Investigating Syntactical and Lexical Complexity in Gendered and Same-Sex Interactions

For many sociolinguists, the issue of shyness and hesitation phenomenon has been problematic for Japanese L1 and L2 speakers, particularly in gendered interactions. Over the past decade, more Japanese are shunning conversations, relationships, and isolating themselves, which is accelerating the demographic crisis in Japan. Thus, this paper focuses on the variables concerning fluency, syntactical and lexical complexity to see if there are significant differences between gendered and same-sex interactions. It seeks to answer questions such as ‘is hesitation phenomenon more marked in gendered discourse than in same-sex interactions,’ and ‘which gender exhibits the most fluency and dysfluency?’ Results showed a significant difference in the speech between males and females in regard to speaking rates and number of words, but no significance was noted between gendered and same-sex interactions, or for the variables in lexical and syntactical complexity.