5-1 Monograf - Gossip Among Female Friends - Srisna

GOSSIP AMONG FEMALE FRIENDS:
COOPERATIVE OR COMPETITIVE?
Srisna J. Lahay, S.S., M.Hum.

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Diterbitkan pertama kali dalam bahasa Inggris
oleh Penerbit Global Aksara Pres
ISBN: 978-623-5874-40-1
xiii + 162 hal; 14,8 x 21 cm
Cetakan Pertama, Desember 2021
Copyright © 2021 Global Aksara Pres
Penulis : Srisna J. Lahay, S.S., M.Hum.

Penyunting : Muhamad Basyrul Muvid, M.Pd.
Desain Sampul : Arum Nur Laili
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Foreword
Language is one of the drivers of all activities

that humans conduct in their lives. Every activity in
their lives is conducted under the control of their
mind and feelings. Every person has a need to share
their knowledge and convey their feelings and also a
need to reveal their life experiences that are very
private. This human’s need controlled by their mind
and feelings can be fulfilled because of the role of
language that moves them. The role of language that
drives this life encourages linguists to construct
theories of language. One of these theories is the
theory about variations in the use of language of
conversations.
Gossip Among Female Friends | v

Gossip is a conversation that is popular in
Indonesia. As stated by Pilkington (in Coates, 1998),
gossip is entertaining and enjoyable. At present
gossip has become an entertainment program offered
in series by many TV stations in Indonesia. This
gossip phenomenon thus becomes interesting for a
research. The realization of the use of language in
gossip, especially in gossip among female
participants, may have different variations compared
to the one performed by male participants. Srisna J.
Lahay has raised this topic of gossip conducted by
female participants in a US TV series entitled Sex and
the City.
The lexical meaning of gossip in Kamus Umum
Bahasa Indonesia (the General Dictionary of
Indonesian Language) is a talk about other people; a
negative story about someone; a rumor. Based on the
meaning of the word gossip, which contains a
negative evaluation towards other people, it certainly
provides a realization of language, which is
compelling to do a research about. However, the
gossip in the US TV series, Sex and the City, a
vi | Srisna J. Lahay
research by Lahay, demonstrates different meanings.
The gossip in this TV series is not a talk or rumor
about a negative side of other people but a talk about
a personal life of each of the participants. Freedom of
sex, which is experienced by the participants of the
conversation, becomes the main topic of this gossip.
Referring to the above definition of gossip as a
conversation, this book entitled Gossip among Female
Friends: Cooperative or Competitive?, a work based on
a research conducted by Srisna J. Lahay, is necessary
to read. This book benefits researchers who are
completing their thesis or researchers who investigate
the variations of language in conversations among
female participants. In Chapter I of this book the
writer presents the background for the choice of the
topic, data, and benefits of the research. Chapter II
contains the theoretical review about women’s
language. In this chapter, Lahay discusses theories
that show differences in variations of language used
by male and female participants, which cover a) style
of conversation, b) strategy of conversation, and c)
importance of talk among women. Chapter III is
Gossip Among Female Friends | vii

about a theoretical review of conversation analysis
proposed by Pomerantz and Fehr (in van Dijk, 1997)).
In chapter III steps of analyzing data are explained,
and according to Pomerantz and Fehr, there are five
steps conducted in a conversation analysis. For her
data analysis, Lahay refers to the model of analysis
proposed by Jennifer Coates (in Coates and Cameron,
1988). Chapter IV of this book provides the analysis
on the data of conversations as gossips found in the
TV series, Sex and the City. In this chapter Lahay has
managed to describe how language is used in gossip
among female participants and what formal features
are found in it. Chapter V contains the conclusion
based on the findings of the research on the data
mentioned previously. The interesting conclusion in
this research by Lahay is that cooperativeness found
in the gossip indicates that all participants positively
respond towards other participants’ view about their
personal experiences regarding sex. The realization of
language in gossip among participants does not
demonstrate competitive features of conversation;
namely, features of conversation in which
viii | Srisna J. Lahay

participants compete with each other to show their
own personal qualities.
In short, this book, written by Srisna J. Lahay
and upon the findings of her research, contributes to
the theoretical and analytical insights as well as
presents a description on research about language
used in a conversation among female participants.
Happy reading.
Depok, January 25, 2022
Dr. F.X. Rahyono, S.S., M.Hum.

Head of Department of Linguistics, Faculty of
Humanites, Universitas Indonesia (2011-2019)
Lecturer at Javanese Study Program, Faculty of
Humanities, Universitas Indonesia (1988-2021)
Gossip Among Female Friends | ix

Preface
Picture this. You enter a café. You see a group of

women talking at a table in the corner of the café.
They seem to have a lively conversation. They seem
not to care about the time and their surroundings.
You wonder, “What are they gossiping about? What
makes them so engaged in the conversation that they
seem to forget about everything else?” If you are
interested in the use of language, you also wonder,
“What kind of language do they use? Is it different
from the one used by men? How is this conversation
carried out?”
This book, entitled Gossip among Female Friends:
Cooperative or Competitive?, will answer those
questions. It discusses the style and characteristics of
x | Srisna J. Lahay
language used in a gossip among female friends. It
also describes in details the functions and formal
features of this conversation among women. In
discussing the type of language and describing the
functions and formal features of this kind of talk, the
writer uses the analysis on the data taken from the
first season of a famous US TV series, Sex and the
City.
The writer hopes that this book based on the
research for her master’s thesis will benefit many
people, not only the writer herself. It will be useful
for students majoring in linguistics and conducting a
research for their thesis. It will help researchers
focusing on variations of language used among
women. It will be advantageous for other people
interested in the relation between language and
gender.
With the completion of this book, first of all, the
writer would like to express her gratitude to Allah
SWT for His blessings so that she could finish writing
this book. Second of all, the writer would like to
thank these following people: Katharina Endriati
Gossip Among Female Friends | xi

Sukamto, Ph.D., for her advice and assistance on her
research; Gloria C. Kismadi, for checking the writer’s
use of English on her thesis; Mama and Papa, the
writer’s late and most beloved parents, for their
priceless legacy: the writer’s education; other
members of the writer’s family, especially her much-
loved sisters, Anin and Nila, and her one and only
brother, Yar, for their constant support, prayers, and
never-ending love. Last but not least, the writer
would like to thank her colleagues, friends, and
others, whom she cannot mention one by one, for
everything they did during the writing of the book.
The writer exerts her best efforts in writing this
book; however, as a human being, she surely has
weaknesses. Thus, in her opinion, the book is far from
perfect. The writer gladly welcomes any comments,
suggestions, or critiques from anybody for the
revision of her book.
Bekasi, December 23, 2021
xii | Srisna J. Lahay

Table of Contents
FOREWORD –[v]
PREFACE –[x]
TABLE OF CONTENTS –[xiii]
CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION –[1]

CHAPTER II STUDY OF WOMEN'S LANGUAGE –[7]
CHAPTER III CONVERSATIONAL ANALYSIS AND
GOSSIP –[45]
CHAPTER IV GOSSIP AMONG FEMALE FRIENDS:
COOPERATIVE OR COMPETITIVE? –[73]
CHAPTER V FUNCTIONS AND FEATURES OF GOSSIP
AMONG FEMALE FRIENDS –[149]
BIBLIOGRAPHY –[153]
TRANCRIPTION CONVENTIONS* –[159]
BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR –[161]
Gossip Among Female Friends | xiii

CHAPTER I
INTRODUCTION
Anthropologists and sociologists have found

that different regions, ethnicity, social class
backgrounds, age and gender result in different ways
of using language. Linguists are challenged to
examine this fact further. Some of their researches
are concerned with gender-differentiated language
use in mainstream, white, English-speaking contexts
in the United States, Britain, and Australia.
Social dialect researches focus on differences
between women’s and men’s speech in the areas of
pronunciation, such as [in] vs. [iŋ], and morphology,
such as past tense forms, with some attention to
Gossip Among Female Friends | 1

syntactic constructions, such as multiple negation
(Holmes, 1998).
Robin Lakoff shifts the focus of research on
gender differences to syntax, semantics, and style.
She proposes that the language women use as well as
in the language used about them reflect the women’s
subordinate social status in American society. She
identifies a number of linguistic features which are
used more often by women than men and which
express uncertainty and lack of confidence. The
linguistic features that characterize women’s speech
are as follows (Holmes, 1998):
1. Lexical hedges or fillers, for example you know,
sort of, well, you see.
2. Tag questions, for example she’s very nice, isn’t
she?
3. Rising intonation on declaratives, for example it’s
really good?
4. ‘Empty’ adjectives, for example divine, charming,
cute.
2 | Srisna J. Lahay
5. Precise color terms, for example magenta,
aquamarine.
6. Intensifiers such as just and so, for example I like
him so much.
7. ‘Hypercorrect’ grammar, for example consistent
use of standard verb of forms.
8. ‘Superpolite’ forms, for example indirect requests,
euphemisms.
9. Avoidance of strong swear words, for example
fudge, my goodness.
10. Emphatic stress, for example it was a
BRLILLIANT performance.
In her article written in 1980 and entitled

Gossip: Notes on Women’s Oral Culture, Deborah Jones
addresses gossip among women and writes based on
personal observations and on other women’s writings
on gossip between females. The content of the article
is representative of white, English-speaking women.
The article discusses the definition, the
elements, and the functions of gossip. In her opinion

gossip is a specific way of talking between women and
is noted for the values, morals, and unity of women as
a social group. Gossip occurs in the home, the
hairdresser, and the supermarket. Topics reflect upon
the roles women are expected to uphold in the
society, that is wife, girlfriend, and mother. Jones
claims that there are four functions of gossip: house
talk, scandal, bitching, and-chatting
(http://course1.winona.edu/pjohnson/gender/jones.ht
m).
Jones offers a description of language use
among women in terms of the relations between
setting, participants, topic, form and function. The
strength of Jones’s paper is that it puts women
talking to women definitely on center-stage. Its
weakness stems from the lack of empirical data.
However, since the publication of this paper, some
linguists have developed the notion that linguistic
differences between men and women might be the
result of sub-cultural differences rather than
4 | Srisna J. Lahay
dominant-subordinate relationships (in Coates and
Cameron 1988).
Inspired by Jones’ article, Jennifer Coates
analyzes conversations between women friends. She
uses the qualitative approach and wants to see
whether her analysis supports Jones’s general claims,
to establish what formal features are typical of all-
woman discourse, and to explore the notion of
cooperativeness. Coates records a group of women
friends who are white, middle class, aged in their late
30s and early 40s. The topics are about people and
feelings. These all-woman conversations have as their
main goal the maintenance of good social
relationships. Coates finds four aspects of the
interactional pattern in these conversations: topic
development, minimal responses, simultaneous
speech, and epistemic modality. She concludes that
based on the analysis of these four formal features,
women’s talk can be described as co-operative (in
Coates and Cameron, 1988).

Following this study, the writer became
interested in analyzing conversations among women
to find out the style and characteristics of language
used among women in terms of the relations between
settings, participants, topics, forms, and functions. By
referring to the research conducted by Jennifer
Coates discussed above, the writer focuses her
analysis on the style and characteristics of language
used in gossip among women friends in the US TV
series, Sex and the City. This popular TV series
depicts the life of four white women in their 30s who
work and live in New York City. These women are
close friends, who see each other very often and share
every aspect of their life with each other.
6 | Srisna J. Lahay
CHAPTER II
STUDY OF WOMEN'S
LANGUAGE
A. Overview of Women's Language

In this chapter, several studies regarding
women’s language use are presented in detail. The
presentation is divided into three main sections:
male-female differences in conversational style,
different strategies men and women use in their
conversations, and the importance of talk among
women. In this chapter the theoretical framework
about conversational analysis, gossip among
women, and the research conducted by Jennifer

Coates and presented in her paper entitled Group
Revisited: Language in All-Female Groups (in Coates
and Cameron, 1988), on which the data analysis is
based, is also explained. Below is the detailed
explanation of each subject matter.
In this section of chapter II previous studies
or researches about male-female differences in
conversational style, different strategies men and
women use in their conversations, and the
importance of talk among women are explained.
B. Male-Female Differences in Conversational Style

According to Deborah Tannen (in Coates,
1998), communication is always a matter of
balancing conflicting needs for involvement and
independence. Women often have a relatively
greater need for involvement, and men have a
relatively greater need for independence. Being
understood without saying what you mean gives a
payoff in involvement, and that is why women
value it so highly.
8 | Srisna J. Lahay
Tannen (in Coates, 1998) then states that if
we want to be understood without saying what we
mean explicitly in words, we must convey meaning
somewhere else—in how words are spoken, or by
metamessages. Thus, women are more attuned to
metamessages of talk than men. Metamessages are
a form of indirectness. Women are more likely to
be indirect and to try to reach to agreement by
negotiation. Another way to understand this
preference is that negotiation allows a display of
solidarity, which women prefer to the display of
power. She further explains that women are more
attuned to metamessages because they are more
focused on involvement, that is, on relationships
among people, and it is through metamessages that
relationships among people are established and
maintained.
Tannen also argues that the differences in
focus on messages and metamessages can give men
and women different points of view on almost any
comment. What they expect is different as well as

what they see as the significance of the talk itself.
These differences have their roots in the settings in
which men and women learn to have
conversations: among their peers, growing up.
Little girls tend to play in small groups or in pairs.
Their social life usually centers around a best
friend, and friendships are made, maintained, and
broken by talk. It is hard for newcomers to get into
these tight groups, but anyone who is admitted is
treated as an equal.
Girls like to play cooperatively. Little boys
tend to play in larger groups, and they spend more
time doing things than talking. It is easy for boys
to get into the group, but not everyone is accepted
as an equal. Boys must strive for their status in it.
Their talk is often competitive about who is best at
what. When women and men grow up, they keep
the divergent attitudes and habits they learned as
children.
10 | Srisna J. Lahay
Tannen asserts that women’s and men’s ideas
about how to conduct talks may be very different.
She gives an example:
Diana is feeling comfortable and close to
Tom. She settles into a chair after dinner and
begins to tell him about a problem at work.
She expects him to ask questions to show he
is interested; reassure her that he
understands and that what she feels is
normal; and return the intimacy by telling her
a problem of his. Instead, Tom sidetracks her
story, cracks jokes about it, questions her
interpretation of the problem, and gives her
advice about how to solve it and avoid such
problems in the future.
Based on this example, Tannen explains that

