Features of Power in Women’s Discourse with reference to David Mamet’s Oleanna, Sam Shepard’s Simpatico, Mohammad Sedqi’s The Wall and the Ivy, and Mohammad El-Gamal’s Two in One

Abstract

This dissertation is motivated by outdated assumptions in the literature equating men’s linguistic strategies with power when men and women disagree about an issue, even if they use the same strategies. Most of the literature has failed to acknowledge the ways in which women use power in their conversational style. In essence, the researcher refutes earlier associations between less-powerful linguistic strategies and women conversational style. The main objective of this study is to investigate how females exercise conversational control and how they manage competitive interactional style. This has been achieved by analyzing features of power used by females to maintain and increase their power and status. It also investigates aspects of similarities and differences of female discourse of power in Egyptian Arabic and American English dramatic dialogues under study. The most significant finding of this study is that females interact competitively and exercise conversational power over the male co-participants and practice one-upmanship on each other in ways which do not promote solidarity. Further, both Egyptian females and American females use the same communicative strategies with varying degrees due to social and cultural differences. In addition, communicative strategies are situation and role-based rather than gender-based.