Chapter 4 Data Analysis (1): Constructions of Agreement
2. Impacts of Hearer’s Gender on HA vs
4.3.5.2. HA vs. HA+SM by Degrees
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(2) When MM and MF are compared by the comparison between WOC and WC in HA and SM, significant difference between WOC and WC is only found in MF’s SM. It means that male speakers may be influenced by female hearers’ gender and make SM more forceful. Compared with HA, which makes agreement directly, SM may express agreement more indirectly. Male speakers, to prevent their SMs from being mistaken for disagreement, they make much more WOC than WC to female hearers, because they may think that women dislike conflict and
inharmonic communication.
(3) The most interesting finding locates on the comparisons between FF and FM whose significant differences are in a complementary distribution. FF’s significant differences occur in SM, while FM’s significant differences occur in HA. The results suggest that women maximize the degrees of SM in same-sex
conversations, while they maximized the degrees of HA in cross-sex conversations.
In other words, hearer’s gender is a significant factor to influence women’s usage of HA and SM. For FF, because the interlocutors are both women who may obey Q-Principle (Horn, 1984), they may keep building on each other’s contribution by adding intensifiers, explanation, and specification…etc. in the usage of SM to make agreement more forceful in order to show politeness and solidarity. But for FM, female speakers mainly rely on HA, but not SM, to make agreement. Thus, the maximization of agreement is mostly done in HAs in cross-sex contexts.
4.3.5.2. HA vs. HA+SM by Degrees
In this section, comparisons between HA+SM with degrees and HA with degrees are made.
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Table 35 shows the results of HA and HA+SM with subjects as a whole by degrees. Related analyses and discussions are given after the presentation of Table 35.
Table 35. Head act with supportive moves versus head act without supportive moves with degrees
(WOC= Without Contingency; WC= With Contingency; HA= Head Act;
SM= Supportive Moves; Numbers in parentheses are frequencies.) Categories
(1) Table 35 shows that in HA and HA+SM, WOCs are significantly different from WCs (P=.003and P=.002, respectively). It means that no matter HA with or
without SM behind, people use WOC to make agreement most of time. In addition, no matter in HA or HA+SM, upgrading degree is used significantly more than preserving degree (for HA, P=.021; for HA+SM, P=.008). Like what have been mentioned above, through obeying politeness principles (Brown and Levinson, 1978), people may strengthen the degree of agreement in order to satisfy hearer’s want to be supported and agreed with.
(2) When HA and HA+SM are compared, upgrading HA is significantly more than upgrading HA+SM (P=.011). Also, preserving HA is significantly more than preserving HA+SM (P=.006). Perhaps it is because that basically, tokens of HA are much more than tokens of HA+SM (65 to 33). In other words, this pattern is caused by extremely different frequencies of HA and HA+SM.
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(3) An interesting finding is located in the use of mixed agreement. HA+SM with mixing degree is significantly more than HA with mixing degree (P=.003). It seems that when people apply HA, they rarely change degrees of agreement. In other words, when agreement is made by HA which is as the core of agreeing, the inner degrees of agreement are stable and rarely changed. By contrast, HA+SM is made as mixed agreement more than HA is. It may be because SM behind are as adjuncts to modify the strength of agreement in HA, the core of agreement. Hence, the degrees of agreement on HA+SM would be more unstable and changeable.
4.3.5.2.2. Impacts of Gender on HA vs. HA+SM by Degrees
This section presents comparisons between HA+SM and HA with degrees by gender. Table 36 shows the results by speaker’s gender and by hearer’s gender. When both speaker’s and hearer’s genders are concerned, significant differences are hardly found. Therefore, they are not analyzed here.
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Table 36. Head act with supportive moves versus head act without supportive moves with degrees by speaker’s gender and by hearer’s gender (WOC= Without Contingency; WC= With Contingency; HA= Head Act; SM= Supportive Moves; Numbers in parentheses are frequencies.)
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1. Impacts of Speaker’s Gender on HA vs. HA+SM by Degrees
(1) No matter in the use of HA or HA+SM by degrees, speaker’s gender has no impact on the use of either WOC or WC. In other words, male speakers and female speakers have similar frequencies on the use of HA’s WOC, of HA’s WC, of HA+SM’s WOC, and of HA+SM’s WOC.
(2) When WOC and WC are compared, significant differences are only found in data of female speakers. No matter in the use of HA or in the use of HA+SM, women’s WOCs are significantly more frequently performed than their WCs (for HA, P=.012; for HA+SM, P=.033). The discussion from categories of agreement mentioned above concludes that HA should be clear enough to show agreement.
People who add SMs behind may consider that they are not polite enough if they make agreement by using HA only. In other words, the structure of HA+SMs is a very polite form because speakers maximize their effort to fulfill hearers’ wants to be agreed by adding SMs behind. That is, according to the Generosity Maxim and the Tact Maxim of politeness principle (Leech, 1983), a way to show politeness is to maximize self’s cost and other’s benefit. This table shows that female speakers, not afraid of HA+SMs’ structurally high redundancy, frequently make HA+SMs more forceful, and avoid making HA+SMs weakened. This pattern is expected because in many previous studies (Tannen, 1994; Woods, 1997), it is verified that women, not men, are concluded as the one who are more hearer-oriented and who emphasizes on solidarity and rapport in verbal exchange. By contrast, for the comparison between WOC and WC, no significant difference is located in men’s data, either in HA or in HA+SM. It means that WOC and WC make no difference to male speakers.
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2. Impacts of Hearer’s Gender on HA vs. HA+SM by Degrees
(1) No matter in the data of HA or HA+SM by degrees, hearer’s gender has no impact on people’s use of either WOC or WC. In other words, male hearers and female hearers receive similar frequencies on the data of HA’s WOC, of HA’s WC, of HA+SM’s WOC, and of HA+SM’s WOC.
(2) Statistic results of hearer’s gender are similar to those of speaker’s gender.
However, there is an exception. That is, male hearers have significant difference between WOC and WC of HA+SM (P=.038). It means that when people make agreement by HA+SM, they rarely make it downgrading.
(3) For female hearers’ pattern, repeating female speaker’s results, no matter HA with SM behind or not, WOC is significantly different from WC. In other words, women rarely provide and receive downgrading HA+SM and HA. Like what have been mentioned above, people may think that female hearers do not like weakened agreements which may cause conflict or even communication broken-down.