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sequence. Typical expression to communicate equality would be something, such as
“I‟ve done the same thing many times,” “I‟ve felt the same way,” and “Something like that happened to me too and I felt like you do.” Based on Hall
and Langellier as cited in Wood, 1993b, growing out of the quest for equality is a participatory mode of interaction in which communicators respond to and build
on each other‟s ideas in the process of conversing. The speakers have the same opportunity to give their opinion and share their feelings.
B. Showing Support
Women often express their understanding and sympathy with a friend‟s
feelings to demonstrate and show support to each other. There are some communicative clues to show that women understand and support the speaker,
such as “Oh, you must feel terrible,” “I really hear what you are saying,” and “I think you did the right thing.”
C. Attention to the Relationship Level
Beck and Tannen as cited in Wood, 1993 believe that in conversations between women, it is natural to hear a number of questions that probe for greater
understanding of feelings and perceptions surrounding the subject of talk. It can be seen that the relationship level of the talk focuses on feelings and the
relationship between communicators rather than on the content of messages. The content of the talk deals
with some expressions to understand the speaker‟s perspective, but usually not without serious attention to the feelings involved. The
probes that usually used by the listener are “Tell me more about what happened,” “How did you feel when it occurred?” and “Do you think it was deliberate?”
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D. Conversational Maintenance Work
This involves efforts to sustain conversation by inviting others to speak and by prompting them to elaborate their experiences. Women, for instance, ask a
number of questions that initiate topics for others, such as “How was your day?”
“Tell me about your meeting,” and “Did anything interesting happen on your trip?” Those kinds of utterances above open the door for others to speak and to
maintain interaction between the speakers.
E. Responsiveness
Women usually respond in some ways to what others say. A woman might say “Tell me more,” “That‟s interesting,” sometimes, she will only nod and
use eye contact to signal the addressee that she is engaged in the conversation, or perhaps she will ask a question. Responsiveness reflects the tendencies to care
about others and to make them feel valued and included Lakoff, 1975. It also affirms another person and encourages elaboration by showing interest in what
was said. This kind of responsiveness is shown by women in aim to keep the speaker continue the story.
F. Tentativeness
This may be expressed in a number of forms. Sometimes, women use verbal hedges such as “I kind of feel you may be overreacting.” In other
situations, they qualify statements by saying “I‟m probably not the best judge of
this, but…” Another way to keep talk provisional is to use a question tag statement. The examples of this feature are
“That was a pretty good movie, wasn‟t