Tom’s way of responding to Diana’s bid for
intimacy makes her feel distant from him. Diana
then tries harder to regain intimacy the only way
she knows how—by revealing more and more about
herself. Tom also tries harder by giving more
insistent advice. The more problems she exposes,
the more incompetent she feels, until they both see

her as emotionally draining and problem-ridden.
When his efforts to help are not appreciated, he
wonders why she asks for his advice if she does not
want to take it.
Quoting Maltz and Borker, Tannen reports
that women and men have different ways of
showing that they are listening. In the listening
role, women make—and expect—more of the
listening noises giving the go-ahead for talk, such
as ‘mhm,’ ‘uh-huh,’ and ‘yeah’. So when men are
listening to women, they are likely to make too few
such noises for the women to feel the men are
really listening. When women are listening to men,
making more such listening noises than men expect
may give the impression they are impatient or
exaggerating their show of interest.
Tannen proposes that what women and men
mean by such noises may also be different. Women
tend to use these noises just to show they are
listening and understanding. Men tend to use them
to show they agree. The difference in how women
and men use listening noises is in keeping with
their focus in communication. Using the noises to
show ‘I’m listening, go on’ serves the relationship
level of talk. Using them to show what one thinks
of what is being said is a response to the content of
talk.
Tannen further argues that women’s and
men’s assumptions about what is interesting to
talk are different. To women to tell and hear about
what happened today, who turned up at the bus
stop, who called and what she said, and other
details are important because their telling proves
involvement—that they care about each other, that
they have a best friend. To men telling about such
topics as sports, politics, history, or how things
work are worthwhile. When women talk about
what seems obviously interesting to them, their
conversations often include reports of
conversations.
Tone of voice, timing, intonation, and
wording are all re-created in the telling in order to

explain the experience that is being reported.
Instead, men tell about an incident and give a brief
summary. Knowing that they may talk about the
conversations later makes women more likely to
pay attention to exactly what is said and how.
Many women are not in the habit of paying
attention to scientific explanations and facts
because they do not expect to have to perform in
public by reciting them.
Tannen concludes that women and men may
try either or both to modify their ways of talking
and to try to accept what the other does and that
the important thing is to know that what seem like
bad intentions may really be good intentions
expressed in a different conversational style.
In her article entitled Women’s Talk: The
Question of Sociolinguistic Universals (in Coates,
1998), Janet Holmes proposes some sociolinguistic
universal tendencies in the area of language and
gender and explore some evidence for and against
them. She uses four dimensions of analysis that
have proved very useful in a range of research
settings and which are sociolinguistic universals in
that they can be used to analyze language in use in
any speech community. These four dimensions are
function (what is the purpose of the talk),
solidarity (how well do the participants relate to
each other), power (who is in charge), and status
(how does speech indicate social status).
Regarding function of talk, Holmes (in
Coates, 1988) states that there is one fundamental
distinction which can be made in analyzing the
function of talk, that is the distinction between
affective or interpersonal meaning and referential
or informative meaning.
Example 1 below provides a clear instance of
talk which is primarily affective:
Context : Two colleagues passing each other at
work
PAT : Hi Chris. How’s things?
CHRIS : Hi! How are you? Great day eh!

Example 2 below is referential talk which has
its main purpose to convey information:
Here is the forecast of the Wellington district until
midnight Tuesday issued by the meteorological
service at 6 o’clock on Monday evening. It will be
rather cloudy overnight with some drizzle,
becoming fine again on Tuesday morning. The
outlook for Wednesday—a few morning showers
then fine.
In Western speech communities, there is
some evidence that women tend to be more
oriented to affective meaning when they are
talking to others, while men tend to focus more
readily on the referential meaning of the talk. The
generalization can be formulated as follows:
women tend to focus on the affective functions of
an interaction more often than men do. This
supports the suggestion that women pay more
attention than men to the feelings of their
addressees. But there is little evidence on the
extent to which these patterns generalize to other
cultures.
Holmes (in Coates, 1998) further argues that
focusing on the feelings of the person they are
talking to is one way in which women express
solidarity (or positive politeness) in their
interactions, especially in informal and intimate
contexts. Women provide more encouraging
supportive feedback or positive minimal responses
(for example mm, mhm, uh-huh, yeah) than men in
informal interaction. Another way in which
concern for the addressee can be expressed is by
the use of facilitative devices which invite the
addressee to contribute to the conversation. These
devices include tag questions and phrases such as
you know and sort of, which are termed by Holmes
as pragmatic particles. Women use these forms
more often than me to express facilitative meaning
and friendliness.
Supportive feedback and compliments are
further obvious ways in which speakers express a

positive orientation to their addressees. The
evidence from a wide range of research—largely
but not entirely based on Western societies—
suggests, then, that women tend to use linguistic
devices such as these, which focus on the feelings
of the addressee and express solidarity and
friendliness more often than men do. The
generalization may be formulated in the following
way: Women tend to use linguistic devices that
stress solidarity more often than men do.
In terms of power, Holmes (in Coates, 1998)
proposes several kinds of linguistic devices that are
often used by powerful communicators to keep
control of an interaction. They are certainly not
solidarity oriented, affiliative interaction
strategies. She states that men disruptively
interrupt others more often than women do. This
pattern appears to hold regardless of status at least
in Western speech communities. A disruptive
interruption is a dominance strategy and generally
reflects the power relations in an interaction. She
also states that men are prepared to talk when
there is some obvious advantage to them in terms
of achieving a goal, controlling the situation, or
status enhancement, but they are not so talkative
in other contexts.
Women and men contribute differently in
different contexts because they have different
communicative aims. The amount that each sex
talks will differ according to what they perceive as
the function of the talk. Men appear to regard
public formal contexts as opportunities for display.
Women tend to regulate their talk according to
their perceptions of the needs of others. In other
words, women tend to put more weight on
behavior which will maintain and increase
solidarity, while men tend to focus on action-
oriented or status-oriented behavior.
The generalization could be formulated in
this way: women tend to interact in ways which
will maintain and increase solidarity, while men
(especially in formal contexts) tend to interact in

ways which will maintain and increase power and
status.
Holmes (in Coates, 1998) later presents
another sociolinguistic generalization that women
use more standard forms than men from the same
social group. More standard forms are associated
with higher social status. She argues that there are
however many ways in which an interpretation of
this pattern as an indication of women’s concern
with status can be challenged. Firstly, there is little
doubt that in a formal interview with a person they
do not know well women will use a relatively high
percentage of standard forms. In other words, the
women adapt their own speech patterns in the
direction of the addressee’s patterns more than
men do. Women’s use of standard forms in social
dialect interviews may well reflect their sensitivity
to their addressee’s speech norms. Secondly, this
pattern may equally reflect women’s awareness of
the appropriate style of speech for such an
interview and their greater ability to adapt to such
a context. This is a relatively formal context and it
is well established that most speakers move
towards more formal styles in such contexts.
Therefore, Holmes (in Coates, 1998) suggests
that women may use more standard forms than
men because they are better able than men to
produce such forms in the formal interview
context where they judge them appropriate. This
leads to the final generalization Holmes proposes
for consideration as a sociolinguistic universal
tendency: Women are stylistically more flexible
than men.
Holmes (in Coates, 1998) concludes her
article by examining three different explanations
which have been suggested for the patterns
described in her article: a cultural explanation
appealing to different patterns of socialization, a
power-based explanation which focuses on
women’s subordinate status, and a biological
explanation. The cultural explanation for
differences in the way women and men use

language point to the fact that women and men are
socialized differently.
They belong to different sub-cultures. Their
ways of interacting are determined in their
childhood same-sex play groups and the patterns
established in those early years persist into
adulthood. The results of these different
socialization patterns are that boys and girls
develop different cultures with different norms for
interaction. The second explanation attributes to
differences in the communicative patterns of
women and men to differences in power between
the sexes. Men are the power brokers in most
speech communities.
Women are subordinate. Consequently, the
patterns of interaction which distinguish the sexes
reflect male dominance and female subordination.
Holmes’ third explanation, which points to biology
as a contributing factor in female-male linguistic
differences, is based on Chambers who argues that
females have a genetic head-start over men, which
they use to their advantage to develop greater
sociolinguistic skills. He points out that women
have an innate neurological advantage which
provides the basis for the development of further
advantages in the area of verbal skills.
C. Different Strategies Men and Women Use in

Conversations
In her paper, Jane Pilkington (in Coates,
1998) attempts to describe some of the features of
gossip, identifies and discusses differences in the
gossip of women and men on the basis of data
collected in single-sex groups. She proposes that
although the aims of women’s and men’s gossip
appears to be similar, in that both express
solidarity and group of membership, the strategies
adopted to achieve these aims are quite different.
The women tend to use positive politeness
strategies, while the men appear to operate within
the context of Mateship Culture and use ways of
interacting which are far more aggressive.

Pilkington begins her paper by asserting
several functions of gossip. The basic function of
gossip can be seen as signifying group membership.
Gossip within groups can play a conservative role
in maintaining morals and unity. Gossip has a
leveling function. Anyone gaining too much power
or overstepping their roles leaves themselves open
to be gossiped about. Gossip is also entertaining. It
is a form of entertaining open only to group
members.
According to Pilkington, gossip is however
generally downgraded or condemned by any
community. It is largely seen as worthless and has
low social prestige. The general belief that gossip is
trivial is perhaps derived from the intimacy that
characterizes gossip. As an intimate style, it occurs
in informal settings seen as small scale and
receiving little attention.
From the observations, Pilkington then
defines gossip as characterized by the following
features:
1. Gossip is focused on the personal rather than
global, private rather than public.
2. Gossip is widely regarded as trivial yet is
valued by individuals.
3. Gossip is entertaining and enjoyable.
4. Gossip occurs in a sympathetic environment,
among friends and intimates not
strangers.
In her research, Pilkington records two
different all-female groups and two all-male
groups. The female groups consist of (i) women
that she shares a flat with and their friends, (ii) the
women she works with in a bakery. The women in
her flat and the friends visiting when she tapes
almost all know one another. All participants are
university students from similar socio-economic
backgrounds aged between 20 and 25 years. The
women she works with are aged 34-43. All
participants know one another, but their socio-
economic background is somewhat lower than that
of the first group. The first group of men

Pilkington tapes consists of four participants and
are aged between 20 and 25 years. The second
group of men consists of five participants and aged
between 20 and 39.
All the participants know one another and
have all left school after either the sixth or seventh
grade and have a similar socio-economic
background. The differing ages and educational
background of the participants and the different
environments in which the data are recorded do
not seem to result in any great differences in the
gossip style. Pilkington’s taping produces about
250 minutes of data from the female groups and
210 minutes of usable data from the male group.
As a result of her research, Pilkington finds
that one very clear feature of the interaction of the
female groups is the large degree of positively
oriented involvement. She finds that while one
speaker might be taking the central talk role, the
other participants are continuously contributing. It
is rare for a speaker to talk alone for more than
about 30-35 words. The more interesting and
exciting the participants find the conversations,
the more often they will contribute, and the more
feedback they will provide. In such episodes, the
length of turn of each participant is extremely
short. Short turns with minimal responses between
are one indication of involvement. Another feature
of the women’s involvement in each other’s talk is
the amount of encouraging feedback they provide
to each other and the ways in which they extend
each other’s topics.
Another interesting cooperative interactive
strategy is a joint story-telling. Sometimes the
other participants will use questions about what
the speaker is talking about to get them to
continue with their narrative. Echoing or repeating
each other’s comments is another strategy that the
women used as a means of showing agreement.
Even when they disagree, the women do so in an
indirect way consistent with their cooperative and
generally supportive approach to interaction. A

speaker will question the previous speaker’s
utterance, for instance, without explicitly stating
that they disagree with the statement.
Based on the result of Pilkington’s research,
male talk is very different from female talk in a
variety of ways. The most noticeable feature is the
long silences. There are also much longer pauses
between turns even when the speaker expects or
invites a response by using tags or questioning
intonation. The men seem to be far more willing to
continue talking without verbal feedback than the
women are. The men by contrast can carry on long
monologues with very long pauses between
utterances. Another feature that characterizes
Pilkington’s male data is the occurrence of
frequent, direct, and repeated expression of
disagreement or hostility. They seem to have
several different strategies for doing this. There
are two different strategies for disagreement in the
data: firstly, questioning the other’s proposition
and secondly, negating the other’s proposition.
Another very common strategy that males use for
expressing disagreement is criticism.
Critical comments are addressed to others by
name. This appears to increase the force of the
criticism and make it more of a threat. The topics
that the men discuss do not seem to be linked as
clearly as the topics that the women discuss.
Sudden changes of topic seem to make the
interaction of the men have less of a flowing
quality to it. This jerkiness seems to be
characteristic of the male data. The topic can
change with no warning and seemingly for no
reason. Arguments will suddenly occur and then
just as suddenly cease when the participants move
on to the next topic.
Pilkington also points out that the women’s
talk appears to be observing generally recognized
principles of politeness. The women use a high
number of the positive politeness strategies
identified by Brown and Levinson as strategies
which emphasize group membership and solidarity.

