The Role of Gender in Verbal Disagreement: A Study of Disagreement Strategies Employed by Hungarian Undergraduate Students

Abstract

The aim of the paper is to present the results of a study on the interplay of gender and disagreement strategies employed by Hungarian undergraduate students. The data for analysis is a corpus of oral face-to-face dyadic interactions; the methodology makes use of both qualitative and quantitative tools and involves identifying disagreement strategies on the basis of previous research as well as patterns emerging from the corpus. The results of the study contradict previous claims that in comparison to men, women disagree less frequently and, when they do disagree, they employ less direct strategies