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Gender-Preferential Language Use in Spouse and

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 GENDER-PREFERENTIAL
LANGUAGE USE IN SPOUSE
AND STRANGER INTERACTION

MARY ANNE FITZPATRICK

University of Wisconsin-Madison
ANTHONY MULAC
University of California, Santa Barbara
KATHRYN DINDIA
University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

Research on sex differences in the communication practices of men and women often
ignores the contexts in which communication takes place. By comparing women and men
as they interact with both strangers and spouses, the authors present a more nuanced
view of gender differences in social interaction. The authors discuss gender-preferential
language and present data on social interaction in same-sex, mixed-sex and marital
dialogues. Results of a round-robin analysis of variance indicate that same-sex dyadic
conversations, but not mixed-sex dyadic conversations, are marked by a strong display
of stereotypical gender-preferential linguistic use. Husbands tend to adopt a female-
preferential linguistic style when speaking to their wives.

For at least 20 years, a consensus has been growing about exploring

male and female differences in communication practices. Husbands
and wives who reside in the same household have been described as
living in ''his and her marriages" (Bernard, 1974), as speaking in
different voices (Gilligan, 1982), and as sending messages across
cultures in different tongues (Tannen, 1990a, 1990b). Indeed, women
and men are said to be from different speech communities, in that they
communicate with different purposes and have different rules and
understandings of how to interpret talk (Labov, 1972). Summarizing
the work of Coates and Cameron (1989), Kramarae (1981), Lakoff
(1975), and Tannen (1990a, 1990b), among others, Wood (1994) has
argued that women view communication as the primary way to estab-
lish and maintain relationships, whereas men see communication as
the primary vehicle to establish autonomy and power.

AUTHORS' NOTE: The research reported in this article was supported by a grant from
the National Institutes ofHealth (Biomedical Research Division, UW 141207) to the first
author. An earlier version of this article was presented at the International Congress of
Language and Social Psychology, University of Queensland, Brisbane, Australia.

JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Vol. 14 Nos. 1-2, March 1995 18-39
© 1995 Sage Publications, Inc.

18
Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 19

We begin this article with two major assumptions. Our first major
assumption follows Smith (1985) in that we expect the communication
differences between women and men to be subtle, few in number, and
gender preferential rather than sex exclusive. This assumption leads
us to make a series of choices, not only about the behaviors we measure
but also about the methods we use to examine these behaviors.
Our second major assumption is that in a number of situations, we
should expect to see shifts in female and male communication patterns;
people vary their speech production, consciously or unconsciously; for
reasons related to both their internal state (for example, mood) and
the constraints of the situation in which they find themselves (for
example, their interaction partners). This second assumption con-
trasts with the radical intergroup relations perspective that guides
much of the recent work on sex differences in communication. Male
and female relations are analyzed in much the same way as cross-race,
-class or -ethnic relations (Tajfel, 1982), and speakers are said to
diverge from one another as a sign of their sex. Clearly, there are times
when women and men treat one another as members of different
groups. The analogy breaks down, however, because unlike members
of other in-group/out-group categories, individual men and women are
drawn to one another and form close interpersonal relationships.
In the next section, we extend the work of Mulac and his colleagues
(e.g., Mulac, Lundell, & Bradac, 1986) on gender-preferential language
use. Subsequently; we draw on some of the theoretical work on com-
munication accommodation (Giles, Coupland, & Coupland, 1991) to
formulate predictions concerning the use of gender-preferential styles
within various interaction contexts.

GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE USE

A substantial body of research on differences between men and

women has shown a relatively wide array of linguistic variables that
in one setting or another make between-group distinctions (Smith,
1985; Thorne, Kramarae, & Henley, 1983). For example, an early study
by Gieser, Gottschalk, and John (1959) found that in adults' oral
descriptions of interesting or dramatic life experiences, men made
more reference to time, space, quantity, and destructive action,
whereas women used more auxiliary words and negations, and made
more references to self, feelings, emotion, and motivation. Such differ-
ences apparently begin to be manifest not long after children become
adept at using language. Staley (1982) has found linguistic differences
as early as age 4, with girls displaying more interpretive-emotive
and reflexive styles than boys. In addition, a number of studies
have reported gender-based linguistic differences in dyadic or group
interactive settings (Crosby & Nyquist, 1977; Martin & Craig, 1983;
McMillan, Clifton, McGrath, & Gale, 1977; Poole, 1979; Price &
20 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY/ March 1995

