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Article published In:
Interaction Studies
Vol. 21:2 (2020) ► pp.187–199

Impact of age and gender on frequency of interruption in dyadic interviews

| King Saud University

This paper investigates whether the gender and/or age of interviewees in dyadic interviews influences frequency of speech interruption of young female interviewers. Forty female students at King Faisal University (KFU) and forty interviewees participated in the study. The author compared the number of interruptions per ten minutes of conversation made by interviewees belonging to four categories: young females, young males, older females, and older males. The author hypothesized that older male interviewees interrupt young female interviewers more than younger male and female interviewees. Additionally, the author hypothesized that older female interviewees interrupt young female interviewers more than young female interviewees. The results did not support the hypothesis that males interrupt females more often. Female participants made significantly more interruptions than male participants. The data do not support the hypothesis that older interviewees interrupt their interviewers more frequently than younger interviewees.

Keywords: interruption, language and gender, language variation, turn-taking, dominance
Article outline
  • Impact of age and gender on frequency of interruption in dyadic interviews
  • Turn-taking irregularities
  • Who interrupts more, males or females?
  • Contribution of the current study
  • Data and methodology
    • Data
    • Participants
    • Methodology
  • Results
  • Discussion
  • Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 20 May 2020
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/is.17011.alm
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