Communicative patterns among homosexual and heterosexual couples : a qualitative study

Abstract

For years, research on the contrasting speech styles of men and women has been a major concern in the sociolinguistic field. Researchers such as Maltz and Borker (1982) and Tannen (1990) have focused on the study of gender related discourse, highlighting the ways in which misunderstandings may arise among men and women in relationships. Miscommunication theories, however, seem to focus solely on heterosexuals. It is often assumed that gays and lesbians simply adopt the speech style of the opposite sex, with the result that all gay men speak like women, and all lesbians talk like men. Only recently, with the rise of Lavender Linguistics and Queer Theory, has discourse analysis come out of its closet. Although research on the linguistic features of gays and lesbians is on the rise, the discourse of homosexual couples often remains disregarded. This is partly due to homophobic attitudes towards gays and lesbians, making it difficult to gather authentic data. For the purpose of this dissertation, a qualitative research method in the form of six in depth interviews was conducted. Two gay male couples, two lesbian couples and two heterosexual couples were video recorded in order to ensure thorough discourse analysis. The main objective of this dissertation is to compare and contrast patterns of interaction among homosexual and heterosexual couples. Do homosexual and heterosexual couples engage in the same linguistic and paralinguistic features when interacting with one another? How do they go about resolving an argument? Are instances of miscommunication more or less likely to occur in homosexual relationships? The results obtained from this study prove that the speech styles of heterosexual men and women, as well as gays and lesbians do, in fact, differ. Despite this, however, the data collected also revealed that sexual orientation does not affect relational communication.