Graves, 1980; Sause, 1976). In Table 1, we present a list and examples

of over 30 linguistic variables that have been shown to be predictive of
a speaker's gender.
We view these language features as gender-preferential rather than
sex exclusive, because women and men are equally capable of using
the styles of the opposite sex and may modify their usage in various
interaction contexts. The linguistic features we have emphasized, such
as intensive adverbs, adverbials beginning sentences, pauses, and
negations, are very subtle, yet Mulac and his associates (Mulac,
Incontro, & James, 1985; Mulac & Lundell, 1980, 1981, 1982, 1986,
1990; Mulac et al., 1986) have demonstrated that variations in their
usage lead to patterned attributions concerning the dynamism,
sociointellectual status, and aesthetic quality of the speech.
Building on this research tradition, Mulac, Wiemann, Widenmann,
and Gibson (1988) tested gender-preferential language use in informal
social interaction. In this study, female and male speech could easily
be discriminated by a weighted combination oflinguistic forms. Inter-
estingly, these researchers found support for the attributional effect in
same-sex groups but an attenuation of that effect in mixed-sex dyads.
In other words, in same-sex dyads, women were rated as high on
sociointellectual status and aesthetic quality, implying that these
women used female-preferential language with one another. In mixed-
sex dyads, however, men were rated as higher on aesthetic quality and
women were rated as higher on dynamism. These results suggest that
women and men switch their gender-preferential language choices in
the mixed-sex dyads.
The research of Mulac and his associates calls into question the
strong version of the argument that men and women operate in
different speech communities. In monologues such as public speeches
or in same-sex interactions, women and men seem to have a preferred
style of communication that is linked to their gender. In these contexts,
they display different linguistic and nonverbal patterns. When we
place men and women in social interaction contexts with qne another,
however, they appear to be able to moderate their gender-preferential
styles.
In an interaction study that includes direct comparisons of three
very different interaction contexts (i.e., same-sex, mixed-sex, and
husband-wife dyads), we can test our proposition that language is
gender-preferential rather than sex-exclusive. In other words, if some
combination of factors other than the sex of the speaker predicts the
use of these linguistic indicators, then our first major assumption is
warranted.

Hypothesis 1: Most of the variation in gender-preferential language use

across different types of interaction partners will be accounted for by the
relationship between the communicators and not the gender of the
speaker.
 Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 21

Table 1
Descriptions, Examples, and Citations a for 32 Language Variables Coded as Potential
Predictors of Interactant Gender

1. Elements
A. Words: The number of printed elements, separated by spaces, having semantic
meaning. Price and Graves, 1980, M+ (spoken) and F+ (written); Wood, 1966, M+.
B. Pauses: (" ... ") Nonvocalized hesitations in the flow of speech.
C. Vocalized pauses: ("ah," "uhm.") Utterances having no semantic meaning. Mulac,
Wiemann, Widenmann, and Gibson, 1988, M+; Poole, 1979, M+.
D. Fillers: ("you know," "like.") Words or phrases used without apparent semantic intent.
Hirschmann, 1973, F+; Mulac and Lundell, 1986, M+; Mulac, Lundell, and Bradac,
1986, F+; Mulac, Studley, and Blau, 1990, F+; Mulac et al., 1988 M+.
E. Back channels: ("unhuh," "right.") Utterances showing apparent interest in having
the partner continue talking.
F. Interruptions: (Person A: "I don't really like electrical engineering that much. [By that
I mean if you.]" Person B: "IA lot of] people are getting out of it.") Breaking into a
person's turn (not including back channels such as "yeah"), in an apparent attempt
to take over the floor. Mulac et al., 1988, M+; West and Zimmerman, 1983, M+;
Zimmerman and West, 1975, M+.
G. Interruption words: The number of overlapping words uttered while apparently trying
to take over the conversational floor from the partner.
H. Mean length sentence: The number of words divided by the number of sentences
(defined as sequences of words beginning with a capital letter and ending with a
period). Hunt, 1965, F+; Mulac and Lundell, 1986, F+; Mulac and Lundell, 1990, F+;
Mulac et al., 1986, F+; Mulac et al., 1990, M+; Poole, 1979, F+.
2. Sentences
A. Questions: ("What is [Communication 12]? What do you do?") Does not include
directives in question form. Fishman, 1978, F+; Mulac et al., 1988, F+.
B. Tag questions: ("It's early winter, isn't it?") An assertion that is followed immediately
by a question asking for support. Crosby and Nyquist, 1977, F+; Dubois and Crouch,
1975, M+; Lapadat and Seesahai, 1978, M+; Hartman, 1976, F+; McMillan, Clifton,
McGrath, and Gale, 1977, F+; Mulac and Lundell, 1986, F+.
C. Directives: ("Think ofanother," "why don't we put that down?") Haas, 1979, M+; Mulac
et al., 1988, M+.
D. Affirmations: ("I think you're right on that one.") Statements indicating apparent
agreement (but not counting back channels).
E. Negations: ("You don 'tfeel like looking.") A statement of what something is not. Mulac
and Lundell, 1986, F+; Mulac et al., 1986, F+.
F. Oppositions: ("The snow must have fallen fairly recently, but it has been a while,"
"... very peaceful, yet full of movement.... ") Retracting a statement and posing one
with an opposite meaning. Mulac and Lundell, 1986, F+; Mulac et al., 1986, F+.
G. Justifiers: ("It's winter because there's snow.") Areason is given for the assertion made.
Mulac and Lundell, 1986, M+; Mulac et al., 1988, F+.
H. Modals: ("I would say that ... " "could," "might.") A model verb form that suggests
doubtfulness. McMillan et al., 1977, F+.
3. Sentence initial elements
A. Sentence initial adverbials: ("Instead of being the light blue, it is ... " "Because the
trees still have snow, it looks like ....") Answers the questions how, when, or where
regarding the main clause. Mulac et al., 1986, F+; Mulac et al., 1988,F+; Mulac and
Lundell, 1990, F+; Mulac et al., 1990, F+.
B. Sentence initial fillers: ("Okay, the first thing we should do is ....") Mulac et al., 1988, M+.
C. Sentence initial conjunctions: (~And then I thought about ....") Mulac et al., 1988, M+.

