Gender aspects of discourse markers in english spoken popular-science discourse (based on TED talks)
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17308/lic/1680-5755/2023/2/66-74Keywords:
gender, popular-science discourse, discourse markers, TED talks, gender studiesAbstract
The article focuses on gender aspects of interactional discourse markers in the English popular-science genre of TED Talks. The purpose of this study is to identify the influence of gender on the use of interactional discourse markers in the popular-science genre of TED Talks. The researched data is analyzed qualitatively and quantitatively. The research is based on 20 English texts of TED talks (10 male and 10 female ones). All lectures focus on the problems of education and online learning. The overall study materials comprise about 50 000 words. To ensure the reliability of the conclusions, we calculated the frequency of discourse markers per 1000 words. In the course of the study, we used the methods of discourse analysis as well as comparative and quantitative methods. We registered 4177 interactional discourse markers in the analyzed texts: 2151ones were used in male lectures and 2026 – in female lectures. According to the quantitative analysis, interactional discourse markers are used more often by women (frequency is 89 cases per 1000 words) than by men (78,9 cases). The results of this study can be applied in the theoretical courses of gender linguistics, sociolinguistics and in English learning practice. Quantitative and qualitative analyses have proved the influence of discourse (in terms of the speech genre) and personal factors (including gender and social status) on the frequency of certain subtypes of discourse markers. It is shown that men tend to more often use performatives, reader-oriented markers, emotional markers and intensifiers, whereas women prefer authorizing constructions, signals of uncertainty, signals of confidence, signals with additional meanings. The current results in general prove the data found by previous English gender studies.
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