Pamela Fishman

Pamela Fishman

She theorised the 'division of labour in conversations'. Her research stretched across the '70s through the '90s.

Pamela Fishman conducted an experiment and involved listening to fifty-two hours of pre-recorded conversations between young American couples. Five out of the six subjects were attending graduate school; all subjects were either feminists or sympathetic to the women’s movement, were white, between the ages of twenty-five and thirty-five. Fishman listened to recordings and concentrated on two characteristics common in women’s dialect, including tag questions.

Her theory states that in mixed sex conversations women use more questions than men. She says that women uses tag questions such as “you know” to gain power in the conversation rather than lack of conversational awareness. She also says that women use questions so that the man will respond because men are less likely to respond to a declarative or give a minimal response. She also states that women are more likely to use minimal responses to signal their active involvement.