Continued
22 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY I March 1995

Table 1 Continued

4. Modifiers
A. Intensive adverbs: ("very," "really," "quite.") Modifiers that apparently increase the
strength or intensity of a statement. Crosby and Nyquist, 1977, F+; Lapadat and
Seesahai, 1978, F+; McMillan et al., 1977, F+; Mulac and Lundell, 1986, F+; Mulac
et al., 1986, F+; Mulac et al., 1988, F+.
B. Hedges: ("possibly," "somewhat," "maybe," "rather.") Modifiers that indicate lack of
confidence in, or diminished assuredness of, the statement. Crosby and Nyquist,
1977, F+; Mulac et al., 1990, F+.
5. Personal pronouns:
Words that stand for beings. Gieser, Gottschalk, and John, 1959, F+; Haslett, 1983,
F+; Koenigsknecht and Friedman, 1976, F+; Mulac and Lundell, 1986, F+; Mulac and
Lundell, 1990, M+; Mulac et al., 1988, F+; Poole, 1979, F+; Westmoreland, Starr,
Shelton, and Pasadeos, 1977, F+.
A. "I": ("I think it's better to ....") Mulac and Lundell, 1990, M+; Mulac et al., 1990, M+.
B. "me": ("If it's up to me ... .")
C. "we": ("We wanted to ... .")
D. "us": ("How can anyone expect us to do that?")
E. "you": ("You should know that ... .")
F. "him" or "her":(" ... gave it to her.")
G. "they": (They said .... ")
H. "he" or "she": ("He's the one who ....")
I. "them": ("Just give it to them.")
6. Miscellaneous
A. References to emotion: ("happy," "enticing," "depressing.") Any mention of an emotion
or feeling. Balswick and Avertt, 1977, F+; Gieser et al., 1959, F+; Mulac and Lundell,
1990, F+; Mulac et al., 1986, F+; Staley, 1982, F+.
B. Obscenities: ("fucking," "shitty.") Words that offend accepted standard of decency.

a. Citations indicate empirical studies in which the variable was found to differ for female
and male communicators. Gender distinctions, in terms of whether the variable was
more indicative of male or female communicators, are as follows: M+ = Male, F+ =
Female. (Note, however, that the linguistic categories were not in all cases precisefy
equivalent across studies.)

The sense of our first hypothesis is not that there are no patterned
differences in gender-preferential style. Rather, this hypothesis pro-
poses that one's linguistic choices are not based exclusively on one's
sex. Gender-preferential language choices are modified across contexts
and conversational partners. Indeed, we expect the strongest display
of stereotypical language behaviors in same-sex interactions. Social
group members use a variety of linguistic and nonlinguistic devices
that are peculiar to their own group and distinguish them from other
groups. Speech accent, for an obvious example, differs among ethnic
groups (Giles & Powesland, 1975). Accented speech potentially marks
one as an outsider in a different context (Giles, Scherer, & Taylor, 1979).
Under certain conditions, men and women may be emphasizing
their membership in a given sociolinguistic community (Ashmore,
1981; Ashmore & Del Boca, 1981; Maltz & Borker, 1982). The variation
in linguistic devices used in these contexts may be less obvious than
 Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 23

speech accent. For example, the use of linguistic features such as

intensive adverbs (Crosby & Nyquist, 1977; Hiatt, 1978; Lapadat &
Seesahai, 1978; McMillan et al., 1977; Mulac & Lundell, 1986; Mulac
et al., 1986) and personal pronouns (Koenigsknecht & Friedman, 1976;
Mulac & Lundell, 1986; Poole, 1979) distinguishes between women and
men. These sorts of distinctions are not merely sociolinguistic curiosi-
ties. Rather, they are frequently of consequence to those involved in
intergroup interactions (e.g., Mulac & Lundell, 1986).
For the same-sex groups in our studY, we predict that gender will be
a major aspect of group identity. In same-sex groups, both men and
women will signal their cohesiveness with their own gender by main-
taining their own gender-preferential style. This style is a form of
bonding and signals in-group identification. Thus we offer the follow-
ing hypothesis:

Hypothesis 2: In contrast to mixed-sex dyads, speakers in same-sex dyads

will be significantly more likely to use the preferential language of their
own gender.

Our second hypothesis is a type of intergroup hypothesis in that it

predicts that female and male groups will display significantly differ-
ent gender-preferential styles as they interact with a same-sex, in
contrast to an opposite-sex, partner. In some sense, we can view what
occurs in the same-sex interactions as a baseline against which to
measure what occurs in opposite-sex stranger and couple dialogues.
Thus, in cooperative interactions, in which the maintenance of an
in-group gender identity is not salient, we anticipate that participants
will tend to moderate their speech styles. Individuals speaking
to opposite-sex partners will decrease the use of their own gender-
preferential style. For example, men speaking to women will use
significantly less male-preferential language styles.
We expect the effect to be even more pronounced in the dialogues of
married couples. Husbands and wives have a couple identity (Giles &
Fitzpatrick, 1985) that decreases each partner's use of their own
gender-preferential style. Thus we offer the following hypothesis:

Hypothesis 3: In contrast to their style when speaking to opposite-sex

strangers, spouses will be significantly more likely to decrease the use
of their own gender-preferential style.

