Staying on topic, changing the topic: language and gender in the 1995 Louisiana governor's race

This study examines the gendered use of topic shifting within an electoral community of practice of ten candidates for the governor of Louisiana (three female, seven male) during two political debates. Despite gender, the candidates shared the same communicative goals of building camaraderie with voters as well as distinguishing themselves from each other within these debates. Due to these shared goals, the debate context provided a type of baseline setting to explore whether or not previously established language and gender patterns, such as male communicative goals being generally competitive and female goals being generally collaborative, hold in a public forum. Overall, topic shifting has tended to be seen as a conversational control mechanism associated with competition and male patterns of speech. However, meta-topic shifting (i.e., shifting the topic from a particular educational plan to education in general) has been seen as a collaborative strategy associated with female speech. The findings on men's speech and topic shifting did not support previous research; however, the findings on women's speech and meta-topic shifting did support previous research.