The following strategies can all be identified in the
recordings of the women’s talk:
1. Noticing Hearer
2. Exaggerate
3. Use of in group identity markers
4. Seek agreement
5. Avoid disagreement
6. Assert common ground
7. Include both Speaker and Hearer in activity
8. Joke
9. Give gifts to Hearer
The men by contrast often explicitly
contradict them. They tend to emphasize
disagreement rather than agreement. It seems
possible that while women use positive politeness
strategies to express solidarity, the men use abuse
as a means of signaling solidarity. The men often
made comments that indicate that they look upon
this abusive behavior as a positive thing and polite
behavior as something negative. The men do not
feel that abusive behavior is necessarily anti-social
behavior. The men appear to identify with such
behavior and see it as appropriate masculine
behavior. The women’s groups are a total contrast
in this respect. Disagreement is avoided and
agreement is built upon.
Pilkington further comments that within each
group there seems to be a strong awareness of their
group’s respective norms. The women’s behavior
follows the rules for polite interaction described by
Brown and Levinson. By considering the male
Mateship Culture described by Bev James and Kay
Saville-Smith, the men can be seen as behaving in a
way that will impress masculine associates with
their own fearlessness in flouting social norms.
The risk that they are taking in insulting one
another is a risk that James and Saville-Smith
argue is central to many male activities. By
knocking one another down with words the men
are signaling their solidarity and their mateship.
Pilkington concludes that men and women in
same-sex interaction behave very differently when

they gossip. Both these groups however seem to
have the same goals for their interaction. Speakers
in both groups wish to demonstrate their
membership of the group and the solidarity that
they feel with the other members. The women do
this by employing well recognized positive
politeness strategies. The men by contrast appear
to behave in an anti-social and impolite way. The
men’s norms are those of a masculine mateship
culture which requires displays of masculine
fearlessness and power. These displays commonly
manifest themselves in the form of abuse and
challenges. Members of each group are well aware
of their own group’s norms. But Pilkington doubts
whether they are aware of the norms of the other
group. These differing models of supportive
interaction then can be one source of
miscommunication between the sexes.
D. Importance of Talk among Women
In their paper (in Coates, 1998) , Fern L.
Johnson and Elizabeth J. Aries focus on the talk of
women friends because their research
demonstrates that talk is the substance of women’s
friendship. By highlighting and featuring talk as
the central feature of women’s friendship, they
attempt to contribute to the more general trend of
feminist scholars to reconceptualize women’s
experience in terms that grow from and validly
capture their experience. The focus of their paper
is on providing a clearer understanding of the
nature of female friendship and, in particular, the
function of talk in this relationship.
Johnson and Aries argue that females engage
in more intimate, one-to-one relationships
involving mutual exploration, understanding and
security, while males form friendships in groups,
showing less concern for the relational aspects of
friendship and putting more stress on activities.
One of the most salient dimensions of this

difference is what men and women talk about, with
their same-sex friends. Females are more self-
disclosing to same-sex friends and, in particular,
on intimate topics. Male friends, on the other
hand, discuss sports more frequently.
Adult women also report greater depth of
discussion with their female friends about personal
problems, family activities, and reminiscences
about the past. Men report greater depth in
conversations with the same-sex close friends
about the topics of work and sports. The major
contrast between male friendships and female
friendships appears to grow from different
orientations toward close relationships. Male
friendships involve more communication about
matters peripheral to the self. They engage more in
sociability than in intimacy. Female friendships
encompass personal identities, intimacy, and the
immediacy of daily life.
Johnson and Aries conduct a depth interview
study with a small sample of men and women from
a New England City. But in their paper they report
on the interviews of 20 white women ranging in
age from 27 to 58 years. All but one woman
completed high school. 75% of the women have
engaged at some time in full- or part-time work
outside the home. In terms of marital status, 15%
are currently married, two are widowed, one is
divorced, and two are single. All but three women
have children. For those women who are or have
been married, the husband’s occupational category
ranges from blue-collar to professional. Johnson
and Aries interview all participants in their homes
at their convenience. The interviews are audio
recorded and range in length from 45 to 90
minutes. Each woman first is asked a number of
questions about one relationship with a woman she
defines as a close friend.
Based on their analysis of the interviews,
Johnson and Aries state that for some women, the
close friend is a person known for only a year or
two, but for others, the relationship has been going

for 20 to 30 years. Half of these participants report
that their close friends live nearby. 75% say that
they carry out their relationships through daily or
weekly visits and phone conversations.
Johnson and Aries also find some common
characteristics to the friendships. First, all but one
of the women report substantial dyadic contact
with a close friend. Second, the women usually see
each other at each other’s homes. Here they often
enjoy a cup of coffee or tea and some conversation.
Third, half of these women engage in activities
together such as sewing, knitting, baking, canning,
crafts, and in one case, research. Finally, Johnson
and Aries find that for more than half of the
women, there is an ongoing exchange for favors
and services between friends.
What emerges from the women’s reports is
the centrality of talk in all their contacts.
Situations in which these women meet are
occasions for conversation. The women that
Johnson and Aries interview isolate talk as the
most important aspect of the relationship. They
talk about the significant relationships in their
lives. They engage in very personal talk, sharing
their deepest feelings, problems, concerns, things
they often can discuss with no one else.
Johnson and Aries point out several themes
that emerge from the descriptions of talk between
female friends. First, friends listen to one another
and do so in a non-critical fashion. This
willingness of a close friend to listen non-critically
appears to be the key to a second theme in the
descriptions of talk. Almost all of the women speak
of the support they get from their close friends. As
a result of this kind of talk, the close friends
enhance each other’s feelings self-worth. The
conversations give life and validity to aspects of
the self that cannot be shared with other people. In
this way, the conversations between close friends
establish what Johnson and Aries see as a theme of
exclusiveness.

Half of the married women note that the type
of communication they engage in with their close
friends is not something they can experience with
their husbands. Husbands have a difficult time
listening to or understanding what is being said or
responding appropriately. A final theme captures
the importance of the close friend in the process of
self-discovery and personal growth.
In sum, Johnson and Aries find consistent
evidence in their interview data that talk creates
from female friends an elaborate and on-going
mosaic of non-critical listening, mutual support,
enhancement of self worth, relationship
exclusiveness, and personal growth and self-
discovery. Through extensive talk about the most
routine of daily activities to the most private of
personal problems and crises, women friends
establish connections with one another that
function significantly in their lives.
Jennifer Coates (in Givon, 1997) states that
the most noticeable about women’s friendly
conversation is that the construction of talk is a
joint effort. She then proposes two characteristics
of women’s talk: jointly constructed utterances
and overlapping speech. In her study, Coates
demonstrates jointly constructed utterances as a
result of the way speakers produce part of an
utterance together. A variant of the pattern occurs
where two speakers produce part of an utterance
together. From time to time the utterances will be
incomplete since speakers know that others can
anticipate what is to come, and others may choose
not to complete the utterance verbally but instead
may choose to indicate that they understand by
nodding or smiling or saying yes.
Jointly constructed talk arises in
conversation where speakers are struggling to find
the right words. As another important feature of
women friends’ talk, overlapping speech occurs
when women friends combine as speakers so that
two or more voices may contribute to talk at the
same time. This kind of overlapping speech is not

seen as competitive, as a way of grabbing turns,
because the various contribution to talk are on the
same theme. Overlapping speech occurs when two
speakers say the same thing but at slightly
different times. It also occurs when two speakers
complete an utterance simultaneously but
complete it differently (with different words, but
saying the same thing). A slightly different kind of
overlapping speech occurs when co-participants
ask questions while another participant is
speaking. Overlapping speech also results when
friends comment on what the other is saying.
Coates (in Givon, 1997) further argues that
jointly constructed utterances and overlapping
speech are both classic components of a
collaborative floor. Collaborative floors typically
involve shorter turns, much more overlapping
speech, more repetition, and more joking and
teasing. Even though the collaborative floor
involves more or less of something which is
regularly found in a single floor, the collaborative
floor is radically different from the singly-
developed floor because the collaborative floor is a
shared space, and therefore what is said is
construed as being the voice of the group rather
than of the individual.
Coates states that in a collaborative floor
speakers can construct talk by rounding off one
point while moving on to a new one, at the same
time (in Givon, 1997). Speakers are keenly aware of
each other’s contributions, and all utterances
relate to the same topic, with particular points
being jointly developed. Women friends involved
in a collaborative floor explicitly welcome each
others’ contributions to talk. When speakers
participate in a collaborative floor and when the
topic under discussion is well known to both
speakers, then who says what is unimportant. All
that matters is that what is to be said gets said.
Another significant part of a collaborative
floor that Coates (in Givon, 1997) proposes is the
use of minimal responses. This is due to the fact

that once the floor is construed as occupied by all
speakers at all times, speakers have an obligation
to signal their continued presence in and
acceptance of the shared floor. So, minimal
responses signal that speakers are present and
involved. When talk is informal and collaborative
floor is established, then minimal responses say: ‘I
am here, this is my floor too, and I am
participating in the shared construction of talk.’ In
conversation, the telling of an anecdote often
functions to introduce a new topic; the utterance
of minimal responses signals listeners’ acceptance
of the new topic. Through signaling the active
participation of all participants in the
conversation, minimal responses play a significant
role in the collaborative construction of text and of
the maintenance of a collaborative floor.
According to Coates (in Givon, 1997),
laughter is also a significant component in the talk
of women friends and plays a special role in the
construction of a collaborative floor. It occurs in
response to a variety of different aspects of talk. It
can signal amusement, surprise, horror, sympathy,
or catharsis. It allows participants to signal their
continued involvement in what is being said, and
their continued presence in the collaborative floor.
It allows people to signal their presence frequently,
while not committing them to speak all the time.
If talk is considered as ‘play’, Coates (Givon,
1997) argues that women’s melding talk takes the
shape it does precisely because it is play. The main
goal of talk-as-play is the construction and
maintenance of good social relations, not the
exchange of information (though this will also be
one of the functions of friendly talk, as there is in
an informational component to all interaction).
The second goal of talk-as-play is that participants
should enjoy themselves. The fun of talk arises as
much as from how things are said as from what is
said.

CHAPTER III
CONVERSATIONAL
ANALYSIS AND GOSSIP
A. Conversational Analysis
In their article, Conversation: An Approach to
the Study of Social Action as Sense Making Practices
(in van Dijk, 1997), Pomerantz and Fehr state that
Conversational Analysis (CA) originated in the mid
1960s within sociology in the work of Harvey
Sacks and his colleagues. Sacks began to
investigate the possibility of an empirically based,
naturalistic, descriptive study of human conduct.
In 1963 Sacks became a fellow at the Los Angeles
Suicide Prevention Center. Audio recordings and

transcriptions of telephone calls were routinely
made in this center.
These recordings provided a resource for the
examination of the details of interactional conduct.
Based on these materials, two noticings formed the
basis of the initial working conversational analysis.
One dealt with the terms telephone callers used to
refer to and describe themselves and others. The
other dealt with the sequential placement of
utterances by the parties to the calls. As time went
on, the interest in and investigation of sequential
organization took precedence over categorization
in the work of conversation analysts.
According to Pomerantz and Fehr,
conversation analysts are concerned with conduct
or action in both informal talk in everyday social
settings and formal talk in institutional contexts.
From the beginning the conversational analysts
have been interested in both the verbal and the
paralinguistic features of talk, that is sound
quality, pauses, gaps, restarts, etc. Moreover, a
number of researchers have expanded the scope of
CA to include the visually available features of
conduct, that is appropriate orientation, hand-arm
gestures, posture, etc. The main analytic objective
is to illuminate how actions, events, objects, etc.,
are produced and understood. The analytic
approach of CA is not limited to an explanation of
talk alone but is open to analyses of how conduct,
practice, or praxis, in whatever form, is
accomplished.
CA has similarities to other approaches. One
similarity is the explanation of how conduct is
produced and recognized as intelligible and
sensible. However, CA may be differentiated from
these various perspectives by its particular
approach to certain analytic issues. First, CA
attempts to explain the relevances of the parties to
an interaction. Second, CA gives particular
attention to the details of the temporal
organization of and the various interactional
contingencies that arise in the unfolding

development of action and interaction. The sense
or intelligibility of an action is provided for by its
location in an ongoing series of actions. Third, CA
treats rules as situationally invoked standards that
are a part of the activity they seek to explain.
Pomerantz and Fehr further argue that CA
treats the conduct of everyday life as sensible, as
meaningful, and as produced to be such. It is
assumed that meaningful conduct is produced and
understood based on shared procedures or
methods. It is a routine feature of everyday life
that people interact and coordinate their conduct
with others. CA’s goal is to explain the shared
methods interactants use to produce and recognize
their own and other people’s conduct.
In Pomerantz and Fehr’s view, the sense or
meaning of this conduct thoroughly depends upon
the context of its production in two ways. One
sense of context involves the temporal
organization of actions and interaction. What an
interactant contributes is shaped by what was just
said or done and is understood in relation to the
prior. Another sense of context conduct depends
upon involves the knowledge of the type of
occasion, who is interacting with whom, where and
when. Furthermore, conversation analysts
maintain not only that the identifications of who,
what, where, etc., are part of producing and
understanding conduct but that conduct helps to
constitute the identities of the participants, the
type of occasion, etc., as they are.
Pomerantz and Fehr propose that CA studies
any sort of interaction. In each case, the interest is
explaining the methods or procedures people
employ to make sense and be understood by
others. Conversation analysts strongly prefer to
work from recordings of conduct for a number of
reasons. First, certain features of the details of
actions in interaction are not recoverable in any
other way. Second, a recording makes it possible to
play and replay the interaction. Third, a recording
makes it possible to check a particular analysis

