Analyzing Gendered Speech Styles and Power Negotiation in Professional and Casual Face-to-Face and Digital Interactions: An Interactional Sociolinguistic Study of Politeness Strategies and Identity Construction

Abstract

This paper examines how gendered speech style is used as an interactional resource in negotiation of power and construction of identity in the workplace and non-work settings of both personal and online communication. The frame of the research is based on the modern sociolinguistic studies which develop the concept of gender as socially constructed and performed phenomenon, and specific to the institutional conventions and communicative contexts. The main aim of the research will be to investigate the use of politeness strategies, turn-taking, directives, modality, stance-taking, and multimodal cues as strategic methods to negotiate the authority and social relations by speakers. The study has a mixed-methods design, with a qualitative predominant approach on an interpretivist research paradigm methodologically. Using purposive sampling so that data are balanced in gender and can be compared contextually, data are gathered through natural interactions that occur in the workplace, such as professional meetings, casual conversation, WhatsApp messages, and Zoom interactions. The theory is based on the Interactional Sociolinguistics, Politeness Theory, and social constructionist approaches to gender and identity. The interactional discourse analysis is used to analyze the data with the assistance of the thematic coding and partial quantitative frequency analysis. The conclusions demonstrate that gendered speech styles are contextual and being tactical. Female interactional and emotional labor is carried out more by mitigation and alignment than by direct and authoritative forms, which are more common between men (especially in professional face-to-face environments). There is no evidence of the end of gendered power asymmetries in digital communication, which instead reconfigures them. On the whole, the analysis shows that gender alone does not predetermine power and identity, but it is the everyday interaction that does.