English Investigation

BY: Laura, Cally & Peifei

Hypothesis and Aim

• Hypothesis: • Men use more expletives than women.

• Aim: • We are looking to see whether if men uses more taboo language in

everyday conversation in comparison to women.

Method

1. We decided to investigate by watching episodes of Come Dine With Me where the guests were arguing and bickering over the quality of the food of one of the contestants. This conjures emotional outbreaks from the contestants as they may feel personally victimised as people are protesting the event.

2. We made a tally of the amount of times men and women used expletives in a five minute clip.

3. We watched several videos to give us a more generalisable result.

Data Video Men Women 1 IIII I2 III II3 VI I4 IX III5TOTAL

Conclusion • We found that on average, men swore nearly three times more than

women, therefore proving our hypothesis. • However, this result may not be entirely accurate due to the fact that

we analysed reality TV. Come Dine With Me may have been scripted; the conversations should have been realistically constructed, but could not be entirely accurate to everyday conversation. People may have changed their behaviour accordingly because they are aware that people are watching and they want to appear more socially acceptable and hence conform to the stereotypes of the society in the way that ‘women should not swear’.

Evaluation

• In order to get a more accurate insight into everyday speech, we think next time we should look into real conversation between friends or family, in their natural environment. This would eliminate the chance of demand characteristics displayed by the participant.

• Also, we feel like next time we should analyse longer conversations as some people take a while to show their ‘true colours’, this way, we are more likely to get results that are more precise.