitzGerald, C., & Hurst, S. (2017). Implicit bias in healthcare professionals: a systematic review. BMC medical ethics, 18(1), 19. https://doi.org/10.1186/s12910-017-0179-8
29. Fitzpatrick, M. A., Mulac, A., & Dindia, K. (1995). Gender-preferential language use in spouse and stranger interaction.Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 14(1-2), 18-39. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0261927X95141002
30. Fuchs, R. (2017). Do women (still) use more intensifiers than men? International Journal of Corpus Linguistics, 22(3), 345-374. https://doi.org/10.1075/ijcl.22.3.03fuc
31. Giles, H. (Ed.). (2016). Communication accommodation theory: Negotiating personal relationships and social identities across contexts. Cambridge University Press.
32. Gleason, J. B., & Ely, R. (2002). Gender differences in language development. In A. McGillicuddy-De Lisi & R. De Lisi (Eds.), Biology, society, and behavior: The development of sex differences in cognition, 21, 127-154. Greenwood Publishing Group.
33. Goffman, E. (1976). Gender display. In E. Goffman, Gender advertisements: Communication and Culture, pp. 69-77. Palgrave, London.
34. Goudsmit, E. M. (1994). All in her mind! Stereotypic views and the psychologisation of women’s illness. In S. Wilkinson, et al., (Eds.), Women and health: Feminist perspectives (pp. 7-12). London, England: Taylor & Francis.
35. Gray, J. (1992). Men are from Mars, women are from Venus: Practical guide for improving communication.Harper Colins Publishers, New York.
36. Haas, A. (1979). Male and female spoken language differences: Stereotypes and evidence. Psychological Bulletin, 86(3), 616. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0033-2909.86.3.616
37. Hahn, A., Kranz, G. S., Sladky, R., Kaufmann, U., Ganger, S., Hummer, A.,… & Kasper, S. (2016). Testosterone affects language areas of the adult human brain. Human brain mapping, 37(5), 1738-1748. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.23133
38. Hall, J. A., & Roter, D. L. (2002). Do patients talk differently to male and female physicians? A meta-analytic review. Patient Educ Couns, 48(217-224). https://doi.org/10.1016/S0738-3991(02)00174-X
39. Hancock, A. B., Stutts, H. W., & Bass, A. (2015). Perceptions of gender and femininity based on language: Implications for transgender communication therapy. Language and Speech, 58(3), 315-333. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0023830914549084
40. *Hancock, A. B., & Rubin, B. A. (2015). Influence of communication partner’s gender on language. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 34(1), 46-64. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0261927X14533197
41. *Hannah, A., & Murachver, T. (2007). Gender preferential responses to speech. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 26(3), 274-290. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0261927X06303457
42. *Hazenberg, E. (2016). Walking the straight and narrow: linguistic choice and gendered presentation. Gender & Language,10(2), 270-294. http://dx.doi.org/10.1558/genl.v10i2.19812
43. *Holmes, J. (2005). Leadership talk: How do leaders ‘do mentoring', and is gender relevant?. Journal of Pragmatics, 37(11), 1779-1800. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pragma.2005.02.013
44. Holmes, J., & Meyerhoff, M. (Eds.). (2008). The handbook of language and gender (Vol. 25). John Wiley & Sons.
45. James, D., & Clarke, S. (1993). Women, men, and interruptions: A critical review. In D. Tannen (Ed.), Gender and conversational interaction. New York: Oxford University Press.
46. Joel, D., Garcia-Falgueras, A., & Swaab, D. (2019). The complex relationships between sex and the brain. The Neuroscientist, 26(2), 156-169. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1073858419867298
47. Joel, D., Persico, A., Salhov, M., Berman, Z., Oligschläger, S., Meilijson, I., & Averbuch, A. (2018). Analysis of human brain structure reveals that the brain “types” typical of males are also typical of females, and vice versa. Frontiers in human neuroscience, 12, 399. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2018.00399
48. Johnson, J. L., Greaves, L., & Repta, R. (2009). Better science with sex and gender: Facilitating the use of a sex and gender-based analysis in health research. International Journal for E
