A Meta-Analytic Review of Gender Variations in Adults’ Language Use: Talkativeness, Affiliative Speech, and Assertive Speech.

Leaper and Ayres’ 2007 meta-analysis examined 63 published studies that were methodologically sound (e.g., actually sampled data instead of relying on intuition) and peer-reviewed in either journals or books. The authors examined not only the amount of words spoken by each gender but also categorized the amount of words spoken into two categories: affiliative speech, which is primarily concerned with the sociocultural relationship of the interlocutors (e.g., compliments, back channeling, and probing questions); and assertive speech, which is persuasive or controlling (e.g., criticism, explanations, and, in one case, a verbal threat). These two categories are similar to James & Drakich’s (1993) “cooperative” and “dominant” styles of speech. The authors ran separate tests for single-sex versus mixed-group results and also removed the outliers at 10% and 20%. Leaper & Ayres concluded that, overall, “men were significantly more talkative than women”; however, “as predicted, women used significantly more affiliative speech than men” and “men used significantly more assertive speech” (p. 351). These findings do not corrorborate James & Drakich’s (1993) findings. In certain contexts, Leaper & Ayres (2007) found women to be more talkative than men, notably when a child was present or children were the topic of conversation, and during self-disclosure. The authors note that these are stereotypically envisioned as female domains, and so women’s talkativeness fit into our society’s gendered norms.