LINGUISTIC CONVERGENCE WITHIN CONVERSATIONS

The strategic use oflinguistic devices has been extensively investi-

gated by Giles and his colleagues (for example, Giles & Powesland,
1975; Giles & Smith, 1979; Street & Giles, 1982; Thakerar, Giles, &
Cheshire, 1982) under the rubric of communication accommodation
theory. This work has shown that people often employ very specific
24 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY/ March 1995

linguistic and prosodic features of speech (for example, speech rate or

pronunciation) to converge toward the behavior of the conversational
partner. In addition, Cappella's discrepancy-arousal model (Cappella,
1983; Cappella & Greene, 1982) provides a rationale for the often-
reported findings that interaction partners tend to mirror one an-
other's nonverbal behavior, establishing a relationship that can be
described as one of mutual influence.
Although there is ample evidence that participants in interactions
are influenced by the communicative behavior of their partners
(cf. Cappella, 1983; Giles, Mulac, Bradac, & Johnson, 1987; Patterson,
1984), the exact nature of this influence is still the subject of debate.
Although the sorting out of various theoretical positions is beyond the
scope of this article (see Andersen & Andersen, 1984, for a comparison
of several influence models), it is reasonable to assume that partner
influence may lead to convergence or divergence in linguistic patterns.
Research on communication accommodation has demonstrated that
even when interacting with someone not of their own dialectical
community, communicators often modify their speech so as to diminish
differences, real or imagined, between themselves and their interac-
tional partners.
A substantial body of research indicates that nonverbal response
matching prevails in a large number of interpersonal settings and for
a large number of variables: for example, vocalizations, pauses, switch-
ing pauses, latencies, intensities, proximity, simultaneous speech,
gaze, and talk/silence states (Cappella, 1994; Cappella & Greene, 1982;
Cappella & Planalp, 1981; Mulac, Studley, Wiemann, & Bradac, 1987).
Matching is generally seen as leading to positive interpersonal out-
comes because it signals involvement with, and responsiveness to,
one's partner (Cappella, 1983). Such communication convergence may
be a reflection (often unconscious) of a speaker's need for identification
with another (Giles et al., 1987). Convergence has been defined as a
strategy whereby individuals adapt to each other's communication
behaviors in terms of a wide range of linguistic-prosodic-nonverbal
features. Unlike the between-group comparisons made in the earlier
section of this article, however, convergence is measured within a
conversation. Convergence occurs when one communicator adopts
behavior that is similar (dissimilar) to that of a conversational partner.
Convergence may be measured in a number of different ways. Some
research has considered convergence as a process ongoing throughout
the conversation and has measured communicators' adjustments on a
second-by-second basis (e.g., mathematical modeling of sound-silence
patterns, in Cappella & Planalp, 1981). Other research has considered
convergence as a mean-level construct and has correlated average
levels of behavior across a conversation (e.g., intraclass correlation of
average amount of time partners spent smiling, in Cappella & Palmer,
1990). Our measure of convergence lies in the middle of these two
Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 25

measures. Although we do correlate the average level of gender-

preferential language by partners in each conversation, this correla-
tion is calculated using a mathematical model that subtracts the
variation because of an individual's typical level of gender-preferential
language use.
In these interaction dyads, we measure convergence with an inter-
personal reciprocity correlation. This correlation taps the exchange of
behaviors of comparable value as a consequence of the unique adjust-
ments one partner makes to another (Kenny & La Voie, 1984). 'lb derive
this correlation, researchers need to have baselines for the behaviors
of individuals to be able to sort out the degree to which an individual
is responding to another, above or below that baseline. In other words,
to claim that husbands are converging toward the gender-preferential
style of their wives would involve an initial estimate of their linguistic
behavior to see the degree to which the husband changed his behavior,
above or below his baseline for talk with other partners, during
conversations with his wife.
Given the cooperative and social nature of the interactions explored
in this study; we expected all three of the dyad types to exhibit
interpersonal reciprocity. Individuals conversing in all three contexts
were expected to make within-conversation adjustments in their use
of gender-preferential language. The married couple could be differen-
tiated from the other dyads, however, in that they have developed
private codes and levels of interdependence far beyond that possible in
an initial encounter between strangers (Fitzpatrick, 1988). Given their
shared history; we predicted that married couples would demonstrate
significantly more convergence in their conversations than would
partners in the other types of dyads.

Hypothesis 4: In contrast to same-sex and opposite-sex dyads, married

couples will exhibit significantly more convergence in their adjustment
ofgender-preferential language during conversations with their spouses.

Convergence can be conceptualized along a number of important

dimensions other than level (Giles et al., 1991). Convergence can be
symmetrical (i.e., equal magnitude of convergence) or asymmetrical
(i.e., unequal magnitude of convergence) in that one partner may
converge toward the other to a greater degree. We have no predictions
concerning the symmetry of convergence in these dyads, although we
offer the following research question:

Research Question 1: Do male and female communicators differ in the magni-

tude of their convergence in gender-preferential style in conversation?

Although examining the level and magnitude of convergence may

tell us a good deal about these dyads, the particular linguistic and
nonverbal behaviors we are discussing may also be construed in
26 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY/ March 1995

reference to upward or downward convergence (Giles et al., 1991).

Convergence can be made upward toward a more socially prestigious
practice or downward toward a less prestigious practice. For many
writers, the female style is automatically less prestigious (Kramarae,
1981; Lakoff, 1975), although women have also been cited as using
more standardized and formal language that may, in the language
attitudes area at least, be seen as more prestigious. Thus the first
research question can help us to examine the symmetry (or asymme-
try) of the convergence between women and men, as well as upward or
downward convergence.