against the materials in all their detail. Finally, a
recording makes it possible to return to an
interaction with new analytic interests. In cases
where the interactants are co-present, it is
preferable to have a videotaped recording so that
at least some of the conduct visually available to
the interacting parties also is available for review
by the analyst. Conversation analysts generally
transcribe their tapes using transcript conventions
developed and elaborated by Gail Jefferson. These
conventions remind the reader of the details of the
conduct that can be heard or seen on tape. The
best way to develop analysis is to use both a tape
and a transcript.
Conversation analysts use different
approaches in developing analyses. Pomerantz and
Fehr offer five questions to ask or areas to
consider to help people get started in their
analyses.
1. Select a sequence
Identify the sequence which is interesting.
Look for identifiable boundaries. For the start of
the sequence, locate the turn in which one of the
participants initiates an action and/or topic that
is taken up and responded to by co-participants.
For the end of the sequence, follow through the
interaction until the place in which the
participants are no longer specifically
responding to the prior action and/or topic is
located.
2. Characterize the action in the sequence
Actions are central to the way that
participants produce and understand conduct,
and they are a fundamental part of the
meaningfulness of conduct. One identifies
actions, by answering the question, “What is
this participant doing in this turn?” For each
turn in the sequence under study, characterize
the action or actions that the interactant
performs. Consider the relationship between the
actions. Most actions are offered with an

expectation of a response and/or as a response
to a prior action.
3. Consider how the speakers’ packaging of
actions, including their selections of reference
terms, provides for certain understandings of
the actions performed and the matters talked
about.
Consider the options for the recipient that
are set up by that packaging. Packaging means
the ways in which speakers form and deliver
actions. On actual occasions of interaction,
speakers package the actions that they perform
in particular ways. Conversation analysts often
say that speakers select the packages,
formulations, or formats that they use. Analysts
use the metaphor “the speaker selects …” as a
shorthand way of reminding themselves to
consider alternative items in a class, not
necessarily as an accurate description of the
actors’ decision making process. For a given
action, consider how the speaker forms it up and
delivers it. Consider the understandings that are
tied to the packaging that the speaker uses in
relation to alternatives that might be used but
are not on this occasion. Also, consider the
options that the packaging the speaker uses
provides for the recipient.
4. Consider how the timing and taking of turns
provide for certain understandings of the
actions and the matters talked about.
For each turn in the sequence, describe
how the speaker obtains the turn, the timing of
the initiation of the turn, the termination of the
turn, and whether the speaker selects a next
speaker.
5. Consider how the ways the actions are
accomplished implicate certain identities, roles
and/or relationships for the interactants.
What rights, obligations, and expectations
between the parties may be gleaned from the
discourse? Are the ways that these interactants
talk and act appropriate across a wide range of

relationships, roles, statuses, etc. or do they
implicate particular relationships, roles,
statuses? Do the ways that the speakers refer to
persons, objects, places, activities, etc. implicate
particular identities and/or relationships
between them? Do the ways they package their
actions implicate particular identities, roles,
and/or relationships? Do the ways that the
interactants take their turns (or decline to)
implicate particular identities, roles, and/or
relationships?
B. Gossip
As quoted by Harlow and Jensen
(http://course1.winona.edu/pjohnson/gender/jones
.htm), Deborah Jones addresses gossip among
women based on her personal observations and on
other women’s writings on gossip between women
in her article, Gossip: Notes on Women’s Oral
Culture, which was written in 1980. The article
logically and clearly discusses the definition, the
elements, and the functions of gossip. The content
of the article is representative of white, English-
speaking women.
According to Oxford Advanced Learner’s
Dictionary, gossip is a casual talk about the affairs
of other people, typically including rumor and
critical comments. In Jones’ article, gossip is
defined as a specific way of talking between
women and important for the values, morals, and
unity of women as a social group. She labels all
discussions by women as gossip. Gossip normally
involves the use of tag questions when talking
about another person’s actions or behavior.
Women tend to develop thoughts or questions
and start to make judgments when sharing
information about a situation or person. The
settings where gossip occurs are domestic: the
home, hairdresser, and supermarket. The topics of
gossip reflect upon the roles women are expected
to maintain in the society, such as wife, girlfriend,
and mother. Topics focus on housework, child

rearing, appearance, and the wifely role as
psychological expertise.
Jones claims that there are four different
functions of gossip: house talk, scandal, bitching,
and chatting. Each type has specific topics of
discussion. House talk is the exchange of
information on concrete tasks and relationships,
such as sharing of recipes, household hints, and
dress patterns, raising a child effectively, finding,
and maintaining a husband. Scandal is about
judging the behavior of others. Bitching is the
action of attacking men, and concentrates on
personal and specific complaints of the inferior
status and restricted role of women. Chatting, the
final and most intimate function, is a mutual
conversation concerning one’s feelings, lifestyle,
and beliefs.
In the research presented in her paper, Gossip
Revisited: Language in All-Female Groups (in Coates
and Cameron, 1988), Jennifer Coates analyzes a
corpus of conversation between women friends,
which runs for 135 minutes. The approached used
in her work is qualitative. Her work aims to see
whether evidence supports general claims
proposed by Deborah Jones in her paper, Gossip:
Notes on Women’s Oral Culture, to establish what
formal features are typical of all-women discourse,
and to explore the notion of co-operativeness.
1. Data
In her research Coates records a group of
women friends over a period of nine months
during 1983-1984. These women are an
established group that meets once a fortnight at
each other’s house in the evening to talk. Coates
has belonged to this group since 1975, when it
began to meet, and records her friends each time
it is her turn to have the group to her house
during the period.
2. Setting
Setting is the term used to cover both time
and place. In her research, Coates finds that the
length of time is not a salient feature of gossip.

The place for the conversations she records is
the living room of her home in Birkenhead,
Merseyside. Her friends sit on the sofas or on
the floor around the gas fire, drinking beer.
Sessions last three hours or more, starting at
about 9.00 in the evening.
3. Participants
The members of the women group Coates
records are white, middle class, aged in their
late 30s and early 40s. The raison d’être of the
group formed in 1975 has shifted gradually over
the years: it initially provided a support network
for mothers with young children; it then
encouraged these women in their struggle to
establish a career in their middle age.
4. Topic
The conversations Coates records cover a
wide range of topics, from discussions of
television programs to the ones about mothers’
funerals and child abuse. According to her, it
seems to be typical of all women groups that
they discuss people and feelings.
5. Functions
Coates argues that the linguistic forms
which characterize women’s interaction can be
explained in terms of functions they serve. She
uses the term function in relation to the goals of
all-woman interaction. According to her, all-
woman conversation, like most informal
interaction between equals, has as its chief goal
the maintenance of good social relationships. In
her work, Coates hopes to show that the formal
features which are typical of women’s language
in all-female groups can be explained by direct
reference to the functions of such interaction,
that is the establishment and maintenance of
social relationships, the reaffirming and
strengthening of friendship.
6. Formal Features
There are four aspects of the interactional
pattern found in the all-female conversation

Coates records. She examines topic
development, minimal responses, simultaneous
speech, and epistemic modality as markers of
co-operative style.
a. Topic Development
Based on the previous researches,
women are said to build on each other’s
contributions, preferring continuity to
discontinuity, and topic shift is supposed to
occur gradually. Consequently, the discussion
of a single topic can last for some time.
Based on her work, Coates finds that
the telling of anecdotes is a common way of
introducing a new topic in conversations,
sometimes one anecdote is sufficient,
sometimes more than one occurs. What
characterizes these introductory sections and
sets them off from the central development
section is that they are monologues: the
telling of a story gives the speaker unusual
rights to speak. Discussion sections, where
speakers evaluate the topic, are multiparty in
nature. Often several speakers speak at once,
and speaker turns tend to be brief.
Discussion sections are complex. At
one level, individual speakers are dealing
with their own feelings about the topic under
discussion. These speakers are in effect
asking for support from the group. Even
though their positions are to some extent
mutually exclusive; they need to air their
feelings in order to deal with them. At
another level, speakers are debating more
general points. The general and personal are
intertwined; crucially, speakers work together
to sort out what they feel. The discussion
section is long. Topic shift is normally
gradual rather than abrupt. At all events,
Coates’ data suggest that women do build
progressively on each other’s contributions,
that topics are developed jointly, and that

shifts between topics are gradual rather than
abrupt.
b. Minimal Responses
Research on the use of minimal
responses is unanimous in showing that
women use them more than men. This
research is, however, mainly concerned with
mixed interaction. In her data, Coates shows
that the use of minimal responses also
characterizes linguistic interaction between
women who are friends and equals.
Minimal responses are used in two
different ways in the women’s conversation
Coates records. In the interaction-focused
sections, they are used to support the speaker
and to indicate the listener’s active attention.
The responses are well placed: they are
mostly timed to come at the end of an
information unit. The speaker’s flow is not
interrupted. These minimal responses signal
the listener’s active participation in the
conversation; that is, they are another aspect
of the way text is jointly produced.
In the narrative or more information-
focused sections of the conversation, minimal
responses seem to have another meaning.
They signal agreement among participants
that a particular stage of conversation has
been reached. Based on her data, Coates
further argues that it is not just the presence
of minimal responses at the end but also their
absence during the course of an anecdote or
summary, which demonstrates the sensitivity
of participants to the norms of interaction:
speakers recognize different types of talk and
use minimal responses appropriately.
c. Simultaneous Speech
Based on her data, Coates states that
for much of the time (typically in discussion
sections) more than one speaker speaks at a
time. There are seven types of simultaneous
speech found in her data. She argues that it is

not the case in the conversations she has
recorded that where more than one speaker
speaks this normally represents an attempt to
infringe the current speaker’s right to a turn.
- Type I, where more than one speaker starts
at the same time, is trivial.
- Type II and III are more serious. Type II is
where speaker B self-selects at transition
place (TRP), i.e. the end of a ‘unit type’
such as a phrase or clause, speaker A
carries on, B stops. Type III is where
speaker B self-selects at TRP, speaker A
tails off. The personal style of these
speakers who typically tail off rather than
finish their turns crisply results from their
expectation that others know what they
mean (so they do not need to say it in full)
and that they invite overlap by their habit
of ending turns with utterances which
decrease gradually before coming to the
end, both syntactically and prosodically.
Such tailing-off turns are not unfinished.
- Type IV is where speaker B completes
speaker A’s utterance.
- Type IV simultaneous speech is closely
related to the above: if a speaker tails off,
then it is open to other participants to
complete the utterance. In this case there
is no overlap, but often speakers’
completion of each others’ utterances
results in simultaneous speech.
- Type V is where speaker B asks a question
or comments while speaker A is speaking.
Type V is a very common type of
simultaneous speech: it involves one of the
co-participants asking the speaker a
question, or commenting on what the
speaker is saying, during the speaker’s
turn. One could describe this phenomenon
as a relation of the minimal response: the
questions or comments function as a sign

of active listenership and do not threaten
the current speaker’s turn. Speakers in fact
acknowledge such questions/comments
while continuing to hold the floor.
Comments occur more frequently than
questions and normally do not threaten a
speaker’s turn.
- Occasionally comments of this kind
coincide with the current speaker stopping
speaking or Type VI simultaneous speech.
This kind of simultaneous speech is where
speaker B comments, speaker A stops
speaking.
- The final type of simultaneous speech, type
VII, involves two or more speakers
speaking at once; for this type it is not
possible to say one speaker has the floor
and the other is merely interjecting a
comment.
Coates concludes that in all
conversations she records there is no sense of
competition or vying for turns. The feel of the
conversation is that all the participants are
familiar with each other and with the way the
interaction is constructed. It is very much a
joint effort, with individual speakers
concerned to contribute to a jointly
negotiated whole. According to her, the term
interruption is hardly ever appropriate as a
description of instances of simultaneous
speech which occur in gossip. In private
conversation between equals, where the chief
goal of interaction is the maintenance of good
social relationships, then the participation of
more than one speaker is iconic of joint
activity: to participate in conversation with
other speakers. The simultaneous speech
given in her data illustrates the way in which
women speakers work together to produce
shared meanings.

