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Article published In: Pragmatics
Vol. 36:1 (2026) ► pp.109–136

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“What are you talking about? That is not true” — Men’s and women’s disagreements in English and Italian interactions

ORCiD logo with link | University of Bologna
Published online: 16 January 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/prag.23038.nap
Abstract
The present research aims to uncover cross-linguistic differences (involving British English and Italian), as well as cross-gender differences (men and women) concerning use and preference of strategies and pragmatic modification, in verbal disagreements. The analysis of spontaneous conversations from the Spoken BNC2014 corpus (McEnery, Tony, Robbie Love, and Vaclav Brezina. 2017. “Introduction: Compiling and Analysing the Spoken British National Corpus 2014.” International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 22 (3): 311–318. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), for the English sample, and from the KIParla corpus (Goria, Eugenio, and Caterina Mauri. 2018. “Il corpus KIParla: una nuova risorsa per lo studio dell’italiano parlato.” In CLUB Working Papers in Linguistics, ed. by Francesca Masini, and Fabio Tamburini, 96–116. Bologna: Alma Mater Studiorum Università di Bologna.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar), for the Italian sample, has brought to light divergences in the realization of disagreements, both at the cross-linguistic and at the cross-gender level. Methodologically speaking, models of analysis used for past empirical studies (Muntigl, Peter, and William Turnbull. 1998. “Conversational Structure and Facework in Arguing.” Journal of Pragmatics 29 (3): 225–256. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Rees-Miller, Janie. 2000. “Power, Severity, and Context in Disagreement.” Journal of Pragmatics 32 (8): 1087–1111. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Johnson, Fiona. 2006. “Agreement and Disagreement: A Cross-Cultural Comparison.” Bisal 11: 41–67.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar; Paramasivam, Shamala. 2007. “Managing Disagreement While Managing Not to Disagree: Polite Disagreement in Negotiation Discourse.” Journal of Intercultural Communication Research 36 (2): 91–116. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar) were drawn from for the annotation and codification of strategies and pragmatic modifiers. Results obtained from quantitative analyses are explained in the light of previous research findings, although the latter are partially disconfirmed and thus call for further future investigations.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Theoretical background
    • 2.1The pragmatic act of disagreement
    • 2.2Disagreement strategies
    • 2.3Cross-cultural empirical research on disagreements
  • 3.Data and methods
    • 3.1The corpora
    • 3.2Data collection process
    • 3.3Parameters for data annotation
  • 4.Data analysis
  • 5.Discussion of results
  • 6.Conclusions
  • References
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