Naya Schulmeyer

1 Introduction 

Sociolinguistics, as a subdiscipline of linguistics, is, at its core, the study of language and how society, culture, and demographic factors have influenced – or are still influencing it by examining communication and its rules being used in real-world context, both consciously and unconsciously, to convey identity, relationships or power-dynamics. Human languages are already highly diverse in their structure but are simultaneously also significantly shaped by norms and social rules, which in turn are often singular to their respective communities. Sociolinguistics examines these influences through how they form and change language across the world to receive an insight into how it affects the manner one might perceive and interpret their environment and self.  

Pragmatics, as another branch of linguistics, focuses on how the context contributes meaning to words and sentences, transcending the literal semantic meaning of them in what they wish to express (Britannica, 2026). It studies the unspoken rules of conversation and thus similarly looks at what may violate these. An interruption is strictly defined as one such turn-taking violation in which one person starts to speak at a point where the current speaker has not yet reached a “Transition Relevance Place” like a natural pause or a syntactic completion (Hilton, 2018). Sociolinguistics then looks at who these people are, and if the pragmatic rules and mechanics are used differently by speakers from other social groups. It supplies the social theory about why a certain group might violate these conversational rules more or less than another.  

The general idea of men interrupting other speakers, especially women, more frequently than women do is not merely a matter of conversational etiquette, but a show of power dynamics within most patriarchal western societies itself. Particularly in professional settings, the ability to hold the floor correlates with perceives authority, assertiveness, and the ability to directly influence decision-making.  

2 Literature Review  

Studies such as West and Zimmerman (1975) or Anderson and Leaper (1998) have already examined this perceived phenomenon, all with varying results. While some like Crawford (1995) agree that usually, it is indeed men interrupting, other studies, especially those more recent, have found the opposite (Nohara, 1992) or describe no significant gender difference in the frequency of successful interruptions (Johnson, 1994). Anderson and Leaper (1998) conclude that interruptions are “influenced more by situational factors than by inherent individual differences between women and men”. Some driving factors this research brings forward include the relationship of the speakers, activity structure, and group size. At the same time, the authors raise concern about previous papers disproving a difference in genders or even faulting women for interrupting more frequently usually having a male first author, while those finding a gender difference faulting men for the most interruptions were typically written by a female first author. This observation leads the authors to conclude that a possible bias might be the root of these varying results. 

Anderson and Leaper (1998) also show that the definition of the term „interruption“ is essential for the outcome. The pragmatic theory of turn-taking is ruled by a sort of cooperative system of ‘floor rights’. Through syntactic closure and nonverbal cues, speakers signal the end of their turn. This is the only place a legitimate turn-taking transition can occur. Speaking before these boundaries is an intrusive interruption and breaks the unspoken rules of pragmatics, thus usually being regarded as rude or ill-mannered. However, pragmatics alone cannot explain why these violations occur, hence this is where sociolinguistics provides the possible explanations about why some social groups might be more willing than others to disregard the rules. Sociolinguistic theories of dominance suggest that speakers who perceive themselves of higher social status, usually, in most western countries, males, may feel entitled to dismiss these pragmatic turn-taking rules more often (Anderson and Leaper, 1998). This paper regards only “’successful interruptions’ whereby the interrupting speaker successfully takes over the conversational floor” (Anderson and Leaper, 227) and does not classify back channelling, minimal responses or questions for clarification as interruptions. 

In addition, they illustrate that gender may not be the only speaker-related factor. Age, relationship, and other environmental factors may affect the frequency and degree of success of interruptions, though this paper will focus solely on gender, which is treated as a societal category independent of the biological sex. 

3 Methodology 

The results of this study are based on the spoken texts of ICE-AUS, which consists of 300 spoken texts. We have used AntConc’s Version 3.5.9 to find every overlap within the corpora, searching for “<[“, which resulted in a total of 6757 hits. Those hits were exported into Excel and randomised, taking the first 200 results and filtering out any back channelling, minimal responses or questions for clarification that were marked as interruption, as well as any results not including any interruption at all, which yielded a total of 20 results of successful interruptions to analyse. These results were then examined in terms of gender, the relationship, and the age of the original speaker and the interrupter using the meta-data of the corpus. The age difference was labelled as equal when it was under one year or both age ranges given were the same. A total of 3 interrupters could not be assigned a gender through the meta-data; Thus, these results were removed from any further analysis.   

4 Results 

Out of the 20 results we analysed, 14 were female and six were male.  

Looking at other factors, most of the interruptions happened when the interlocuters were friends or colleagues.  

5 Discussion 

While the results seem to confirm, at first glance, that authors such as Nohara (1992) were right in their findings of women being the more frequent interrupters, gender seems only secondary when looking at the data. Interruptions appear to be closer tied to the relationship between speaker and interrupter, their respective age, and a possible hierarchy. The analysis has revealed especially younger people in their early to mid-twenties to be the most frequent interrupters, most of the time when conversing within their own friend groups or with other close acquaintances such as colleagues.  

It is, however, very important to note that out of the 200 analysed interruptions, only 20 were actual interruption. Most overlaps in speech were found to be simple back channelling such as ‘Mhm’, ‘Yeah’ or ‘Okay’, a way for the listener to signal their attention or agreement to the speaker. These noises and simple expressions made up most overlaps in speech marked as an interruption, while only a small percentage were successful interruptions.  

6 Conclusion 

The research has brought to light that the generalisation of males making up the majority of interrupters is, indeed, false. Instead, women were the ones taking this place for themselves, although analysis has also revealed gender not being the biggest factor in who interrupts and who gets interrupted. Just like Anderson and Leaper (1998), our results make visible that the relationship between speakers and their age are far more important factors to consider than their gender. Most interruptions happen between friends in their early adulthood. A possible explanation for this imbalance when looking at the relationships is the differentiating perception of interruptions. It can be assumed that, while interruptions are normally regarded as rude or ill-mannered when they happen towards strangers, this view does not carry into friendships. In a group of friends, interruptions are, in many cases, not seen as rude at all, that is for a certain type of interruptions. Within the data analysed in conversations among friends, many interruptions were caused due to the interrupting person ending the other person’s sentence or idea. Among friends this is perceived as a sign of belonging and connection and therefor may even be regarded as a positive phenomenon. In contrast, in situations of work or business transaction such kind of behaviour is seen as disrespectful. 

Despite the results of this research aligning with prior papers such as Anderson and Leaper (1998), there are limitations worth mentioning. First, the only corpus used was the Australian spoken one. Thus, it cannot be ruled out to be a result singular to Australians. It cannot be said to be representative of all societies and languages globally with good conscience. Secondly, the amount of data was rather small and thus starkly limited. Even though 200 results of interruptions were originally taken, only 20 of those could be used for the research of this paper. This, too, makes it less representative of the global world, and even of Australian society.  

References 

Anderson, K. J.; Leaper, C.: Meta-Analyses of Gender Effects on Conversational Interruption: Who‚ What‚ When‚ Where‚ and How University of California, Santa Cruz, 1998 

Britannica, 2026  

Crawford, M.: Talking Difference: On Gender and Language Cambridge University, 1995  

Nohara, M.: Sex differences in interruption: An experimental reevaluation University of Connecticut, 1992  

Johnson, J. E. V.: Decision Making, Risk and Gender: Are Managers Different? British Academy of Management,1994  

Hilton, K.: What does an interruption sound like? Stanford University, 2018  

Zimmerman‚ D. H.‚ & West‚ C. (1975). Sex roles‚ interruptions and silences in conversation. In B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.) ‚ Language and sex: Difference and dominance. Rowley‚ MA: Newbury House.