d. Epistemic Modality
Epistemic modal forms are defined
semantically as those linguistic forms which
are used to indicate the speaker’s confidence
or lack of confidence in the truth of the
proposition expressed in the utterance.
Lexical items such as perhaps, I think, sort of,
probably as well as certain prosodic and
paralinguistic features are used in English to
express epistemic modality. Such forms are
used by speakers not just to indicate their
lack of commitment to the truth of
propositions but also to hedge assertions in
order to protect both their own and
addressees’ face.
Based on her data, Coates proposes
that women in single-sex groups exploit these
forms more than men. They use them to
mitigate the force of an utterance in order to
respect addressees’ face needs. Such forms
also protect the speaker’s face. Where
sensitive topics are discussed, epistemic
modal forms are used frequently. In the
women’s conversation she records, topics are
related to people and feelings.
Coates further argues that women also
use these forms to facilitate open discussion.
An underlying rule of conversation between
equals, where the exchange of information is
not a priority, is do not come into open
disagreement with other participants.
Epistemic modal forms can be used to invite
others to speak, a function fulfilled by the tag
question.
Based on the analysis of the tag
questions used in the conversations she
records, Coates shows that the vast majority
are addressee-oriented rather than speaker-
oriented. Addressee-oriented tags can be used
either to soften the force or a negatively
affective utterance or to facilitate interaction.
Facilitative tags are used to facilitate the

participation of others; they invite them into
the discourse. In her data, tag questions occur
in mid-utterance, and the speakers seem to
expect no verbal response (or at most a
minimal response). Most of the other
facilitative tags appear as comments by active
listeners. All of them involve falling
intonation and all expect the answer ‘yes’.
According to Coates, these women
conversationalists seem to use these tags to
check the taken-for-grantedness of what is
being said. Paralinguistic cues and sometimes
minimal responses signal to the speaker that
what she is saying has the support of the
group. She argues that these tags are not only
addressee-oriented, in the normal sense of
facilitative, but that they also function,
sometimes simultaneously, to mark the
speaker’s monitoring of the progress of the
conversation.
e. Co-operativeness
Coates states that the notion of co-
operativeness in the literature on women’s
language refers to a particular type of
conversation, where speakers work together
to produce shared meanings. At the heart of
co-operativeness is a view of speakers
collaborating in the production of text: the
group takes precedence over the individual.
She argues that her data support the idea that
women’s language is co-operative and that
formal features described in her data analysis
function as collaborative devices.
In her data Coates demonstrates that
topics develop slowly and gradually because
participants build on each others’
contributions and jointly arrive at a
consensus. Both minimal responses and
epistemic modal forms function as enabling
devices. Minimal responses are used to signal
participants’ active listenership and support
for the current speaker and to mark their

recognition of different stages of
conversational development. Epistemic modal
forms are used to respect the face needs of all
participants, to negotiate sensitive topics, and
to encourage the participation of others.
Simultaneous speech occurs in such
discourse in various forms. Co-
conversationalists ask questions or make
comments which signal active listenership
and which help to produce joint text.
Simultaneous speech also occurs when
speakers complete each others’ utterances.
Moreover, simultaneous speech occurs most
commonly because in discussion speakers
prefer the affirmation of collaborative talk to
the giving of the floor to one speaker.
CHAPTER IV
GOSSIP AMONG FEMALE
FRIENDS: COOPERATIVE
OR COMPETITIVE?
This chapter discusses the analysis of the data

collected from the first season of the US TV series,
Sex and the City, and the findings of the research.
There are 28 conversations among women friends,
which are gathered from the 12 episodes of this
popular TV series. However, there are only 16
conversations which are considered gossips among
women friends. Each data contains a conversation
occurring among at least three participants. All of the
data are then analyzed based on the setting,

participants, topic, formal features, and co-
operativeness. The analysis is based on the way
Jennifer Coates analyzed the data in her research as
presented in her paper, Gossip Revisited: Language in
All-Female Groups (in Coates and Cameron, 1988).
Below are the detailed explanation and examples
of data analysis.
1. Setting
Based on the data collected in this research,
most of the conversations happen in the apartment
belonging to one of the participants, a restaurant,
or bar. Some other conversations occur in a shop, a
hotel room, or during the participants’ ride in a
taxi. One conversation even takes place in the
ladies’ room.
2. Participants
The members of group that the researcher
analyzes in this US TV series, Sex and the City, are
single, white, middle class women, aged in their
mid 30s and early 40s. They are Carrie Bradshaw
(acted by Sarah Jessica Parker), who works as a
columnist in a New York newspaper; Charlotte
York (acted by Kristin Davis), who is an art dealer;
Miranda Hobbes (acted by Cynthia Nixon), who
works as a corporate lawyer; and Samantha Jones
(acted by Kim Cattrall), who is a public relations
executive. They have been friends for a long time,
and all live on their own in New York City, USA.
3. Topic
The conversations in the data taken from this
US TV series discuss a wide range of topics, from
the ones about being single women, falling in love,
dating, getting married and having babies to the
ones about sex.
4. Functions
In the conversations found in the data source
in this research, the participants of the
conversations usually begin the conversations by
making comments, asking for or stating their
opinions about something or talking about their
experiences and feelings, and the other members of
the group join in the conversations by making their

own comments or offering their opinions,
experiences, or feelings, about the same thing. The
conversations usually end with the participants
making statements related to the topic being
discussed. In these conversations the participants
share what they think, undergo, or feel with their
friends and take turns in asking for, stating their
opinions, or making comments about it.
5. Formal Features
In her research Coates examines four aspects
of the interactional pattern found in the all-female
conversation, namely topic development, minimal
responses, simultaneous speech, and epistemic
modality as markers of co-operative style (in
Coates and Cameron, 1988). Therefore, the
conversations found in the 12 episodes of the first
season of Sex and the City TV series are analyzed
based on these four aspects: topic development,
minimal responses, simultaneous speech, and
epistemic modality.
6. Topic Development
Based on the review of related literature,
women are said to develop topics progressively and
build on each others’ contributions, preferring
continuity to discontinuity, and topic shift occurs
gradually. In her research, Coates examines the
nature of topic development in all female
conversations. She describes the pattern of topic
development by using musical terms. In the
material Coates has transcribed, the typical pattern
of the topic development is as follows: exposition
in which a participant of the conversation
introduces the topic by telling an anecdote,
another participant follows by telling another
anecdote on the same theme, and another
participant tells another anecdote about the same
theme, which leads into, development in which the
general discussion occurs, recapitulation in which
a participant summarizes the conversation, and
coda in which a participant has the last word in
the conversation (in Coates and Cameron, 1988).

In this research conducted on 16 conversations
which are taken from Sex and the City TV Series and
which are considered gossip, there are six patterns
found. All of these conversations have exposition,
development, and coda. However, they are different
in the way the participants introduce the topics and
end the conversations.
In the first pattern of the conversations, one
participant introduces the topic by asking a question,
other participants develop the topic into a discussion,
and later another participant ends the conversation
by giving a statement. The following conversation,
conversation 1 of episode 1 of season 1 of the Sex and
the City TV Series, is an example of conversations
belonging to this pattern. This conversation takes
place in a restaurant. There are four participants in
this conversation: Carrie Bradshaw (Carrie),
Charlotte York (Charlotte), Miranda Hobbes
(Miranda), and Samantha Jones (Samantha). The
conversation is about the difference of sexual
behavior between women and men.
MIRANDA: you were saying?
SAMANTHA: look/you’re a successful
saleswoman in this city/ you have
two choices/ you can bang your
head against the wall and try/
and find a relationship/ or you
can say SCREW EM/ and just go
out and have sex like a man/
CARRIE: you mean with dildos?
SAMANTHA: noooo/I mean without feeling/
SAMANTHA: remember that guy I was going
out with? oh god/ what was his
name? Drew?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CARRIE: Drew/
CHARLOTTE: Drew/
MIRANDA: Drew/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CARRIE: Drew/ the sex god/

SAMANTHA: right/ well/ afterwards/ I didn’t
feel a thing/ it was like/ hey
babe/ gotta go/ catch ya later/
and I completely forgot about
him after that/
CARRIE: but are you sure/ that isn’t just
because he didn’t call you?
SAMANTHA: sweetheart/ this is the first time/
in the history of Manhattan/ that
women have had as much money
and power as men/ plus the equal
luxury of treating men like sex
objects/
MIRANDA: yeah/ except men in this city fail
on both counts/ I mean/ they
don’t wanna be in a relationship
with you/ but as soon as you only
want them for sex/ they don’t
like it/ all of a sudden/ they can’t
perform the way they’re supposed
to/
SAMANTHA: that’s when you dump them/
In this introductory part of the

conversation, Miranda asks about
what Samantha has said. Samantha
then answers and states her opinion.
By answering Miranda’s questions,
Samantha introduces the topic that
successful women have two choices:
to try hard to find a relationship or
just go out and have sex like men.
Carrie then asks for clarification
about what Samantha means by
having sex like men, and Samantha
then explains. Carrie asks another
question to make sure whether
Samantha really means what she has
just said. As soon as Samantha has
finished Carrie’s second question,
Miranda offers her opinion about the
topic. By asking and answering

questions as well as giving opinions,
all of the participants of the
conversation have agreed to accept
the topic and begin the discussion
about it.
CARRIE: come on ladies/ are we really that
cynical? what about romance?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
SAMANTHA: ehhhh who needs it?
CHARLOTTE: yeah/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
MIRANDA: it’s like that guy Jeremiah/ the
poet/ I mean/ the sex was
incredible/ but then he wanted to
read me his poetry/ and go out to
dinner/ and the whole chat bit/
and I’m like let’s not even go
there/
CHARLOTTE: what are you saying? are you
saying that/ you’re just going to
give up on love?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CARRIE: noooo/
MIRANDA: noooo/
SAMANTHA: noooo/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARLOTTE: that’s just sick/
CARRIE: you believe me/ the right guy
comes along/ and you two right
here/ the whole thing/ right out
the window/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARLOTTE: that’s right/
MIRANDA: I don’t think so/
SAMANTHA: listen to me/
-------------------------------------------------------------------
SAMANTHA: the right guy is an illusion/ you
don’t understand that/ you can’t
start living your life/
In this part of the discussion, all

of the participants join in the

discussion and evaluate the topic. The
discussion section is multiparty in
nature. The participants agree and
disagree with each other’s opinions.
At some points of this discussion, as
soon as one participant has finished
asking a question or stating her
opinion, the other participants
simultaneously answer and give their
supporting as well as opposing
opinions. This can be shown when
Carrie asks whether they are really
cynical about men and whether they
still need romance in their
relationship. Samantha and Charlotte
answer Carrie’s question at the same
time.
Samantha asks another
question implying that she does not
need romance in her relationship,
while Charlotte gives a short
supporting answer that romance is
needed in a relationship. It can also
be demonstrated when Charlotte asks
a question about whether the others
are just going to give up on love.
Simultaneously, the others answer,
“No.” It can also be seen when Carrie
states her opinion that Samantha and
Miranda will forget their statement
that they just need men for sex when
they meet the right men. As soon as
Carrie has finished her statement,
Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha
concurrently respond. Charlotte
agrees with Carrie’s opinion, Miranda
disagrees, and Samantha asks for the
others’ attention and continues to
state her opinion that the right man is
an illusion. When Carrie asks
Samantha whether it is possible for
women to have sex like men,

Samantha answers by referring to a
movie.
CARRIE: so you think/ it’s really possible
to pull off this whole/ women
having sex like men thing?
SAMANTHA: you’re forgetting The Last
Seduction/
CARRIE: you’re obsessed with that movie/
MIRANDA: okay/ Linda Fiorentino fucking
that guy up/ against the chain
link fence/
SAMANTHA: and never having one of those/ oh
my god/ what have I done
epiphanies/
CHARLOTTE: I hated that movie/
In this part of the discussion,
the topic shifts to the one about the
movie which Samantha thinks shows
a woman having sex like men and not
regretting it. The other participants
respond to Samantha’s statement and
by then accept this topic of
discussion. Carrie states that
Samantha is obsessed with the movie,
while Miranda gives a description of
what the actress does in the movie.
The discussion about this topic is
short. The discussion ends when
Charlotte gives her opinion about the
movie: she hates it. Charlotte’s
statement also ends the conversation.
In the second pattern of the
conversations, a participant begins
the conversation and introduces a
topic by stating her opinion, other
participants then respond to it and
develop the topic into a discussion,
and another participant later ends the
conversation. The following
conversation, conversation 2 of
episode 2 entitled Models and Mortals,
is an example of the conversations

having this pattern. The conversation
happens when all of the characters of
this popular TV series: Carrie,
Charlotte, Miranda, and Samantha get
together to have dinner at Carrie’s
apartment. They talk about beauty
and models while preparing and
enjoying their dinner.
MIRANDA: they're stupid/ and lazy/ and
should be shot on sight/
SAMANTHA: I've been out with a lot of guys/
and they say I am just as
beautiful as a model/ but I work
for a living/I mean/ I'm like/
well/ I'm like a model/ who’s
taken the high road/
MIRANDA: the advantages given to models/
and to beautiful women in
general/ are so unfair/ it makes
me puke/
SAMANTHA: sweetheart/ you are so cute/
MIRANDA: cute doesn’t cut it in this town/
what’s cute compared to
supermodel?
CHARLOTTE: they have this/ distant sexy look/
In this beginning part of the

conversation, Miranda introduces the
topic by offering her opinion about
models. In her opinion, models are
stupid and lazy and should therefore
be killed. Samantha responds to her
opinion and tells her experience going
out with a lot of men who tell her
that she looks like a model. In the
greater part of this beginning section
of the conversation, Miranda and
Samantha exchange opinions about
models. When Charlotte offers her
opinion, at this point the participants
of the conversation have clearly

established what topic is under
discussion.
MIRANDA: that’s not sexy/ that’s starvation/

SAMANTHA: that’s starvation in the best
restaurants/
MIRANDA: yeah/ what I wanna know is/
when did all the men get together
and decide/ that they would only
get it up/ for giraffes with big
breasts?
(Samantha laughs)
CHARLOTTE: in some cultures/ heavy women
with mustaches/ are considered
beautiful/
SAMANTHA: and you're looking at me/ while
you're saying that?
MIRANDA: we should just admit/ that we live
in a culture that promotes
impossible standards of beauty/
CHARLOTTE: yeah/ except/ men think they're
possible/
MIRANDA: yeah/
In the part of discussion above,

Miranda and Charlotte take turns in
offering their opinions about models
and their beauty, while Samantha
only make comments on her friends’
opinions. Miranda thinks that models
look sexy because they starve
themselves and wonder why men fall
head over heels for models who have
long legs and big breasts. Miranda
argues that they live in a culture that
promotes impossible standards of
beauty. Charlotte thinks that
different cultures have different
views about beauty, agrees that their
culture encourages impossible
standards of beauty, but argues that

men in their culture think that these
standards of beauty are possible. In
the next part of the discussion, the
topic of the conversation then
changes.
CHARLOTTE: you know/ no matter how good I

feel about myself/ if I see Christy
Turlington/ I just wanna give up/
MIRANDA: I just wanna force feed her lard/
but that’s the difference between
you and me/
(All laugh)
CARRIE: what are you talking about? look
at you two/ you're beautiful/
CHARLOTTE: ooooh/ I hate my thighs/
MIRANDA: oh/ come on/
CHARLOTTE: I can't even open a magazine
without thinking/ thighs thighs,
thighs/
MIRANDA: well/ I'll take your thighs and
raise you a chin/
CARRIE: I’ll take you a chin/ and raise you
a/ <pointing at her nose>
(All look at Samantha expectantly)
SAMANTHA: what?
CARRIE: come on/
SAMANTHA: I happen to love the way I look/
MIRANDA: you should/ you paid enough for
it/
(Miranda, Carrie and Charlotte all laugh)
SAMANTHA: hey/ I resent that/ I do not
believe in plastic surgery/ well/
not yet/
CARRIE: I find it fascinating/ that four
beautiful flesh and blood women
could be intimidated by some
unreal fantasy/ I mean/ look/
look at this/ <pulling out a
magazine> is this really
intimidating to any of you?

