Iryna Skoriak (Vinnytsia) Gender Research in Interactional Sociolinguistics

The study of how gender is manifest in language is a recent branch of linguistics and it has developed into a wide field.

Men communicate clearly with each other and so do women, but when the two opposites come together, communication becomes muddled. Men and women, on average, tend to use slightly different language styles. The differences are as follows:

- minimal responses: women use minimal responses, i.e. paralinguistic features such as ‘mhm’, “uh-huh” and ‘yeah’ very often in conversation meaning they are showing interest and being responsive , while men, on the other hand, generally use them less frequently and where they do, it is usually to show agreement.

- questions: for men, a question is usually a genuine request for information whereas with women it can often be a rhetorical means of engaging the other’s conversational contribution or of acquiring attention from others conversationally involved. Therefore women use questions more frequently.

- listening and attentiveness: it appears that women attach more weight than men to the importance of listening in conversation, which is inferred by women’s normally lower rate of interruption. Men, however, interrupt far more frequently with non-related topics.

- changing the topic of conversation: men tend to jump from topic to topic, but women tend to talk at length about one topic.

Thus, it's obvious that men and women communicate differently, but it doesn't mean that they can't understand each other. If each accepts how the other communicates and takes time to learn a new way of communicating, the differences can be bridged.

Torbas Iryna

The Concept 'Self' in the novel "Nice Work" by d. Lodge

By definition 'concept' is a cognitive unit of meaning— an abstract idea or a mental symbol sometimes defined as a "unit of knowledge," built from other units which act as a concept's characteristics. What we are particularly interested in is a linguistic concept which is a basic unit of reflection and interpretation of reality by human consciousness, a linguo-mental unit that has the plane of expression and the plane of content.

The concept 'self' is quite a complicated and extensive notion while its content comprises life priorities and world outlook, moral qualities and spiritual values, traits of character and professional interests.

In the novel "Nice Work" D. Lodge opposes two at first sight absolutely unlike personalities, people from two different 'worlds' - Robyn Penrose and Vic Wilcox.

Vic is a manager of an engineering firm, a real businessman with typical industrialistic views and qualities. “…come off it, no identity crises, please. Somebody has to earn a living...”[17]. He works and worries hard. His favourite motto is: "There is no such thing as a free lunch" [116]. Vic knows his job to perfection, has an innate capacity to be a leader, but his interests don't go further than the foundry and he is convinced that attending a university is simply a waste of time and money. “A waste of time and money, in my opinion, those conferences”[63].

Robyn is a young feminist university teacher, resourceful, responsible, energetic, self-confident and stylish. “…she privately concluded that she was better than most of her colleagues – more enthusiastic, more energetic, more productive”[52].“She has youth, she has confidence, she regrets nothing”[60]. Robyn is persistent, consistent is her beliefs, enjoys her work at the university but is completely ignorant in the field of industry.

These two people come across each other with mutual hostility and distrust, the two 'worlds' collide, but the outcome is promising - they influence each other's views and change each other's 'selves', which is represented with the help of various linguistic means skillfully used by the author to represent the concept 'self' variation in the novel under study.

Yakubovska Tanya