METHOD

SUBJECTS

Mailings were sent to all couples in a local church requesting them

to participate in the study. The church community included 100 couples
and 58 questionnaires were returned. From among the 58 couples who
completed the questionnaires, 20 married couples were voluntarily
recruited. These couples received $30 at the end of their participation.
At first glance, the number of participants in this study seems small.
The design, however, was a type ofrepeated-measures design in which
couples were grouped and each member of the group engaged in seven
different conversations.
There were no significant differences on demographic variables
between the participants in the study and the individuals in the church
who completed the questionnaires but did not participate in the study.
In general, the average husband in this sample was 37 years old (SD=
13.54), had a college degree (85%), and worked full-time. The average
wife was 35 years old (SD= 11.78) and also had a college degree (80%).
About half of the wives also worked full-time outside the home. The
average couple had been married 10 years (SD = 11.13), had 2.78
children (SD = 1.72), and had a combined annual income of over
$25,000. Furthermore, there were no significant differences in the level
of marital satisfaction experienced by the study participants and that
experienced by the questionnaire-only respondents, t(85) = 1.48; ns. In
the actual study, participants completed the Relational Dimensions
Instrument (Fitzpatrick, 1988) and the Bern Sex-Role Inventory (Bern,
1974).

PROCEDURE

Four laboratories were set up as living rooms for the conversations.

Participants engaged in seven 10-minute dyadic conversations with
Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 27

each of the other participants (their spouse, three other married men,
and three other married women). The order of participation in the
seven conversations was randomized. Participants were escorted from
room to room to ensure that no conversations occurred during the
evening that were not captured on tape. The gender ofthe participants
was made salient in two ways. First, participants did not know who
would be their interaction partner until entering the experimental
room. Second, the topics for discussion were on relationship issues.
Participants were given a list of topics to choose for discussion. The 15
topics were taken from the Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) (Spanier,
1976) and concerned important aspects ofrelationships, for example,
handling family finances, matters ofrecreation, religious matters, and
so forth.

CODING SCHEME

In this study, 32 linguistic variables were coded. These variables can

be divided into (a) elements of speech, (b) sentence forms, (c) modifiers,
(d) personal pronouns, and (e) reference to emotions (see Table 1).
The language from the 140 conversations (of same-sex, mixed-sex,
and husband-wife dyads) was coded for the 32 variables by three teams
of nine advanced undergraduate communication majors. Each team
met for eight weekly 2-hour training sessions. The training consisted
of practice coding the week's new variables, using transcripts from an
earlier study; it was continued until consensus of meaning and conver-
gence of variable frequencies was achieved. Coders were then given
copies oftranscripts and coding sheets for the week's variables for their
independent coding before the next meeting.
The data were aggregated by computing the mean number of occur-
rences of each linguistic variable across the coders for each of the
interactants. Because the number ofwords uttered by each interactant
was not the same, the data were transformed. The variable counts for
each person were converted to occurrences per 100 words. Because the
data for each interactant existed as proportions (occurrences per 100
words), arsine transformations of the data were computed. The reli-
ability for the 32 variables, in the form of agreement between the
coders, was determined by an intraclass procedure. The coefficients
were consistently high across the variables, ranging from .82 to .99.
In this study, rather than examine individual language variables in
isolation, we chose to code all of the language variables presented in
Table 1. Coding all of these variables allowed us to examine the
gender-predicting efficacy of a cluster offeatures. This cluster is more
reflective of the unique combinations oflanguage features present in
natural conversation. Earlier research has demonstrated the useful-
ness of discriminant clusters of variables for predicting a speaker's
gender in interviews (Poole, 1979), storytelling tasks (McLaughlin,
28 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY I March 1995

Cody, Kane, & Robey, 1981), descriptions of photographs (Mulac &

Lundell, 1986), and public speeches (Mulac et al., 1986).
The advantage of using this weighted combination oflanguage and
nonverbal variables becomes apparent after the recent discussion of
distinctions between convergence and divergence by Giles et al. (1991).
These authors have argued that a number of distinctions must be made
in considering conversational adjustments, including the level and size
of the convergence shift, the direction of the shift, and the symmetry
or asymmetry of the shift. By adopting this measure of gender-prefer-
ential language usage, we employed a multimodal, objective measure
of convergence. The indicators chosen for this study were multimodal
because they were a weighted combination of32 linguistic and nonver-
bal indicators of gender-preferential language.

DESIGN

In this study, we employed a round-robin research design (Kenny,

1990), in which each person in a group interacted dyadically with every
other person in the group. We had men interacting with other men,
with other women, and with their wives, and so forth. With this design,
we could compare the use of gender-preferential language use in male
dyads, female dyads, male-female dyads, and spousal dyads. This
design allows tests of both between-group and within-group predic-
tions. Employing this design, a researcher can calculate how much of
the variance in gender-preferential language use is based on the
gender of the communicator (i.e., the actor effect), the level of gender-
preferential language directed at a given individual (i.e., the partner
effect), and the peculiar adjustments individuals in conversations
make to one another (i.e., the relationship effect). In other words, the
pure speech community prediction would be for strong actor effects on
gender-preferential language use, regardless ofthe interaction partner
or the relationship between the communicators. The communication
accommodation prediction would be that communicators adjust their
behavior to one another based on a variety of factors related to the
salience of group identification. Hence the relationship variance in
these interactions would be higher than the variance because of actors
or partners. Hypothesis 1 could be tested with these variance estimates.
Hypotheses 2 and 3, and Research Question 1, deal with the levels
of various effects, as well as the size or magnitude of those effects.
These calculations are easily made with the round-robin, because one
can establish an estimate of typical behavior in a given context.
Hypothesis 4 could be tested with the round-robin data by calculat-
ing the reciprocity correlation. This reciprocity correlation involves the
unique adjustments made in various dyads after considering the actor
and partner effects. This reciprocity correlation is a form of covariant
Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 29

