Resumen de Gender in Job interviews: some implications of verbal interactions of women and men

Iris E. W. M. Bogaers

• The Job interview can be seen äs a Situation in which gender-specific communicative rules might have a severe social impact. Using four interviews drawn from a larger corpus of actual Job Interviews recorded in several Dutch companies, this study examines whether the speech patterns of the dominant, male, group prove to be the norm in mixed-gender Job Interviews. The variables of initiation/response behavior, Interruption, and laughter on the pari of each participant are analyzed. Linguistic features that reflect dominance are examined in all four groups (Interviewers and applicants of each sex) and positioned on a scale of conversational styles ranging from most dominant to nondominant. The interaction of gender and Status yields a "sociolinguistic hierarchy" in which Interviewers rank above applicants, and within each group, males rank above females. This offers support for the argument that a higher-status position does not result äs much in a dominant speech style for women äs it does for men. Moreover, a lower-status position does not lead äs much to a subordinate speech style in men äs it does for women. It is argued therefore that not only in everyday conversation, but also in formal speech, differences in sex-specific subcultural communicative rules äs well äs differences in the communication patterns of different-status persons play an important r öle in the organization of conversations.