Language and Occupation Theorists

Eakins and Eakins 1976-
Studied seven university meetings. They found that the men spoke for longer. The men's turns ranged from 10.66 seconds to 17.07 seconds, whereas the women's was from 3 seconds to 10 seconds. This suggests that the men were in power.


Edelsky 1981-
In a series of meetings of a university department's faculty committee, men took more and longer turns and did more joking, arguing, directing, and soliciting of responses during the structured segments of meetings. During the free for all parts of the meetings, women and men talk equally, and women joked, argued, directed, and solicited responses more than men.


Herbert and Straight 1989-
Compliments tend to flow from those of higher rank to those of lower rank.


Herring 1992-
In an email discussion which took place on a linguistics 'distribution list'. Five women and 30 men took part, even though women make up nearly half of the members of the linguistic society of America and 36% of subscribers to the list. Men's messages were twice as long, on average, as women's. women tended to use a personal voice, e.g. 'I am intrigued by your comment...'. The tone adopted by men who dominated the discussion was 'it is obvious that...'.


Holmes-
Women managers seem to be more likely to negotiate consensus than male managers. They are les likely to 'plough through the agenda', taking time to make sure everyone agrees with the decisions made.


Holmes 2005, Holmes and Marra 2002 -
Contrary to popular beliefs, women use just as much humour as men, and use it for the same functions, to control discourse and subordinates and to contest superiors, although they are more likely to encourage supportive and collaborative humour.


Hornyak 1995-
The shift from work talk to personal talk is always initiated by the highest ranked person in the room.


Tracy and Eisenberg 1990-1991-
When role-playing delivering criticism to a co-worker about errors in a business letter, men showed more concern for the feelings of the person if they were in the subordinate role, whereas women showed more concern when in the superior role.