reciprocity, in which the correlation between partners' language behav-

iors has been statistically adjusted for individual actor and partner
variance in gender-preferential language use. Thus a relationship
found here can be attributed to the specific adjustments dyads are
making in their conversations with one another.
For the round-robin design parameters, we set the alpha level at .10.
Although we coded hundreds ofhours of dialogue, for some of the tests
in this design, we had only 4 degrees of freedom, because we had to
test among the five groups of couples. Kenny (1990) has argued that
five groups of couples, with four couples in each group, allows a
reasonable estimate of most of the parameters of this model, especially
given the difficulty of collecting these types of data.

RESULTS

In this section, we discuss the results of the discriminant analysis

of our language variables. A computed value on the discriminant
function then was input into the round-robin analysis as our dependent
variable. This dependent variable was signed as negative for male-
preferential language use and positive for female-preferential lan-
guage use.

DISCRIMINANT ANALYSIS

Results of the direct discriminant analysis (all variables forced into

the equation) showed that the 35 variables correctly predicted the
gender of the speaker in all but one case. This justified a subsequent
stepwise discriminant analysis to determine the weighted combination
of variables best able to predict gender. This stepwise analysis indi-
cated that 20 variables were entered into the discriminant equation
before reaching the predetermined cut-off point. Table 2 gives the
canonical discriminant function coefficients, along with the final F-to-
remove ratios, for each of the 20 variables making up the discriminat-
ing cluster. Four variables were shown to be indicative of male inter-
actants: vocalized pause, use of he/she, pausing, and the use of the
negative. The rest of the variables in weighted combination charac-
terized female speech.

ROUND-ROBIN ANALYSIS OF VARIANCE

The weighted discriminant function score for each individual served

as the dependent variable. In a test of our first hypothesis, we exam-
ined the amount of variance accounted for in each of the groups by
actor, partner, and relationship effects. For all ofthe dyads, except men
30 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY I March 1995

Table 2
Linguistic Variables Selected by Stepwise Discriminant Analysisa Predicting Gender for
All I nteractants

Gender Canonical F-to-Remove Wilks's

Variable Predictedb Coefficientc Ratios lambda

1. Vocalized pause Male -.73 41.87 .87

2. Intensifiers Female .53 31.62 .81
3. Interruptions Female .40 26.55 .78
4. "Them" Female .56 23.90 .74
5. Sentence initial conjunction Female .31 20.76 .73
6. "He/she" Male -.29 18.44 .71
7. Sentence initial fillers Female .20 16.93 .70
8. "Us" Female .25 15.32 .69
9. Questions Female .24 13.96 .68
10. Pauses Male -.12 12.75 .68
11. Affirmations Female .14 11.77 .67
12. References to emotions Female .14 10.93 .67
13. "Me" Female .18 10.21 .67
14. Words Female .28 9.71 .66
15. Interruption words Female .21 9.24 .66
16. Negatives Male -.14 8.81 .65
17. Modals Female .14 8.37 .65
18. "We" Female .13 7.97 .65
19. Directives Female .12 7.61 .64
20. Fillers Female .15 7.28 .64

a. Wilks's lambda = .64, F(20, 259) = 7.28, p < .001, reclassification accuracy= 78%.
b. Relatively frequent use of the variable led to this prediction for interactant gender.
c. Canonical coefficients are standardized.

speaking to women, over 95% of the variance in gender-preferential

language use is predicted by the relationships between the communi-
cators. In these dyads, most of the variance in gender-preferential
language use is accounted for by the specific relationships developed
in the interaction between communicators, rather than by the gender
ofthe speak.er or the gender of the partner. In these types of conversa-
tions, speakers make linguistic adjustments depending on the context.
A strong actor effect was observed, however, for men when they
interacted with women. Regardless of who the female partner was,
men consistently displayed male gender-preferential language. The
relative variance accounted for (i.e., in masculine talk by an actor effect
for men) was .69 (reliability = .89). In other words, some stable
dispositional factor causes men to use masculine language in conver-
sations with women, regardless of any particular characteristics of the
female partner. In stranger interactions with other women, men ap-
pear to try to differentiate themselves from these women by maintain-
ing distance through using a more masculine gender-preferential style.
When encountering a strong actor effect, it is reasonable to examine
a set of individual difference factors that might explain this result. For
Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 31

men, we considered their level of traditionalism about marriage and

the family, as measured by the ideology of traditionalism scale of the
Relational Dimensions Instrument (Fitzpatrick, 1988), and their self-
identifications with a number of attributes of masculine and feminine
identity, as measured by the Bern Sex-Role Inventory (Bern, 1974).
Both the ideology of traditionalism (r = -.42,p < .10) and self-ascribed
femininity (r = .43,p < .10) were significantly related to male gender-
preferential language use. When men interacted with their wives, the
ideology of traditionalism (r = -.56, p < .01) and their self-ascribed
masculinity (r = -.53, p < .01) predicted their conversational choices.
The more traditional the ideology to which these men ascribed and the
more masculine their sex-role identity, the more likely men were to use
a masculine gender-preferential style in conversations with their
wives and with other women. Traditional men prefer male gender-
preferential language when speaking to women.

