Women Talk: Conversation Between Women Friends

This book challenges the age–old myth that women′s talk is trivial and unimportant. Drawing on a corpus of spontaneous conversation between friends, Jennifer Coates demonstrates the richness and complexity of the language used in such talk, focusing on women′s use of hedges, questions and repetition. She shows how women use story–telling as a focus for discussing and re–evaluating social norms, and for the construction and maintenance of personal identity. At the level of conversational organization, Coates makes the claim that women friends draw on a collaborative model which enables them to construct talk jointly. She draws on post–structuralist theory to show the ways in which women′s talk constructs and maintains gender, and constructs and maintains friendship. Overall, the book builds up a picture of women′s friendship in the late twentieth century, and of the vital role played by language in these friendships.

Acknowledgements. Notes on the Transcription of the Conversations. Transription Conventions. 1. ′This is on tape you know′: The Origins of the Book. 2. ′She′s just a very very special person to me′: Women and Friendship. 3. ′We never stop Talking′: Talk and Women′s Friendships. 4. ′We talk about everything and anything′: An Overview of the Conversations. 5. ′D′you know what my mother did recently?′: Telling our Stories. 6. ′The Feminine shape....is more melding in together′: The Organization of Friendly Talk. 7. ′You know so I mean I probably...′: Hedges and Hedging. 8. ′It was dreadful wasn′t it′: Women and Questions. 9. ′I just kept drinking and drinking and drinking′: Repetition and Textual coherence. 10. ′Thank God I′m a woman′: The Construction of differing Femininities. 11. ′Talk′s absolutely fundamental′:Being a Friend. Appendices. Notes. Bibliography. Index.

Jennifer Coates isis Professor of English Language and Linguistics at University of Surrey, Roehampton.

"Coates′s book is an extraordinary study of the discourse of female friendships, based on recordings of a large number of naturally–occurring same–sex conversations among female and (for comparison) male friends, supplemented by ethnographic interviews with the same and other women, and analyzed by means of discourse analysis ... In empirical terms, Coates has provided a detailed analysis of the linguistic strategies making up this discourse of solidarity, the collaborative floor." Bent Preisler, University of Roskilde "While this text is important reading for specialists in discourse, it is accessible to lay readers as well, so it is both an important research text as well as a good tool to use in introducing students to discourse analysis" Timothy Frazer, Western Illinois University "Jennifer Coates celebrates and describes friendships and talk among women; at the same time, she provides an argument for feminist ethnographic research methods. She writes a clear, detailed and rich study based on the transcripts of 20 conversations among women, and on the transcripts of interviews with 15 women .... Women Talk is likely to become a pivotal publication.....This book offers a very useful conversation about women friends′ talk." Cheris Kramarae, University of Illinois