(A) Discussion:
(i) Male to Male Conversation:
In Saudi community there is a vast cultural difference between men and women. Women are not as liberal in all the aspects of life as men are and this is very crucial in understanding their conversational pattern.
In this case study we can see that men would interrupt in a more frequent rate. Even in 30 minutes time, they would interrupt at least 40 times. As men always get bored of one topic, men like changing from topic to topic. One would interrupt when he want to change to another topic. For example, he would say, “Don’t talk about this, shall we talk about other things. In this way, interruption occurs more frequently.
One reason for this phenomenon is that men are …show more content…
Women try to support each other or collaborate with each other by inserting interruption. They would support each other’s turn by interrupting some supportive sentences, but not trying to dominate the speaker’s floor. For example, women would use “that’s right”, or “ Yes” ,… . Women would respect each other’s turn and they would try to wait until the end of one’s sentence. So, women’s talk would be in a relatively lower frequency of interruption than that of men. Therefore, women’s maximum frequency of interruption is 20, while men’s minimum frequency of interruption is 40 in a given …show more content…
Women would respect each other’s turn and try not to interrupt frequently. Women may interrupt when they want to express their view by asking, “Have you finished your sentence”? While men are not keen on listening, they would simply stop current speaker by giving her a solution, like saying, ”It’s all too easy, I suggest you do ….” . All these reasons help to explain why men interrupt women more.
(B) Conclusion:
The researcher has come across the following results:
1. The data revealed that men interrupt more than women in Saudi society and thus proves the researcher’s hypothesis. This is also supported by recent study (reported in West and Zimmerman, 1983), in which the researcher found that the men interrupted more often than the women (the average was 75 per cent male interruptions to 25 per cent female). In both same-sex interaction and cross-sex interaction, men seem to interrupt more than women do. Yet, for the same-sex interaction, men are holding the same authority and so, the ratio of the frequency of interruption would be much similar to each other.
2. Surprisingly, women do not seem to interrupt as much as their reputation goes that as women talk more, accordingly, they would interrupt more.
3. So, it is concluded that the gender of the participants has important conversational consequences and that interruptions are one of the ways on which power relations may be worked