Women Talk: Conversation Between Women Friends - Softcover

Coates, Jennifer

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0631182535 ISBN 13: 9780631182535

Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell, 1991

Synopsis

This book challenges the age-old myth that women's talk is trivial and unimportant. Drawing on a corpus of spontaneous conversation between friends, Jennifer Coates demonstrates the richness and complexity of the language used in such talk, focusing on women's use of hedges, questions and repetition.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

This book challenges the age-old myth that women's talk is trivial and unimportant. Drawing on a corpus of spontaneous conversation between friends, Jennifer Coates demonstrates the richness and complexity of the language used in such talk, focusing on women's use of hedges, questions and repetition. She shows how women use story-telling as a focus for discussing and re-evaluating social norms, and for the construction and maintenance of personal identity.

At the level of conversational organization, Coates makes the claim that women friends draw on a collaborative model which enables them to construct talk jointly. She draws on post-structuralist theory to show the ways in which women's talk constructs and maintains gender, and constructs and maintains friendship. Overall, the book builds up a picture of women's friendship in the late twentieth century, and of the vital role played by language in these friendships.

About the Author:

Jennifer Coates isis Professor of English Language and Linguistics at University of Surrey, Roehampton.

About this edition

• Publisher: Wiley-Blackwell
• Publication date: 1991
• ISBN 10: 0631182535
• ISBN 13: 9780631182535
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 352