In this part of the conversation,
the topic changes to the one about the
participants’ looks. Charlotte begins
by stating that she does not feel as
good as Christy Turlington, a
supermodel. Miranda thinks that
Christy Turlington looks a lot more
skinny than her and wants to fatten
her. Charlotte then says that she
hates her thighs. Carrie states that
Miranda and Charlotte are beautiful.
Three of them then exchange
comments about the good parts of
their bodies. Carrie later states her
fascination that all of them could be
intimidated by some unreal fantasy
and asks her friends whether they are
intimidated by the model on the cover
of a magazine. Each of her friends
answers Carrie’s question.
CHARLOTTE: I hate my thighs/ <looking at
them>
MIRANDA: pass the chicken/
SAMANTHA: you know/ I have that dress/
<pointing at the magazine>
In the last part of the

conversation, Charlotte, Miranda, and
Samantha indirectly answer Carrie’s
question about whether they are
intimidated by the model of the cover
of a magazine. This shows that they
are actually intimidated by the model
but do not have the courage to say so
and make statements about other
things. Charlotte hates her thighs.
Miranda asks for the chicken.
Samantha has the dress that the
model is wearing on the cover of the
magazine.

In the third pattern of the
conversations considered gossip in
this comedy series, one of the
participants begins the conversations
by making comments about
something, the other participants
react to the comments by presenting
their own comments or opinions and
then develop the topic into a
discussion, and then one of the
participants ends the conversations
by offering their statements related to
the topic. One of the conversations
having this pattern is conversation 8
of episode 5 of season 1 of Sex and the
City TV series. This conversation
takes place in the hotel room after
Carrie has had a date with a French
architect and got $1,000 from him at
the end of the date. Carrie, Miranda,
and Samantha talk about the money
given by Carrie’s date while having
their breakfast.
MIRANDA: thanks for the beautiful day/
must have been a HELL of a
beautiful day/
CARRIE: well/ it was/ we had such a
fantastic connection/ then he
leaves me money/ I don’t
understand/ what exactly about
me screams whore?
MIRANDA: besides the $ 1,000 on the end
table?
SAMANTHA: I just can’t believe/ that you had
dinner at Balzac/ wait a minute/ I
thought I ordered two eggs
benedict/ and one spinach
omelet/
MIRANDA: it’s all right/ I’ll take the omelet/
CARRIE: this isn’t right/ we’re gonna pay
for all this ourselves/ all right?
SAMANTHA: he said order anything/

MIRANDA: the room service is one thing/ but
the money/ uh-uh/
SAMANTHA: what are you getting so uptight
about? I mean/ money is power/
sex is power/ therefore getting
money for sex/ is simply an
exchange of power/
In this beginning part of the

conversation, Miranda starts the
conversation by commenting that
Carrie must have had a wonderful
date. Carrie then expresses her
agreement with Miranda’s comment
but feels insecure about the money
given by her date. Samantha then
continues the conversation by
offering her comment about the place
Carrie and her date have had their
dinner. After Carrie states that
getting the money is not right and
that they have to pay all they have
ordered for breakfast, Miranda and
Samantha proposes their own
arguments about it.
Miranda thinks that they can
pay for the room service that they
have enjoyed but should not do
anything about the money. Samantha
thinks that getting money for sex is
not something to worry about and
that getting money for sex is just an
exchange of power. At this point of
the conversation all of the
participants have accepted the topic
and begun the discussion. Then the
discussion continues.
MIRANDA: don’t listen to the dime store

Camille Paglia/

CARRIE: I don’t know whether to take it as
an incredible compliment/ or as
an incredible insult/
SAMANTHA: just take it/ period/
CARRIE: I wouldn’t know how to return it
anyway/ because one thing he
didn’t leave me was/ his phone
number/
MIRANDA: he paid in full/ what more is
there to talk about? who is this
Amalita Amalfi character
anyway? I’m concerned that
you’ve been drafted into/ a ring
of high-class hookers/
CARRIE: she isn’t a hooker/ she’s- she’s
like an international party girl/
MIRANDA: she’s a hooker with a passport/
do you ever have any
conversations about money?

CARRIE: no/ I mean/ I did allude to the
fact that I was a bit cash poor
these days/
MIRANDA: so/ maybe it’s supposed to be a
loan?
CARRIE: I don’t remember filling out an
application/
SAMANTHA: sweetheart/ men give/ women
receive/ it’s biological destiny/
MIRANDA: do you really want to say that?
that’s the argument men have
been using since the dawn of time
to exploit women/
In this discussion, Miranda asks

Carrie not to listen to Samantha that
getting money for sex is just a trade
of power, while Carries doubts
whether to take Samantha’s
statement as a compliment. Carrie
later states that she does not know

how to return the money since she
does not have her date’s phone
number. Miranda asks Carrie not to
talk about it anymore and expresses
her concern that Carrie has been
recruited into a circle of high-class
prostitutes by her acquaintance,
Amalita Amalfi, who has introduced
Carrie to this French architect.
She wants to know whether
Carrie has talked about money with
Amalita Amalfi and suspects that
Carrie’s friend is a prostitute. Carrie
refutes Miranda’s suspicion, even
though she admits that she has
mentioned to Amalita Amalfi that she
has been broke recently. Miranda and
Samantha continue their discussion
by expressing their opinions about it.
Miranda considers the money as a
loan. Samantha thinks that it is usual

that men give money and women
receive it. Then the conversation
reaches its end.
CARRIE: I’m just gonna write the whole

thing off/ as a bad date with a
cash bonus/
MIRANDA: you know/ that salmon is really
good/ I think we should order
another one/
In this ending part of the
conversation, Carrie expresses her
opinion and then summarizes the
conversation: she considers her
experience as a bad date with a cash
bonus. Miranda then closes the
conversation by stating her opinion
about the food that they are having as
breakfast.
In the fourth pattern of the
gossip among women friends in Sex

and the City TV series, one of the
participants starts the conversation
by telling her experience and thus
introduces the topic, the other
participants then make comments or
utter their opinions about it and
develop the topic into a discussion,
and one of the participants later ends
the conversation by making her
statement about the topic. The
following conversation, conversation
14 of episode 8 of season 1 of the
famous TV series, is one example. The
conversation occurs in the restaurant,
and all of the characters in the TV
series are present. They all talk about
a threesome sex.
CHARLOTTE: Jack wants us to do a threesome/

MIRANDA: of course he does/ every guy
does/

SAMANTHA: threesomes are huge right now/
they’re the blow job of the ‘90s/
CHARLOTTE: what was the blow job of the
‘80s?
SAMANTHA: anal sex/
CARRIE: any sex/ period/
MIRANDA: don’t let him pressure you into it/
it’s just this guy’s cheap ploy to
watch you be a lesbian for a
night/

conversation, Charlotte starts the
conversation by telling of her
experience that Jack, her boyfriend,
wants them both to have threesome
sex. The other participants then
respond to her statement. Miranda
states her opinion that every man
wants to have it. Samantha expresses
her own opinion that threesomes are

popular in the 90s. Miranda later asks
Charlotte not to let her boyfriend
pressure her into doing it because she
thinks it is only her boyfriend’s tactic
to watch her conduct a homosexual
act for one night. At this point of the
conversation, all participants have
accepted the topic. The conversation
then continues to discuss this topic.
SAMANTHA: don’t knock it till you’ve tried it/

MIRANDA: I had a threesome once I think/ in
college/ I was drunk/ I woke up
in someone else’s bra/
SAMANTHA: the only way to do a threesome/ is
to be the guest star/
CHARLOTTE: guest star?
SAMANTHA: yeah/ the girl the couple gets to
come in/ screw/ and leave/
CARRIE: the pinch hitter/

SAMANTHA: exactly/ perfect/ great sex/
without wondering what it will
do to your relationship/
CHARLOTTE: but you don’t have relationships/
SAMANTHA: which is why I have great sex/
CARRIE: I’ve never done a threesome/
MIRANDA: because you have relationships/
CHARLOTTE: well/ I’ve never done a
threesome/
SAMANTHA: oh come on/ of course you
haven’t/ you in a threesome? you
won’t even wear a thong/
CHARLOTTE: Jack thinks I’m sexy/
MIRANDA: he’s buttering you up/ first you
start thinking you’re hot/ then he
brings up the threesome thing/
boom/ suddenly you’re kissing
another woman while he beats
off/
CHARLOTTE: please/

SAMANTHA: just make sure the other woman
isn’t a friend/ use somebody
random/ you know/ somebody
you meet in a bar or something/
MIRANDA: that’s romantic/

of the participants exchange
experiences, feelings, and opinions
about threesome sex. Miranda shares
her experience of having threesome
sex during her college years.
Samantha thinks that the only way to
have threesome sex is to be the guest
star, the girl a couple invites to come
to have sex with them, and she later
states that sex in this way is great sex
because the guest star girl does not
have to worry about the effect of
having threesome sex on her
relationship.

Carrie mentions that she has
never had a threesome sex. Miranda
states the reason why Carrie has
never had threesome sex is that she
has relationships. Charlotte joins in
the discussion by stating that she also
has never had threesome sex.
Samantha then comments on
Charlotte’s statement and expresses
her certainty that Charlotte has never
had threesome sex because she will
not even put on different underwear
from the one she usually has on, such
as a thong. Samantha later offers her
suggestion that Charlotte should use
somebody she does not know if she
really wants to have threesome sex.
The conversation then continues to
discuss the person to have threesome
sex with.

CHARLOTTE: no/ I think I’d feel safer with a
friend/ with someone I could
trust/ like Carrie/
CARRIE: oh gee/ I’m flattered/ but I’d go
with someone who has a little
more experience like Sam/
SAMANTHA: well/ thanks/ but/ hmm there is
something sexy about a first-
timer like Charlotte/
CHARLOTTE: really?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
SAMANTHA: yeah/
CARRIE: yeah/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
MIRANDA: oh great/ no/ forget about me/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CARRIE: ohhh/
SAMANTHA: ohhh/
CHARLOTTE : ohhh/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
SAMANTHA: come on/

MIRANDA: I’d do it with you guys/ it’s like-
it’s like picking teams for dodge
ball all over again/

of the participants talk about who
they think they should have a
threesome sex with. Charlotte thinks
that she feels safer to have it with
someone she can trust, such as Carrie.
Carrie however thinks that she would
do threesome sex with someone who
has a little more experience, such as
Samantha. Samantha in turn thinks
that it is sexy to have it with a first-
timer like Charlotte.
When Samantha has finished her
statement, Charlotte expresses her
disbelief and asks for confirmation.
At the same time Samantha and
Carrie confirms it by answering,

“Yeah.” Because none of her friends
mention to have threesome sex with
her, Miranda feels left out. She utters
her disappointment by uttering,
“…forget about me.” As soon as she
has finished her utterance, her
friends simultaneously express their
empathy and comfort her by saying,
“Ohhh.” Samantha then utters,
“Come on,” implying her request to
Miranda for not thinking that way.
Miranda later makes her statement
that she would have threesome sex
with any of her friends, and
Miranda’s statement ends the
conversation.
In the fifth pattern of the
conversations taken from the Sex and
the City TV series, one of the
participants begins the conversation
by uttering her feelings and thus

introduces the topic of the
conversation, the other participants
then ask questions or make comments
about her feelings and thus continue
the conversation, and another
participant later makes her statement
about the topic and ends the
conversation. One example of the
conversation belonging to this pattern
is conversation 25 of episode 12 of
season 1 of Sex and the City TV series.
The conversation happens in a bar
when all of the characters of the TV
series get together to spend the night.
SAMANTHA: hey/ I’m sorry I’m late/

CARRIE: well/ it’s about time/
SAMANTHA: I just had a five-hour lunch with
James/
CARRIE: five-hour lunches/ I remember
those/

SAMANTHA: ladies/ I have an announcement/
please don’t laugh/
MIRANDA: what?
SAMANTHA: I’m in love/
In this beginning section of the

conversation, Samantha apologizes
for coming late and states her reason
for it: she has just had a five-hour
lunch with James, her new boyfriend.
She then expresses her feeling that
she is in love.
MIRANDA: what?
SAMANTHA: I mean/ I’d totally given up on
the idea that you could actually
talk to men/
CARRIE: okay/ but don’t spread that
around/
SAMANTHA: before James/ all my
conversations consisted of two

sentences/ give it to me/ and go
home/ and I owe it all to
Charlotte/
CHARLOTTE: me? what did I do?
SAMANTHA: all that bullshit you spout about
not sleeping with men right
away/ actually paid off/ I mean/
if I’d fucked James already/ who
knows where we’d be/
MIRANDA: wait/ you haven’t had sex yet?
SAMANTHA: soon/ you know/ I think he’s
someone I could actually marry/
CHARLOTTE: Samantha/ that’s great/

the other participants ask further
questions and make comments about
Samantha’s statement that she is in
love. This way they have accepted the
topic about Samantha’s feelings and
agreed to talk about it. Her friends’

comments and questions make
Samantha continue to share more
about her feelings and keep the
conversation going. After hearing that
Samantha is in love, Miranda
expresses her disbelief by saying,
“What.” This prompts Samantha to
offer her explanation that she has
completely given up the idea that she
can actually talk to men before
meeting James. She further explains
that being in love and able to talk to
men happens because of Charlotte.
During Samantha’s explanation,
Carrie makes a comment about not
spreading Samantha’s statement that
she has given up the idea of talking to
men. Charlotte then asks about what
she does. Samantha continues her
explanation and thus continues the
conversation. She states that she

follows Charlotte’s suggestion not to
sleep with men right after they meet
them. If she does not follow
Charlotte’s suggestion, she may not
be in love and have a relationship.
Miranda then joins in the
conversation and asks for
confirmation whether Samantha
really has not had sex with her
boyfriend yet. This makes Samantha
utter that she thinks James is
someone she could actually marry.
Charlotte ends the conversation by
stating that what happens to
Samantha is great.
In the sixth pattern of
conversations found in Sex and the
City TV series, one of the participants
introduces the topic of conversation
by asking a question, the other
participants then ask further

questions and make comments about
it and thus develop the topic of
conversation into a discussion,
another participant later asks the last
question which ends the
conversation. The following
conversation is one example. It is
taken from conversation 26 of episode
12 of this TV series. It takes place in
the ladies’ room. All of the characters
of the TV series are present as
participants of the conversation. The
participants talk about the size of the
sexual organ of Samantha’s new
boyfriend.
CHARLOTTE: here you are/ we’ve been looking

for you everywhere/
CARRIE: so/ how is everything?
MIRANDA: she means/ have you and James
done it yet?

