Gender, Power, and Interruption: A Corpus-Based Study of Mixed-Gender Interaction

Abstract

Interruptions act as an important discourse characteristic that shows hidden patterns of gender, power, dominance, and communicative agreement. However, the traditional gender analysis has often shown a behavior that is patriarchal in nature whereas, the new cross-cultural data show the sequences differ in cultural and linguistic settings. Different datasets taken from different sociocultural and discourse contexts, including Arab political television debates, Persian EFL classroom dyads, Congressional hearings whereas, Egyptian media talk shows, mixed-gender focus groups. Therefore, this corpus-based study scrutinizes into gendered action over seven datasets. Though Thai educational settings and multiparty workplace meetings occupy an expressive and descriptive corpus linguistic method influenced by the help of conversation analysis and evaluative discourse viewpoints. This study examines kinds, frequencies, and pragmatic purposes of breaks in mixed-gender communications. The consequences display contextual whereas Persian EFL learners displayed additional balanced interruption designs, Arab political debates, and Egyptian programs introduced the male dominated interventions as well as multiparty gatherings present in cooperative and competitive approaches. Approaches such as Thai educational settings, formed by cultural standards of regard, presented minimal female confident interruptions across all data sets. However, women were interrupted more often in public and organized settings. The analysis determines that interruption actions are not naturally gendered but instead formed by interactional objectives, issue delicacy, cultural standards organizational power systems, and discourse kind. The end results emphasize the importance of corpus-based methodologies in the finding of subtle international designs.

Keywords: Discourse Analysis, Corpus Linguistics, Mixed-Gender Talk, Power Relations