http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s_4PvRZi3XY
A: are we gonna see a Geordie wedding this season (.) or coming up
A: are we gonna see a Geordie wedding this season (.) or coming up
B: no (0.5) we’re not um I think (.) well (.) um in ooh
C: you lost for words babe
B: [laughs]
C: is she feeling alright (.) are you feeling alright
B: I’m not lost for words I’m just struggling working out
/ things
C:
/ oh yeah okay
B: [puts hand over his face] shut up
C: I can’t believe this like
B: we don’t have a / wedding
C: / got this on
camera
B: no [continues to put her hand on his face]
C: this never happens
B: shut up (0.5) we have sort of like um an engagement
party (1) so it’s kinda like in the right direction for a wedding but it’s not
a wedding (.) so wu we’re moving [makes hand gesture indicating direction] (.) towards (.) a wedding but we’re still
very far away from a wedding (.) stop putting so much pressure on us [buries
head in scarf]
A: I can’t think of anything worse than planning a
wedding it must be a lot of / hassle
B:
/ I can’t literally cause I’m so
dreading the point where I have to do something like that (.) in real life we
just had our engagement party like in one for all our friends and all our
family /
C: family that obviously couldn’t get there’ll come on
the [mumbles] show / at that point
B: /
and it was the most stressful time
tryna plan it and /
C: so much planning and so much /organising
B: / oh yeah Ricci I
bet your knackered after all that
planning are ya
C: [laughs]
B: yeah all those decisions ya had to make (.) all those
emails ya had to send (.) meetings with the cake maker yeah (1) he did nothing
until about a week before where he suddenly
got interested and started demanding all sorts of ridiculous things (.) which
were just not possible like monkeys carrying trays of drinks
A: [laughs]
B: so Ricci is not gonna be part of planning the wedding
as he didn’t plan the engagement
party and I’m not planning the
wedding until I get a team of people
to help us
I chose this data because male and female conversational
styles interest me and in this clip there were clear contrasts between the two
speakers. I found that this video corresponded with Robin Lakoff’s Deficit
Theory. For example, speaker B, the female, used a plentiful amount of
intensifiers and frequently spoke in italics, for example, “shut up,” and “team of people,” used to exaggerate. Speaker B also uses hedges,
such as, “sort of like” and “kind of like.” She often repeats how she organised
their engagement party single handily and the same will not happen with her
wedding which can be viewed as an indirect request for her fiancé to have more
involvement in wedding planning and organisation.
However there are some differences between this clip and the
theory as it does seem to be the female speaking more frequently which links
more to verbosity. The female character cannot be considered polite, however
does avoid using derogatory language. Her speaking is more declarative so she
tends not to use empty adjectives as this text is limited in description.
If I attempted to
investigate this further, I could name this investigation ‘Is Robin Lakoff’s
1975 theory about female speech still relevant in modern day conversations?’
Additional data I could add to this investigation could be a recording of a
conversation in 1975 between a male and female to test if the theory was
relevant then. Most importantly, to compare it to modern day language, I could
collect primary data recording a live conversation between a male and female
and transcribing it myself. I could repeat the process and obtain a large
quantity of data that I could choose examples from that either contradict or
agree with my hypothesis.
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