Status Structures and Turn-taking: An Examination of Gender, Formal Position, and Conversational Rules in Mock Organizations

• In Event: 142 - Regular Session. Group Processes

Abstract

This paper investigates turn-taking structures in groups that systematically vary in formal and informal status. We examine task conversations within 32 three-person mock organizations that varied in gender composition and the degree of external legitimacy associated with the authority structure. Each group had a Supervisor (male or female) and two Assistants (both male and both female). We use turn-taking categories developed by Gibson (2003) called participation shifts (P-shifts) to identify how status gets interactionally accomplished within these discussions. These p-shift structures catalog all possible forms of conversational adjacency pairs, or behavioral interchange patterns, which can categorize conversational floor exchanges. Random effects logit models identify the effects of formal position (supervisor versus subordinate), gender, and group structure on various forms of participation shifts. We find strong effects of formal authority on these conversational markers of status. In contrast, few gender patterns and influences emerge at the turn – actor’s position level. Gender composition of the group does shape the odds of a turn taking a certain participation shift form. Assistant gender did systematically impact the use of certain structures of floor exchange. These findings appear consistent with findings in the literature about the greater relative importance of gender of the less powerful person in an interaction (e.g., Molm 1986) as well as the greater importance of the power of the target, compared to the power of the initiator within hierarchical exchanges (e.g., Kollock, Blumstein and Schwartz 1985; Smith-Lovin and Brody 1989).

Authors

• Bryan Christopher Cannon, University of Georgia

• Dawn T. Robinson, University of Georgia