Conflict, gender, and amount of talk

Abstract The present paper examines whether speakers’ gender affects how much they talk in conflictive discourse in Spanish — measured through number of words and number and mean length of interventions. We analyse role play data simulating two conflictive situations with varying levels of proximity between the participants. In addition to comparing female and male informants, we use a sociopsychological questionnaire to measure the informants’ conformity with traditional gender roles. Informants’ age was also analysed as an exploratory variable. We found that both gender and gender role conformity correlated with different measures of amount of talk. In general, men produced more words and more interventions than women, while women produced longer interventions, and this effect was stronger for more gender-conforming women. The observed gender differences are partially attributable to different orientations towards the resolution of the conflict and — unexpectedly — to men’s more frequent use of interactional features.