49. Lakoff, R. (1973). Language and woman’s place. Language in Society, 2(1), 45-80.
50. Lakoff, R. (1975). Language and woman's place. New York: Harper and Row.
51. Land, V., & Kitzinger, C. (2011). Categories in talk-in-interaction: Gendering speaker and recipient. In: Speer, S.A. & Stokoe, E. (Eds.). Gender and Conversation, 48-63. https://doi.org/10.1017/CB09780511781032.004
52. Laufer, B., & Nation, P. (1995). Vocabulary size and use: Lexical richness in L2 written production. Applied linguistics, 16(3), 307-322. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/16.3.307
53. Leaper, C., Anderson, K. J., & Sanders, P. (1998). Moderators of gender effects on parents’ talk to their children: A meta-analysis. Developmental psychology, 34(1), 3. https://psycnet.apa.org/doi/10.1037/0012-1649.34.1.3
54. Leaper, C., & Ayres, M. M. (2007). A meta-analytic review of gender variations in adults’ language use: Talkativeness, affiliative speech, and assertive speech. Personality and Social Psychology Review, 11(4), 328-363. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F1088868307302221
55. Leaper, C., & Robnett, R. D. (2011). Women are more likely than men to use tentative language, aren’t they? A meta-analysis testing for gender differences and moderators. Psychology of Women Quarterly, 35(1), 129-142. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0361684310392728
56. Litosseliti, L. (2006). Gender and language theory and practice. London: Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9780203784792
57. Maltz, D. N., & Borker, R. A. (1983). A cultural approach to male-female miscommunication. In J. J. Gumperz (Ed.), Language and social identity (pp. 196-216). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University. https://doi.org/10.1017/CB09780511620836.013
58. Mast, M. S., Hall, J. A., Klöckner, C., & Choi, E. (2008). Physician gender affects how physician nonverbal behavior is related to patient satisfaction. Medical care, 46(12), 1212-1218. https://doi.org/10.1097/MLR.0b013e31817e1877
59. McGlone, M. S., & Pfiester, R. A. (2015). Stereotype threat and the evaluative context of communication. Jornnal o;f Language and Social Psychology, 34(2), 111-137. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0261927X14562609
60. *Menz, F., & Al-Roubaie, A. (2008). Interruptions, status and gender in medical interviews: The harder you brake, the longer it takes. Discourse 沒 Society, 19(5), 645-666. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0957926508092247
61. Mulac, A., Wiemann, J. M., Widenmann, S. J., & Gibson, T. W. (1988). Male/female language differences and effects in same sex and mixed sex dyads: The gender linked language effect. Communications Monographs, 55(4), 315-335. https://doi.org/10.1080/03637758809376175
62. Mulac, A., Bradac, J. J., & Gibbons, P. (2001). Empirical support for the gender-as-culture hypothesis: An intercultural analysis of male/female language differences. Human Communication Research, 27(1), 121-152. https://doi.org/10.1111/i.1468-2958.2001.tb00778.x
63. O’Barr, W. M., & Atkins, B. K. (1980). “ Women’s language” or” powerless language”？. In S. McConnell-Ginet, R. Borker, & N. Furman (Eds.), Women and language in literature and society (pp. 93-110). New York: Praeger.
64. Ochs, E. (1992). Indexing gender. In A. Duranti & C. Goodwin (Eds.), Rethinking Context: Language as an Interactive Phenomenon, 335-58. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
65. Oertelt-Prigione, S., Parol, R., Krohn, S., Preissner, R., & Regitz-Zagrosek, V. (2010). Analysis of sex and gender-specific research reveals a common increase in publications and marked differences between disciplines. BMC Medicine, 8(70). https://doi.org/10.1186/1741-7015-8-70
66. Palomares, N. A. (2004). Gender schematicity, gender identity salience, and gender linked language use. Human Communication Research, 30(4), 556-588. https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/14682958
67. Palomares, N. A. (2009). Women Are Sort of More Tentative Than Men, Aren’t They? How Men and Women Use Tentative Language Differently, Similarly, and Counterstereotypically as a Function of Gender Salience. Communication Research, 36(4), 538-560. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0093650209333034
68. *Pfiester, R. A. (2009). Stereotype threat in mixed-sex dyadic communication (Doctoral dissertation, University of Texas at Austin).
69. *Reid, S. A., Keerie, N., & Palomares, N. A. (2003). Language, gender salience, and social influence. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 22(2), 210-233. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0261927X03022002004
70. *Reznik, D. (2004). Gender in interruptive turns at talk-in-interaction. Teachers College Columbia University Working Paper in TESOL & Applied Linguistics 4(3). https://doi.org/10.7916/D8J965W3
71. Roter, D. L. (1991). The Roter method of interaction process analysis (RIAS manual). Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University.
72. Sacks, H., Schegloff, E. A., & Jefferson, G. (1978). A simplest systematics for the organization of turn taking for conversation. In Studies in the organization of conversational interaction (pp. 7-55). Academic Press. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-623550-0.50008-2
73. Sandhu, H., Adams, A., Singleton, L., Clark-Carter, D., & Kidd, J. (2009). The impact of gender dyads on doctor-patient communication: a systematic review. Patient Educ Couns, 76(3), 348-355. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pec.2009.07.010
74. *Saucier, D. M., & Elias, L. J. (2001). Lateral and sex differences in manual gesture during conversation. Laterality: Asymmetries of Body, Brain and Cognition, 6(3), 239-245. https://doi.org/10.1080/713754416
75. Schegloff, E. A. (2000). Overlapping talk and the organization of turn-taking for conversation. Language in society, 29(1), 1-63. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500001019
76. Schieffelin, B. B., & Ochs, E. (Eds.). (1986). Language socialization across cultures (No. 3). Cambridge University Press.
