Gender Similarities and Differences in the Usage of Stance Markers: A Study Based on Twenty TED Speeches

Abstract

The past few decades have witnessed the hot discussion concerning language and gender from various aspects, with the use of stance markers as one of the most vital angles. To find out the gender similarities and differences in the use of stance markers under the classification by Hyland, figure out the gender features and summarize the behind reasons, this article combines the qualitative and quantitative analysis together, conducts a detailed analysis on twenty TED speeches delivered by ten male and ten female lecturers, respectively. Finally, the study finds that firstly, there are no distinctive differences in the use of stance markers in the primary class proposed by Hyland named hedges, boosters, attitude markers and self-mention. But the female lecturers use stance makers more frequently on the whole. Secondly, in terms of secondary class which complemented by other scholars, still no obvious differences are found in terms of hedges and attitude markers. Then, for the use of boosters, the males prefer fact-asserting while the females tend to use certainty-indicating. As for the employment of self-mention markers, words indicating authority such as I are more frequently used by males and those contributing to solidarity between the speaker and audience such as we are more commonly applied by females. The discovery of gender similarities and differences involves various reasons, and it provides important implications for the study of oral English.