SAMANTHA: uh hum/
CARRIE: and/
SAMANTHA: it’s nice/
CHARLOTTE: I’m so happy for you/
(Samantha is crying)
CARRIE: sweetie? what? what is it?
SAMANTHA: nothing/
(Samantha is still crying and going into a closet)
CARRIE: what’s going on? why are you
crying?
SAMANTHA: James has a small dick/

conversation, Carrie starts the
conversation by asking Samantha
about how everything is. Miranda
then asks another question to clarify
what Carrie really asks about.
Miranda says that what Carrie means
is whether Samantha and James have
already had sex or not. Samantha

gives a minimal response, “Uh hum,”
and implies that she and James have.
Carrie responds by saying,
“And...,” which is a request for
further explanation. However,
Samantha only answers that it is nice.
Charlotte then comments that she is
happy for Samantha. However, when
they hear Samantha crying, Carrie
asks further questions that make
Samantha let out the reason why she
is reluctant to talk about her sex with
her boyfriend and why she is sad:
James, her new boyfriend, has a small
penis. At this point the discussion
begins.
CARRIE: oh/ well/ it’s not the end of the

world/
SAMANTHA: it’s really small/
MIRANDA: how small?

SAMANTHA: too small/
CARRIE: well/ size isn’t everything/
SAMANTHA: three inches?
CARRIE: well/
SAMANTHA: hard/
CARRIE: uh/
CHARLOTTE: is he a good kisser?
SAMANTHA: oh/ who the fuck cares? his dick
is like a gherkin/ I feel so
terrible/ listen to me/ I’m a bad
person/
MIRANDA: don’t beat yourself up/ you had
certain expectation/ and you’re
disappointed/
SAMANTHA: why? why? why does he have to
have a small dick? I really like
him/
MIRANDA: I thought you loved him/
SAMANTHA: well/
CARRIE: oh look/ we’ve all been there/

MIRANDA: that’s for sure/ I was once with a
guy with the size of one of those
little miniature golf pencils/
couldn’t tell if he was trying to
fuck me/ or erase me/
(Carrie is laughing, while Samantha is still crying)
CARRIE: I’m sorry/ I’m sorry/ it’s just- it’s
just funny/
MIRANDA: let’s not lose perspective/ there
are ways to work around this/
SAMANTHA: I don’t want to work around this/
I love a big dick/ I love it inside
of me/ I love looking at it/ I love
everything about it/ when I blow
him/ it’s like nothing/ nothing/
MIRANDA: can you talk to him about it?
SAMANTHA: no/ it’s the only thing we CAN’T
talk about/ what am I gonna do?

all of the participants discuss the size

of the sexual organ of Samantha’s
new boyfriend and thus accept it as
the topic of the conversation. The
participants ask questions, make
comments, and give suggestions to get
more information about Samantha’s
problem, calm her down, and offer
her solutions. By asking and
answering questions, the participants
find out that the sexual organ of
Samantha’s boyfriend is extremely
small.
The other participants then take
turns to make comments to calm
Samantha down. Carrie says that size
is not everything and later states that
they all have been in Samantha’s
situation. Charlotte asks whether
Samantha’s boyfriend is a good kisser
and implies that this can be the good
side that Samantha should consider.

Miranda asks Samantha not to be
hard on herself and expresses her
opinion that it is natural to be
disappointed because Samantha has
certain expectations about her new
boyfriend. Miranda later tells her
experience with a man who has a
small penis. In the end, Miranda
states that there are ways to solve
Samantha’s problem and asks
Samantha to talk about this problem
with her boyfriend. However,
Samantha does not want to listen to
her friends’ suggestions or accept
their request to find solutions to her
problem because she loves a big penis.
She also does not want to talk
about it with her boyfriend because it
is the only thing that they cannot talk
about. Then, Charlotte asks the last
question.

CHARLOTTE: how is he with his tongue?
With this question, Charlotte
ends the conversation. The beginning
and the discussion parts of this last
pattern of conversations are the same
as the ones of the conversations
belonging to the first pattern. A
participant begins the conversation
with a question and introduces the
topic of conversations, and the other
participants develop the topic into a
discussion. However, in the last
pattern of the conversations another
participant ends the conversation by
asking a question about the topic of
the conversation, while in the first
pattern of conversation another
participant ends the conversation by
giving a statement about the topic of
the conversation.

a. Minimal Responses
In her research Coates shows that
the use of minimal responses
characterizes linguistic interaction
between women who are friends and
equals. Minimal responses are used in
two different ways in the women’s
conversation Coates records. In the
interaction-focused sections, they are
used to support the speaker and to
indicate the listener’s active attention.
The responses are well placed: they are
mostly timed to come at the end of an
information unit. The speaker’s flow is
not interrupted.
These minimal responses signal
the listener’s active participation in the
conversation; that is, they are another
aspect of the way text is jointly
produced. In the narrative or more
information-focused sections of the

conversation, minimal responses seem to
have another meaning. They signal
agreement among participants that a
particular stage of conversation has
been reached (in Coates and Cameron,
1988).
In this research conducted on
gossip in Sex and the City TV series, the
use of minimal responses is also found.
All of the minimal responses found in
the conversations in this TV series come
at the end of utterances. They are used
to support the other participants and
signal the participant’s active
involvement in the conversation. The
minimal responses also show agreement
among the participants. The use of these
minimal responses illustrates that all of
the participants jointly and actively
construct the conversation.

One example of the use of
minimal responses in the conversation1
of episode 1 in Sex and the City TV series
is as follows.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARLOTTE: yeah/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In this part of the conversation

taken from episode 1 of season 1 of Sex
and the City TV series about women
having sex like men, the minimal
response yeah is used. In this
conversation, Carrie asks for her
friends’ agreement that romance is still
needed in a relationship. Charlotte

utters the minimal response yeah to
show agreement with Carrie’s opinion.
Another example of the use of
minimal responses can be found in the
following part of the conversation.
CHARLOTTE: Jack thinks I’m sexy/

MIRANDA: he’s buttering you up/ first you
start thinking you’re hot/ then he
brings up the threesome thing/
boom/ suddenly you’re kissing
another woman while he beats
off/
CHARLOTTE: please/

taken from episode 8 of season 1 of Sex
and the City TV series about threesome
sex, Charlotte states that Jack, her
boyfriend who asks her to have
threesome sex, thinks that she is sexy.

Miranda responds to Charlotte’s
statement and presents her opinion that
Jack only makes her feel good so that
she later agrees to have threesome sex.
Charlotte responds to Miranda’s
utterance and says the minimal response
please to show that she is appalled by
Miranda’s opinion.
One more example of the use of
minimal responses is from the same
conversation about threesome sex.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
CARRIE: ohhh/
SAMANTHA: ohhh/
CHARLOTTE : ohhh/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In this part of the conversation the

participants discuss the person who they

want to have threesome sex with. Carrie,
Charlotte, and Miranda choose each
other as a partner. Miranda feels
neglected and says, “…forget about me.”
The other participants simultaneously
say the minimal response ohhh to show
that they feel bad about unintentionally
neglecting their friend.
minimal responses can be found in the
following part of conversation 26.
CARRIE: so/ how is everything?

MIRANDA: she means/ have you and James
done it yet?
SAMANTHA: uh hum/
CARRIE: and/
SAMANTHA: it’s nice/
In this conversation taken from

episode 12 about the size of the sexual

organ of Samantha’s boyfriend, an
example of minimal responses can be
found. They are uh hum in Samantha’s
answer. Samantha uses a minimal
response uh hum to give a short answer
that she has had sex with her boyfriend
James to Miranda’s question about
whether Samantha and James have had
sex or not and also to show that she
does not feel good about answering the
question.
One more example of the use of
minimal responses is from the same
conversation of episode 12 above.
CARRIE: well/ size isn’t everything/

SAMANTHA: three inches?
CARRIE: well/
SAMANTHA: hard/
CARRIE: uh/

about Samantha’s boyfriend having a
small penis, Carrie offers her opinion
that size does not matter. Samantha
then asks about her comment on the fact
that her boyfriend’s penis is about three
inches long. Carrie utters a minimal
response well to show she is reluctant to
make a comment. But when Samantha
says that three inches is the length of
her boyfriend’s penis in its erection,
Carrie lets out a minimal response to
show her disappointment.
b. Simultaneous Speech
Coates finds that for much of the
time in discussion sections in
conversations she analyzes more than
one speaker speaking at the same time.
There are seven types of simultaneous
speech found in her data. Type I is when
two speakers self-select at the same

time, one stops. Type II is when Speaker
B self-selects at the end of a phrase or
clause, A carries on, B stops. Type III is
when Speaker B self-selects at the end of
a phrase or clause, A tails off. Type IV is
when Speaker A completes A’s
utterance. Type V is when Speaker B
asks a question or comments while A is
speaking. Type VI is when Speaker B
comments, A stops speaking. Type VII is
when two speakers speak at the same
time (in Coates and Cameron, 1988).
Coates then concludes that in all
conversations she records there is no
competition for turns. Interruption
hardly ever occurs in gossip. All the
participants are familiar with each other
and with the way the interaction is
constructed. The interaction is a joint
effort. In the conversation between
friends, where the principal goal of

interaction is the maintenance of good
social relationships, the participation of
more than one speaker shows a joint
activity: to participate in the
conversation with other speakers. The
simultaneous speech given in her data
illustrates the way in which women
friends work together to produce shared
meanings (in Coates and Cameron,
1988).
Simultaneous speech is also found
in this research on gossip among women
friends in Sex and the City TV series. All
of the examples of simultaneous speech
found in the conversations of this TV
series belong to Type VII of
simultaneous speech proposed by Coates
in her research, in which two speakers
speak at the same time. The participants
of these conversations have known each
other for a long time. They usually get

together to spend time as friends. In
these conversations the participation of
more than one speaker at a time also
shows that the conversations are joint
activities. The simultaneous speech
found in the conversations of Sex and
the City TV series also demonstrates that
these women friends work together to
construct shared meanings.
One example of simultaneous
speech can be found in the following
part of conversation 1 from episode 1 of
the first season of this famous TV series.
SAMANTHA: remember that guy I was going

out with? oh god/ what was his
name? Drew?
-------------------------------------------------------------------
CARRIE: Drew/
CHARLOTTE: Drew/

MIRANDA: Drew/
--------------------------------------------------------------------

about women having sex like men,
Samantha asks her friends whether they
still remember the name of the man she
used to go out with. Her friends
simultaneously answer and give the
name of her previous boy friend.
In the following example of
simultaneous speech taken from the
same conversation, the participants at
the same time answer the other
participant’s question.

--------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARLOTTE: yeah/
--------------------------------------------------------------------

In this part of the conversation 1 of
episode 1, Samantha and Charlotte
immediately and simultaneously give
different answers to Carrie’s question
about whether romance is still needed in
a relationship between men and women.
Samantha answers that she does not
need romance in her relationship with
men, while Charlotte at the same time
answers in favor of romance in a
relationship.
Another example of simultaneous
speech can be found in the following
part of the same conversation as the one
about women having sex like men above.
CARRIE: you believe me/ the right guy

comes along/ and you two right
here/ the whole thing/ right out
the window/

--------------------------------------------------------------------
CHARLOTTE: that’s right/
MIRANDA: I don’t think so/
SAMANTHA: listen to me/
--------------------------------------------------------------------

Carrie expresses her opinion that
Miranda and Samantha will forget that
they have ever said that they do not
need romance in their relationship with
men when they meet the right men. As
soon as Carries has finished uttering her
opinion, Charlotte, Miranda, and
Samantha simultaneously react to
Carrie’s opinion. Charlotte utters her
agreement. Miranda disagrees with it.
Samantha asks for her friends’ attention
before taking her turn to express her
opinion.

In the following part of
conversation 14 from episode 8 of
season 1 of Sex and the City TV series,
another example of simultaneous speech
can be found.
--------------------------------------------------------------------
CARRIE: ohhh/
SAMANTHA: ohhh/
CHARLOTTE : ohhh/
--------------------------------------------------------------------
In this part of conversation about

the person the participants of the
conversation want to have threesome
sex with, Miranda expresses her
disappointment that none of her friends
pick her to have threesome sex with.
Realizing that Miranda’s
disappointment, Carrie, Samantha, and
Charlotte at the same time express that

they understand why Miranda feels
disappointed and are sorry for making
her feel that way.
c. Epistemic Modality
Epistemic modal forms are defined
semantically as those linguistic forms
which are used to indicate the speaker’s
confidence or lack of confidence in the
truth of the proposition expressed in the
utterance. Lexical items such as perhaps,
I think, sort of, probably as well as
certain prosodic and paralinguistic
features are used in English to express
epistemic modality. Such forms are used
by speakers not just to indicate their
lack of commitment to the truth of
propositions but also to hedge assertions
in order to protect their own and
addressees’ face (in Coates and
Cameron, 1988).

