AN ANALYSIS OF WOMEN'S LINGUISTIC FEATURES AND LINGUISTIC BEHAVIORS PRODUCED BY FEMALE HOST IN THE ELLEN SHOW IN SAME-GENDER AND CROSS-GENDER CONVERSATIONS

This study mainly concerns on women’s linguistic features proposed by Lakoff (1975) and linguistic behaviors proposed by Nordenstam (1992) found in female host’s speech in The Ellen Show. The data are taken from two conversations: same-gender conversation (female-female) and mix-gender conversation (female-male).
Qualitative research is applied to explain and discuss the findings by using words. The data are all words, phrases or sentences which represent women’s linguistic features and linguistic behavior used by Ellen in The Ellen Show and taken from Youtube.com. The writer collects, transcribes, classifies, observes, analyzes and interprets the data by herself. The data collection and data analysis is using Cresswell’s (2014) general inductive model of analysis.
In this study, the writer found that: (a) Ellen produced 18 lexical hedges and fillers, 3 rising intonation on declarative, 1 empty adjective, 8 intensifiers, 6 hypercorrect grammars, and 12 emphatic stresses in same-gender conversation; while in mix-gender conversation, she produced 33 lexical hedges or fillers, 2 rising intonation on declaratives, 4 empty adjectives, 5 intensifiers, 11 hypercorrect grammars, 2 super polite forms and 9 emphatic stresses; (b) In same gender conversation, Ellen produced 25 linguistic behaviors: 7 topic raisings, 6 interruptions or simultaneous speeches and 12 minimal responses; while In cross-gender conversation, Ellen raised new topics 9 times, interrupted or overlapped 2 times and produced back-channel 9 times. The findings above imply that the gender of the interlocutors influences the way how the speaker produces linguistic features and linguistic behaviors.