Conversation Analysis of an American talk show interview with Emma Watson: a focus on gender differences

This dissertation deals with conversation analysis (CA), a discipline that studies the structures behind social interaction between humans. An eye is put on the so-called ‘conversational styles’, meaning men’s speech and women’s speech. The first Chapter provides an introduction to this discipline (CA), with a focus on its practical and methodological issues. The second Chapter goes more into detail on gender issues, giving an account of the main differences in talking between men and women. Further, it deepens two aspects of conversation: on the one hand, politeness strategies, on the other, hedges and boosters. The third and last Chapter tries to put into practice what the two previous chapters are about. The chosen case study is an interview with the actress Emma Watson in a talk show, which is a semi-institutional context. Its aims are to provide a conversation analysis of a talk between a man and a woman, and to test if the differences in talking between the two sexes find application in this conversation, too.