Based on her data, Coates proposes
that women use epistemic modal forms
to mitigate the force of an utterance in
order to respect addressees’ face needs
and also to protect the speaker’s face
when sensitive topics related to people
and feelings are discussed. She argues
that women also use these forms to
invite others to speak and to facilitate
open discussion. This function is also
fulfilled by tag questions. Tags can also
be used to lessen the force or a
negatively affective utterance or to
facilitate interaction (in Coates and
Cameron, 1988).
In this research about gossip
among women friends in Sex and the
City TV series, the use of epistemic
modal forms and tag questions is also
found. These epistemic modal forms and
tag questions are used to indicate the

participants’ lack of commitment to the
truth of the propositions in their
utterances, to reduce the force of their
utterances in order to respect the other
participants’ face needs and at the same
time to protect their own face, to invite
others to speak, and thus to facilitate
open discussion.
One example of the use of
epistemic modal forms can be found in
the following part of conversation 8
from episode 5 of season 1 of this TV
series.
MIRANDA: she’s a hooker with a passport/

do you ever have any
conversations about money?
CARRIE: no/ I mean/ I did allude to the
fact that I was a bit cash poor
these days/

MIRANDA: so/ maybe it’s supposed to be a
loan?

about money given by a date, Miranda
asks Carrie whether she has had talks
about money with Amalita Amalfi, who
has introduced Carrie to her date who
has given her $1,000 at the end of their
date. Carrie answers that she has
mentioned the fact that she has been
broke recently to Amalita Amalfi.
Miranda then expresses her opinion that
the money is supposed to be a loan. But
she is not sure of her statement.
Therefore, she uses the epistemic modal
form maybe.
epistemic modal forms is found in the
following part of the same conversation
from the same episode.

CARRIE: I’m just gonna write the whole
thing off/ as a bad date with a
cash bonus/
MIRANDA: you know/ that salmon is really
good/ I think we should order
another one/
In this ending part of the

conversation about money given by a
date, Carrie summarizes the
conversation and states that she is going
to regard the whole thing she has
experienced as a bad date with a cash
bonus. Miranda recognizes that Carrie’s
statement ends their discussion about
money given by a date and mentions
another topic, which is the food they are
enjoying while talking about Carrie’s
money. She states that the salmon is
delicious and that they should order
another one. In order to reduce the force

of her utterance and to respect Carrie,
who is responsible for the breakfast they
are having, and to protect her own face,
Miranda uses the epistemic modal form I
think.
d. Co-operativeness
Coates states that the notion of co-
operativeness in the literature on
women’s language refers to a particular
type of conversation, where speakers
work together to produce shared
meanings. In this view speakers
collaborate in the production of text: the
group takes priority over the individual.
She argues that her data support the
idea that women’s language is co-
operative and that formal features
described in her data analysis function
as collaborative devices (in Coates and
Cameron, 1988).

In the data collected for the
research on gossips among women
friends in Sex and the City TV series, the
writer also finds that topics develop
slowly and gradually because
participants of the conversations build
on each other’s contributions and
cooperatively construct shared
meanings. Minimal responses and
epistemic modal forms also serve the
purpose as enabling devices. Minimal
responses are used to signal
participants’ active involvement in the
conversations and support for the other
participants.
Epistemic modal forms are used to
indicate the participants’ uncertainty
towards the truth of the propositions of
their utterances, to mitigate the force of
their utterances, and to respect the face
needs of all participants. Simultaneous

speech occurs as participants actively
collaborate to produce shared meanings
and signals that the conversations are
cooperative activities. The participants
ask questions or make comments, which
indicate their active involvement in the
conversations and which help construct
cooperative text.

CHAPTER V
FUNCTIONS AND
FEATURES OF GOSSIP
AMONG FEMALE
FRIENDS
In this part of the book the writer proposes the

answer to the main research question: How is English
language used in gossip among women friends. In
finding out the answer to this main research question
the writer also finds out the answers to the following
sub-questions: What are the functions of these all-
female conversations? What are their formal
features? Therefore, the main objective of this

research is to find out how the English language is
used in gossip among women friends. At the same
time it aims to find out the functions and formal
features of these all-female conversations.
In finding out the answers to the above
questions, the writer uses a qualitative method. Her
data are taken from conversations considered gossips
among female friends in Sex and the City TV series.
The data collected from 12 episodes of the first
season of this popular TV series consist of 16
conversations regarded as gossips among female
friends. By referring to the research conducted by
Coates (in Coates and Cameron, 1988), the data are
analyzed in terms of setting, participants, topics, and
formal features of the conversations. The
conversations are then analyzed to determine
whether the formal features function as markers of
co-operative style.
The settings of the conversations found in the
12 episodes of the first season of Sex and the City TV
series are an apartment, restaurant, bar, shop, hotel

room, ladies’ room, and taxi. The participants of the
conversations are the main characters of Sex and the
City TV series. They are Carrie Bradshaw, a columnist
in a New York newspaper; Charlotte York, an art
dealer; Miranda Hobbes, a corporate lawyer; and
Samantha Jones, a public relations executive. They
are single, white, middle class women, aged in the
mid 30s and early 40s. They have been friends since
they were in college, and all live on their own in New
York City, USA. The topics of their conversations
range from being single women, falling in love,
dating, getting married, and having babies to the one
about sex. The conversations function to give these
women friends the means to share their opinions,
feelings, and experiences and at the same time
maintain their friendship.
Formal features found in 16 conversations in the
Sex and the City TV series are topic development,
minimal responses, simultaneous speech, and
epistemic modality. As found in Coates’ research, in
these conversations the topics also develop slowly

and gradually because the participants of the
conversations build on each other’s contributions and
cooperatively produce shared meanings. Minimal
responses are also used to indicate the participants’
active involvement in the conversations and support
for the other participants. Simultaneous speech
occurs as participants actively collaborate to produce
shared meanings and signals that the conversations
are cooperative activities. Epistemic modal forms are
used to indicate the participants’ lack of commitment
to the truth of the propositions of their utterances, to
reduce the force of their utterances, to respect the
face needs of all participants, and to facilitate open
discussions. Therefore, these formal features also
serve the purpose as markers of cooperative style of
conversations. Women’s talk in Sex and the City TV
series can thus be described as cooperative.

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Van Alphen, Inggrid. 1987. Learning from Your Peers:

The Acquisition of Gender-specific Speech
Styles. In: Déde Browner and Dorian de Haan
(eds). Women’s Language, Socialization, and
Self-Image. Dordret-Holland: Foris
Publications.
Coates, Jennifer. 1988. Groups Revisited: Language in

All-Female Groups. In: Jennifer Coates and
Deborah Cameron (eds). Women in Their
Speech Communities. New York: Longman
Group.
------------------. 1993. Women, Men, and Language. 2nd

Edition. London: Longman Group UK Limited
------------------. 1997. The Construction of a

Collaborative Floor in Women’s Friendly Talk.

In: T. Givon (ed). Conversation Cognitive,
Communicative and Social Perspectives.
Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
van Dijk, Teun A (ed).1997. Discourse as Social

Interaction. London: SAGE Publications Ltd.
Eckert, Penelope and Sally McConnell-Ginet. 2003.

Language and Gender. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Harlow, Angela and Michelle Jensen. 1997. “Annotated

Bibliography: Language, Gender, and Writing.”
In
<http://course1.winona.edu/pjohnson/gender/jo
nes.htm>
Holmes, Janet. 1998. Women’s Talk: The Question of

Sociolinguistic Universals. In: Jennifer Coates
(ed). Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford:
Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
------------------. 2001. An Introduction to

Sociolinguistics. 2nd Edition. Essex: Longman
Group UK Limited.
Johnson, Fern L. and Elizabeth J. Aries. 1998. The Talk

of Women Friends. In: Jennifer Coates (ed).

Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford:
Kumar, Ranjit. 1999. Research Methodology: A Step by

Step Guide for Beginners. New Delhi: SAGE
Publications.
Madsen, David. 1992. Successful Dissertations and

Theses: A Guide to Graduate Student Research
from Proposal to Completion. 2nd Edition. San
Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers.
Maltz, Daniel N. and Ruth A. Borker. 1998. A Cultural

Approach to Male-Female Miscommunication.
In: Jennifer Coates (ed). Language and Gender:
A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers Ltd.
Mills, Sarah (ed). 1995. Language and Gender:

Interdisciplinary Perspectives. New York:
Longman Publishing.
Nelson, Marie Wilson. 1998. Women’s Ways: Interactive

Patterns in Predominantly Female Research
Teams. In: Jennifer Coates (ed). Language and
Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers
Ltd.
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary, 4th edition.

Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Patton, Michael Quinn. 1987. How to Use Qualitative
Methods in Evaluation. Newbury Park: SAGE
Publications.
Pilkington, Jane. 1998. ‘Don’t try and make out that I’m
nice!’ The Different Strategies Women and Men
Use when Gossiping. In: Jennifer Coates (ed).
Tannen, Deborah. 1984. Conversational Style:

Analyzing Talk among Friends. Norwood: Ablex
Publishing Corporation.
------------------. 1990. You Just Don’t Understand:

Women and Men in Conversation. New York:
Ballantine Books.
------------------ (ed). 1993. Gender and Conversational

Interaction. New York: Oxford University Press.
------------------. 1994. Gender and Discourse. New York:

Oxford University Press.
------------------. 1998. Talk in the Intimate Relationship:

His and Hers. In: Jennifer Coates (ed).

Turabian, Kate L. 1996. A Manual for Writers of Term
Papers, Theses, and Dissertations. 6th Edition.
Chicago: The University of Chicago Press.
Wardhaugh, Ronald. 1998. An Introduction to

Sociolinguistics. 3rd Edition. Oxford: Blackwell
Publishers Ltd.
Weatherall, Ann. 2002. Gender, Language and

Discourse. New York: Routledge Inc.
Wray, Alison, Kate Trott and Aileen Boomer. 1998.

Projects in Linguistics: A Practical Guide to
Researching Language. London: Arnold, a
member of Hodder Headline Group.

TRANSCRIPTION
CONVENTIONS*
/ end of a tone group or chunk of talk, for

example: she pushes him to the limit/
? end of a chunk of talk which is analyzed as a

question, for example: do you know anyone
who’s pregnant?
- incomplete word or utterance, for example: I

was- I was- I was stopped by a train/
Horizontal broken lines mark the beginnings

and ends of staves; the lines utterances enclosed by
the lines are read simultaneously, for example:

--------------------------------------------------------------------
A: the squidgy stuff that they put on pizzas
B: Mozarella
--------------------------------------------------------------------
< > clarificatory information about the preceding

chuck of talk, for example: I can’t help it/
<whiney voice>
Capital letters are used for words/syllables uttered

with emphasis, for example: it’s in MExico.
*based on Coates and Cameron (1988)

BIOGRAPHY OF THE
AUTHOR
Srisna J. Lahay was born on October 19, 1971, in
Makassar, South Sulawesi. She now lives in Bekasi,
West Java. She got her bachelor’s degree in English
Studies from Universitas Indonesia, Depok, in 1996
and her master’s degree in English Applied
Linguistics from Universitas Katolik Indonesia Atma
Jaya, Jakarta, in 2008. She is currently studying for
her doctoral degree in Linguistics at Universitas
Indonesia. She has been teaching English and
Linguistics since the year 2000 and now working as a
full-time lecturer at the Faculty of Letters and
Languages, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta.
She is also an instructor in Indonesian language
for non-native speakers (Bahasa Indonesia bagi

Penutur Asing/BIPA). She has started teaching BIPA
since 2009 and had experiences in teaching BIPA
abroad. In 2015 she was assigned by Directorate of
Higher Education, Ministry of Education and Culture,
to teach BIPA at Taras Shevchenko National
University in Kyiv, Ukraine, and in 2018 she was
assigned by Center for Development of Strategy and
Diplomacy in Language (Pusat Pengembangan
Strategi dan Diplomasi Kebahasaan/PPSDK), Ministry
of Education and Culture, to teach BIPA at
Polytechnic University of the Philippines, Philippine
Women’s University, Far Eastern University, and
Indonesian Embassy, in Manila, Philippines.
Her research interest is in Semantics,
Pragmatics, Discourse Analysis, and Corpus
Linguistics. She can be reached at srisna@yahoo.com.

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GOSSIP AMONG FEMALE FRIENDS:

Srisna J. Lahay, S.S., M.Hum.

1. Setiap Orang yang dengan tanpa hak melakukan pelanggaran

GOSSIP AMONG FEMALE FRIENDS:

Copyright © 2021 Global Aksara Pres

Penulis : Srisna J. Lahay, S.S., M.Hum.

Hak Cipta dilindungi undang-undang.

Language is one of the drivers of all activities

Gossip Among Female Friends | v

Gossip Among Female Friends | vii

viii | Srisna J. Lahay

Depok, January 25, 2022

Dr. F.X. Rahyono, S.S., M.Hum.

Gossip Among Female Friends | ix

Picture this. You enter a café. You see a group of

Gossip Among Female Friends | xi

Bekasi, December 23, 2021

Srisna J. Lahay, S.S., M.Hum.

xii | Srisna J. Lahay

CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION –[1]

Gossip Among Female Friends | xiii

Anthropologists and sociologists have found

Gossip Among Female Friends | 1

In her article written in 1980 and entitled

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Gossip Among Female Friends | 5

A. Overview of Women's Language

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B. Male-Female Differences in Conversational Style

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Based on this example, Tannen explains that

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C. Different Strategies Men and Women Use in

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