【作者】 马文芸；

【导师】 白丽梅；

【作者基本信息】 西北师范大学 ， 英语语言文学， 2010， 硕士

【摘要】 语言的性别差异是客观存在的,然而导致这种差异的原因复杂多样。正因为如此,语言的性别差异引起了不同学科学者的研究兴趣,他们从不同的视角对这一问题进行了讨论。近几十年来,随着话语分析的蓬勃发展,语言性别差异的研究已经拓展到语篇层面,话语风格的性别差异成了社会语言学研究的热点,且有不少研究者如Fishman和Goodwin(1988)认为:在英语会话中,男性的风格呈现为竞争型,其话语为强势语言;女性的风格倾向于合作型,其话语为弱势语言。但近年来,有学者如Cameron和Holmes(1995)指出,过去关于语言性别差异的研究过于简单化、单一化,其所得结论难免带有片面性。因为在多数情况下,两性在语言使用方面的差异并不是绝对的,而仅仅是程度上或发生频率上的差异。本研究从交际语境关系的角度入手,来探讨性别因素和非性别因素分别与话语策略和话语风格之间的关系,以期对性别话语风格作一个科学、全面、客观的描述和解释,并试图建立一个性别话语风格的交际语境关系研究模式。根据维索尔伦的语言顺应理论,运用语言就是不断选择语言的过程。顺应论中的语境关系顺应指出语言使用过程中语言的选择必须与语境顺应。语境包括交际语境和语言语境,交际语境属于非语言语境,它包括物理世界,社交世界和心理世界。本研究在现有语言性别差异研究的基础上,以维索尔伦的语言顺应论为理论依据,以Sacks等提出的会话分析理论为分析模式,以美国电视剧《老友记》为语料,采用定量研究和定性研究相结合的研究方法,从交际语境关系入手,通过对剧中主人公的话语量、打断、重叠语、最小回应、闪避词、附加问句、话题选择等体现话语风格的最主要的话语策略的数据的收集、统计和分析,进一步对性别话语风格做一尝试性研究,试图发现性别因素和非性别因素各自在语言运用中的作用及其与说话者的话语策略的选择之间的关系。研究发现,在具体的交际情景中,话语风格除受交际者的性别因素制约外,还受交际场合、话题、交际者之间的角色关系、交际者的性格以及社会文化规约等多种非性别因素的影响,因而呈现出相对性、互动性、多元性的特点。故而只有从交际语境关系入手研究话语风格,才能更加合理地解释言语交际中的性别差异。而二元论者对性别话语风格研究所得结论过于简单化且不能恰当地解释语言运用实例。这一研究发现也体现了语言与性别研究正从静态走向动态、从二元走向多元的发展态势。作为尝试性研究,本文验证了顺应论在性别话语风格研究中的可行性,并成功地建立了一个性别话语风格的交际语境关系研究模式。更多还原

【Abstract】 There do exist gender differences in language. But the reasons for it are hard to tell, because this problem is too complicated. It’s for this reason that so many researchers become more and more interested in this topic. They try to explore this problem from different perspectives. In the last decades, with the rapid development of discourse analysis, gender differences in language have gone into the level of text. Gender discourse style has been one of the focuses in sociolinguistics. Many linguists such as Fishman and Goodwin (1988) think that males’discourse style is competitive and their language is powerful while females’discourse style is cooperative and their language is powerless. Only in recent years, some researchers such as Holmes and Cameron (1995) point out that previous research pays too much attention to the differences and the function of gender factor so that they ignore the similarities of language use and their conclusions are too oversimplified. Because in many situations, the differences in conversations between males and females are not absolute, they are relative. They are just differences in degree and in frequency. This thesis is designed to make a tentative study on the relationship between discourse style and the contextual factors including gender factors and non-gender factors from the perspective of contextual correlates. By doing so the author hopes to establish a new research model in gender discourse style from gender and non-gender contextual correlates perspective at last. Only in this way can people have a better understanding of the relationship between gender and discourse style.According to Verschueren (2000), language use is the very process of making linguistic choices consciously or unconsciously and language choice has to go with the context in which it is used. Context consists of communicative context and linguistic context. Contextual correlates of adaptability include all the ingredients of the communicative context with which linguistic choices have to be interadaptable. And communicative context is extra-linguistic context. It includes the physical world, the mental world and the social world. The physical world usually refers to temporal deixis and spatial deixis. The social world includes social settings or institutions, community-specific communicative norms. Culture is also an important part of the social world. The mental world refers to the cognitive and emotional factors such as speakers’personality, emotions, beliefs, desires or wishes and motivations or intentions, etc..Based on the previous study on this problem, the theory of contextual correlates adaptability and the theory of conversational analysis, with the American sitcom Friends as the data, qualitative as well as quantitative analysis are conducted in the present research so as to have another tentative study on gender and discourse style from the perspective of contextual correlates adaptability. The most important data of discourse strategies that represent the speaker’s discourse styles, including amount of speech, interruption, overlap, minimal response, hedges, tag questions and topic choice, etc., are collected and analyzed carefully with the purpose of finding out the relationship between discourse style and gender or non-gender factors by means of empirical study of some data from Friends.In specific communication, we can find that the style differences in male and female conversations are also constrained by such factors as setting, topic, speaker’s role relationships, speaker’s character and socio- cultural conventions, etc. apart from gender factor. Therefore, male and female discourse styles are relative, interactive and pluralistic. Only in a specific context and from a contextual correlates perspective can we better understand and interpret gender differences in speech communication. The conclusion of the previous research on this problem by binary-thinking scholars is one-sided and oversimplified and it can not explain many instances of language use in real conversations. Such a finding also reflects a gradual shift from static and binary thinking research to dynamic and pluralistic thinking research in language and gender study.The significance of the present study lies in the fact that it, as a tentative one, validates the application of Adaptation Theory in discourse style and succeeds in establishing a research model in gender discourse style from non-gender contextual correlates perspective at last.更多还原