Draft 1 Introduction

1. INTRODUCTION
Hypothesis: What are the linguistic differences between male and female talkshow hosts, with a
specific focus on The Graham Norton Show and Ellen?
As I teenager I enjoy finding out what my favourite celebrities have been up to and am able to do
this through watching different talkshows. I think talkshows can be entertaining and allow singers
and actors to inform their fans about upcoming and current projects. My favourite talkshows are
The Graham Norton Show and Ellen because Graham Norton and Ellen DeGeneres have a great
sense of humour and I have sound knowledge of the way both hosts conduct their interviews. For
my investigation I am going to select an interview from both talkshows that include the same
interviewee. I aim to investigate language and gender as I am interested to see how male and female
interviewers conduct interviews differently.
I would certainly expect there to be many similarities and differences in the way both hosts use
language in their interviews. I predict that both Graham Norton and Ellen DeGeneres will use a
similar range of vocabulary as they have a similar target audience for their shows and therefore they
are unable to use explicit or controversial language. However I also believe they will both try to use
certain types of lexis in order to make their show unique and entertain their audience. In addition, as
Norton is British and DeGeneres is American I will pay extra attention to the differences in their
dialect. Furthermore, the use of linguistics within the interview will depend on the topic of
conversation.
With reference to the variable s in my study, my investigation will be synchronic as it focuses on
language study in a specific context during the same period of time. Consequently I will be focusing a
great deal on lexis, semantics and discourse throughout the interview as well as potentially looking
at pragmatics and phonology. I will be looking at how Norton and DeGeneres phrase similar
questions and see how they structure their interviews differently.
The purpose of my investigation is exemplification as I will be providing examples of the way
linguistics are used by two different interviewers when looking at language and gender. To support
my findings I will be using language and gender theorists such as Robin Lakoff and Deborah Tannen.
At the end of my investigation I plan to reach objective conclusions so that if anyone repeated my
study they would find the same inferences.