BETWEEN-GROUP COMPARISONS

Table 3 presents the scores for gender-preferential language use in

each dyad type. Hypothesis 2 was strongly supported by the data. In
same-sex stranger groups, women and men displayed significantly
more gender-preferential language than in mixed-sex or married dia-
logues. In same-sex dyads, both male and female communicators
displayed a strong preference for using the language of their respective
speech communities. The data also demonstrate strong support for
Hypothesis 3. When speaking in mixed-sex stranger dyads, both
women and men decreased their own gender-preferential style usage.
The data in Table 3 offer partial support of Hypothesis 3. Husbands
moderated their style significantly more in conversation with their
wives than they did in conversation with other women (t = 2.279, df =
19, p < .05). Wives, however, did not adjust gender-preferential style
in conversation with their husbands more than in conversations with
other men.
Interesting between-group comparisons emerge from Table 3. Con-
sider the behavior in the same-sex dyad as the baseline. When speak-
ing to opposite-sex strangers, both women and men moved toward the
gender-preferential language of the opposite sex. Female adjustment
was about twice as strong (.30 units toward male-preferential style) as
male adjustment toward the female style (.15 units toward the female-
preferential style). However, the strongest adjustment was exhibited
by husbands toward their wives. In conversations with their wives,
husbands adjusted to their wives' gender-preferential style substan-
tially more than wives did to their husbands' style. In some sense, both
men and women "code switched" when speaking to opposite-sex others.
But husbands demonstrated the largest magnitude of adjustment
when speaking to their wives. Thus the greatest adjustment was that
32 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY/ March 1995

Table 3
Level of Gender-Preferential Language Use and Relational Reciprocity in Dyadic
Interaction

Gender-Preferential
Dyadic Interaction Language Scorea Reciprocity Correlation

Male to male -.93 .25

Female to female .92 .49*
Male to female -.78 .01
Female to male .62 .29~
Husband to wife -.30 .17
Wife to husband .65 .43*

a. Numbers reported are weighted combinations from discriminant functions. A positive

scale indicates female-preferential styles, whereas a negative scale indicates male-
preferential style.
*p < .10.

of husbands moving toward their wives' gender-preferential style (.60

units for men in contrast to .30 units for women).

CONVERGENCE WITHIN CONVERSATION:

INTERPERSONAL RECIPROCITY

This design allows us to calculate two different types ofreciprocity

The first is individual reciprocity. Individual reciprocity is the correla-
tion of one's actor and partner effect. It can be considered as the
correlation between the behavior one displays toward others and the
behavior one elicits from others. We have no hypotheses or research
questions about this correlation. One could imagine, however, that the
more masculine behavior one emitted, the more one would elicit in
conversational partners. In these data, there was only one significant
type of individual reciprocity, and that was for men interacting with
women who were not their spouses (r =.65 for women; r = .18 for wives).
Thus masculine gender-preferential language use by men appeared to
have a strong conversational effect in mixed-sex stranger dyads. Men
who used masculine language forms with women tended to elicit
masculine language from women. In other words, by differentiating
from women with whom they were interacting for the first time, men
were drawing a similar response across their female partners. Individ-
ual reciprocity or the actor-partner correlation suggests that men who
use the masculine gender-preferential style are the targets of such a
style from the women with whom they interact.
The second type of reciprocity is our measure of convergence. This
correlation involves statistically removing the actor and partner vari-
ance to determine the correlation between the unique adjustment
made by two partners, after removing the effects of the behavior they
exhibit and elicit across conversational partners. Positive correlations
 Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 33

indicate reciprocity; an individual's specific adjustments to a partner

are positively related to the partner's specific adjustments to the
individual. This correlation allows us to consider symmetry and asym-
metry in a new light. Because the relational reciprocity correlation
involves subtracting each individual's actor and partner variance, we
can get potentially different relational reciprocity measures for the
mixed-sex stranger and married comparisons. In the same-sex dyads,
everyone is partnered with everyone else, meaning that the actor and
partner effects are the same. In the mixed dyads, however, the spouses
are special dyads; thus roles are assigned (Kenny, 1990). When the
actor and partner effects are partialed out, the researcher may be able
to draw different conclusions (e.g., husband-to-wife may differ from
wife-to-husband reciprocity).
Table 3 displays the reciprocity correlation across the dyads. Hy-
pothesis 4 was not supported by these data. Indeed, in contrast to our
prediction, most of the relational reciprocity on average was displayed
in same-sex dyads. That is, when talking to members of one's own sex,
conversational partners retained a gender-stereotyped level of talk, yet
they were also able to adjust to the moves of a conversational partner.
The least flexibility occurred for dialogues between opposite-sex part-
ners; only moderate convergence marked the conversations of the
married couples.
What is notable in this table, however, is that all of the statistically
significant reciprocity correlations occurred for female speakers, re-
gardless of the conversational partner. Women appear better able to
moderate their gender-preferential language choices during dialogues
in many different contexts: with husbands, with men, and with other
women.

