Gesprekken Tussen Vrouwen en Mannen

With respect to gender differences in language use, two theoretical positions can be distinguished: the cultural approach and the dominance view. In the first approach, communication between women and men is regarded as a special case of intercultural communication. In the second perspective, the social superiority of men is reflected in the details of everyday conversations, while women play a more submissive role. Although these two views can be seen as complementary in many respects, there is at least one point of contrast. In the dominance view, the typically male and female conversational styles are especially prominent in cross-sex conversations. In the cultural approach, the male and female styles are not considered to be sensitive to the sex of the addressee. With these two theoretical positions in mind, we analysed interviews from Dutch talk shows and current affairs programs. In both types of interviews, politeness strategies were analysed in relation to the sex of the addressee. The interviews in the current affairs programs were also analysed with respect to turn-taking mechanisms. Results show that two analyses confirm the dominance view, while the other two confirm neither the cultural approach nor the dominance view. In conclusion, no evidence was found for the position that communication between women and men is a special case of intercultural communication.