GENDER CONVERSATIONAL STYLES IN WORKPLACE CONTEXT

This study deals with gender conversational styles in workplace context. The
object of this study were the utterances of male and female staff. It specially
focused on the features of conversational style used by male and female staff in
their workplace, how are the features of conversational styles realized by male and
female staff in workplace, and why are the features of conversational styles used
by male and female staff as the ways they are. The subject of this study were 4
male staff and 4 female staff in Internal Auditor Unit at Universitas Islam Negeri
Sumatera Utara.The data were analyzed by using theory of the features of
conversational styles proposed by Swann (2000:225). This study used descriptive
qualitative method. Based on the data analysis, it was found that firstly, all the
features of conversational style were used by male and female staff. Namely:
amount of talk, interruption, conversational support, tentativeness and
compliment. The result showed that the most dominant feature of conversational
style realized by female staff was amount of talk, while male was interruption.
Secondly, there were different way of communication during conversation
between male and female staff in their workplace. Looking at the realization of
conversational style of male and female staff, the female staff realized more than
male staff during the conversation. Thirdly, there are 4 reasons of male and
female staff used different style in conversation, there were status vs support,
independence vs intimacy, politeness vs politeness, confirmation vs confirmation.
And different characteristics which also lead them having different style in
conversation.