DISCUSSION

Because we make use of analyses conducted by trained linguistic

coders, we view the study reported in this article as providing objective
evidence of gender differences in linguistic use. Our results indicate
that a weighted combination of20 language features can successfully
discriminate male and female speakers. This finding is consistent with
the earlier discriminant analysis-based research that has demon-
strated objective differences in gender-preferential language (Mulac &
Lundell, 1986; Mulac et al., 1988). Three issues need to be emphasized.
First, it is important to note that the discriminant analysis leading to
the gender-discriminant function scores was based on females and
males interacting with a variety of different types of partners (same
sex, opposite sex, spouse). Consequently, the scores themselves were
not influenced by dyad composition. Second, the variables found to
discriminate male and female speech did so as part of a weighted
34 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY/ March 1995

combination of variables. It is inappropriate to think in univariate

terms of"men used more ofx, y, and z, and women used more of a, b,
and c." Third, gender-preferential language use is very subtle.
By comparing conversations between same-sex, opposite-sex, and
marital partners, we can draw a number of interesting intergroup
conclusions about gender-preferential language use. With this de-
sign, we can examine the levels and magnitude of change in gender-
preferential style as the group composition changes, as well as the
convergence displayed within various dyadic conversations. We drew
the latter hypotheses from communication accommodation theory,
because it covers the ways in which individuals adjust their conversa-
tional style based on the process of identification with the conversa-
tional partner.
The most striking finding of this study is that with the exception of
men speaking to women, most of the variance in these conversations
is accounted for by the relationship between the partners-that is, by
factors other than a given set of characteristics of a speaker or a
listener. What does this mean? First, conversation is driven less by any
particular personality or individual difference in the commwricators
than it is by the process per se. During conversations, women and men
smoothly make subtle adjustments in their gender-preferential style.
When speaking to women, however, men appear to find adjustment
more difficult. That is, men demonstrate a strong actor effect across
conversations with women who are strangers. Consequently, men are
not adjusting their gender-preferential style to the specific women with
whom they are interacting but rather are operating on a script for
interaction. Not surprisingly, this script is predicted by how traditional
and sex-typed the man is. For a traditional and sex-typed man, the
switch from the male gender-preferential style is a difficult transition.
The more traditional the man, the less able he is to shift to a more
female linguistic style.
When women and men speak to a person of the same gender, they
employ their respective gender-preferential codes. A given gender-
preferential style may be a bonding mechanism between same-sex
individuals, signaling their acknowledgment of a shared in-group
culture. When speaking to individuals of the same gender, both men and
women exhibit similar levels of gender-preferential talk. In the same-
sex interactions, the women and men were having an initial conversa-
tion with a stranger of the same sex. The sex of the partner was the
salient priming cue in the interaction. In future research, we need to
examine how the type of friendship established between these same-sex
partners would potentially moderate their use of gender-stereotypical
linguistic patterns. It may be that strong displays of gender-stereotypical
language occur predominantly in same-sex stranger interaction.
Same-sex friends may develop private cultures that specify less
gender-stereotypic codes for use in conversations with one another.
 Fitzpatrick et al./ GENDER-PREFERENTIAL LANGUAGE 35

If we had compared only same-sex interaction, we would have had

strong evidence for the concept of the differentiated speech communi-
ties of women and men. When we add the additional comparisons of
conversations with opposite-sex strangers and spouses, however, we
find that both men and women are capable of moderating the level of
their gender-preferential style usage. Both women and men decreased
their use of gender-preferential language in opposite-sex interactions.
This effect is to be expected because these interactions are casual and
cooperative ones. Although women display somewhat more of this
effect in these dialogues than do men, the real differences in these
dyads show up in convergence. Women display statistically significant
amounts ofconvergence in these dialogues, and men do not. As we have
seen, men, especially traditional ones, have trouble adopting the
female-preferential style when speaking to other women. Women do
not have this difficulty, in that they appear capable of converging
toward the male style and are able to adjust during conversation to the
particular stance of a given partner.
What about married couples? In tenns of communication accommo-
dation theory, these couples have a couple identity. This identity should
be a stronger and more salient one than either person's gender. It is
also important to note that these couples were reasonably happily
married: Their DAS (Spanier, 1976) scores were significantly above the
mean for marital distress (Fitzpatrick, 1988). Thus we conclude that
husbands who are happily married are able to moderate their gender-
preferential style when they talk to their wives. The magnitude of this
shift is striking. Men appear to maintain autonomy and distance in
their conversations with other men. For men, moderating their gender-
preferential style may be the language of relationships.
However, changes in gender-preferential conversational style for
men, as they move from conversations with other men, other women,
and their own wives, appear to be a digital process. Men leap from a
male gender-preferential style to a more moderate style with other
women and leap again in conversations with their wives. The more
traditional the man, the more difficult he finds the jump. The switch
occurs and is maintained at a given level of magnitude throughout the
conversation. Little convergence or reciprocity occurs for husbands as
they converse with their wives.
For women, the initial leap from the extremes of the female-
preferential style occurs when speaking to any man, husband, or
stranger. The language of relationships for women may be thought of as
an analogic process in which she continually monitors the social
environment and adjusts to the conversational partner and the social
environment. Women speaking to other women, women speaking to men
they are meeting for the first time, and women speaking to their hus-
bands display increased sensitivity and convergence toward the gender-
linked linguistic and nonverbal behaviors of the conversational partners.
36 JOURNAL OF LANGUAGE AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY/ March 1995

Future research on gender and language needs to be especially

sensitive not only to the sex of the communicators and the relationships
they have to one another (i.e., stranger, spouse) but also to the highly
specific relational culture developed and shared by the communicators
under scrutiny.

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