What Men and Women Do When They Talk About Love : A Sociolinguistic Analysis of" What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" By Raymond Carver

Authors

  • Mª Carmen Gómez Galisteo Camilo José Cela University

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.168

Keywords:

Discourse analysis, Raymond Carver, “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love”, sociolinguistics, cross-sex talk and married couples

Abstract

Many people, like the protagonist of Dorothy Parker’s short story “Too Bad,” wonder “what did married people talk about, anyway, when they were alone together?” Raymond Carver’s short story “What We Talk About When We Talk About Love” is the literary rendition of the ways in which married couples talk. This essay analyses this short story taking into account sociolinguistic aspects related to men’s and women’s linguistic behaviour and the speech strategies each gender uses, so as to explore if these characters accurately reflect real life speech patterns or not.

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References

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Published

29-05-2011

How to Cite

Gómez Galisteo, M. C. (2011). What Men and Women Do When They Talk About Love : A Sociolinguistic Analysis of" What We Talk About When We Talk About Love" By Raymond Carver. Journal of English Studies, 9, 125–141. https://doi.org/10.18172/jes.168

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Articles