77. Schulte-Ruther, M., Markowitsch, H. J., Shah, N. J., Fink, G. R., & Piefke, M. (2008). Gender differences in brain networks supporting empathy. №uroimage, 42(1), 393-403. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroimage.2008.04.180
78. Simpson, A. P. (2009). Phonetic differences between male and female speech. Language and linguistics compass, 3(2), 621-640. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1749-818X.2009.00125.x
79. *Singh, S. (2001). A pilot study on gender differences in conversational speech on lexical richness measures. Literary and Linguistic Computing, 16(3), 251-264. https://doi.org/10.1093/llc/16.3.251
80. *Sleath, B., & Rubin, R. H. (2002). Gender, ethnicity, and physician-patient communication about depression and anxiety in primary care. Patient Education and Counseling, 48(3), 243-252. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0738-3991(02)00177-5
81. Speer, S. A., & Stokoe, E. (2011). An introduction to conversation and gender. In: Speer, S.A. & Stokoe, E. (Eds.). Conversation and Gender, 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1017/CB09780511781032.002
82. Stapleton, K. (2003). Gender and swearing: A community practice. Women and Language, 26(2), 22.
83. Stevanovic, M., Henttonen, P., Kahri, M., & Koski, S. (2018). Affiliation and dominance in female and male dyads: when discoordination makes happy. Gender Issues, 1-35. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12147-018-9218-0
84. Stokoe, E. (2012). ‘You know how men are’： Description, categorization and common knowledge in the anatomy of a categorial practice. Gender & Language, 6(1), 233-255. https://doi.org/10.1558/genl.v6i1.233
85. Stokoe, E. (2018, November 8). Do women and men talk differently? [Extract from Talk: The Science of Conversation]. Retrieved from https://thepsychologist.bps.org.uk/do-women-and-men-talk-differently.
86. *Stubbe, M. (2013). Active listening in conversation: gender and the use of verbal feedback. In S. Yamazaki and R. Sigley (Eds). Linguistic Insights -Studies in Language and Communication: Approaching language variation through corpora: A festschrift in honour of Toshio Saito (Vol. 167, p. 365-416). Bern, Switzerland: Peter Lang.
87. Talbot, M. M. (1998). Language and gender: An introduction. Cambridge, UK: Polity Press.
88. Talbot, M. (2008). 20 Gender Stereotypes: Reproduction and Challenge. The handbook of language and gender, 25, 468-486.
89. Tannen, D. (1990). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation (p. 42). New York: Morrow.
90. Tannen, D., Hamilton, H. E., & Schiffrin, D. (Eds.). (2015). The handbook of discourse analysis (Vol. 1). Malden, MA: Wiley Blackwell.
91. Thomson, R. (2006). The effect of topic of discussion on gendered language in computer-mediated communication discussion. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 25(2), 167-178. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0261927X06286452
92. Thorne, B. (1993). Gender play: Girls and boys in school. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press.
93. Thorne, B., & Henley, N. (1975). Language and sex: Difference and dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
94. Turner, J. C., Hogg, M. A., Oakes, P. J., Reicher, S. D., & Wetherell, M. S. (1987). Rediscovering the social group: A self-categorization theory. Basil Blackwell.
95. Van den Brink-Muinen, A., van Dulmen, S., Messerli-Rohrbach, V., & Bensing, J. M. (2002). Do gender dyads have different communication patterns? A comparative study in western-European general practices. PatientEduc Couns, 48, 253-264. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0738-3991(02)00178-7
96. Van den Brink-Muinen, A. (2008). Sekseverschillen en de communicatie tussen huisarts en patient. Bijblijven, 24(2), 7-13. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03076325
97. *Waara, E., & Shaw, P. (2006). Male and Female Witnesses' Speech in Swedish Criminal Trials. HERMES-Journal of Language and Communication in Business, (36), 129-156. https://doi.org/10.7146/hjlcb.v19i36.25842
98. Weatherall, A. (2005). Gender, language and discourse. London: Routledge.
99. West, R., & Turner, L.H. (2010), Understanding interpersonal communication: Making choices in changing times. Cengage learning.
100. West, C. & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender and Society, 1(2), 125-151. https://doi.org/10.1177%2F0891243287001002002
101. Zimmerman, D. H. & West, C. (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversation. In Thorne, B., & Henley, N. M. (Eds.) Language and Sex: Difference and Dominance. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, Inc.