2. Hypothesis and Aim
• Hypothesis:
• Men use more expletives than women.
• Aim:
• We are looking to see whether if men uses more taboo language in everyday
conversation in comparison to women.
3. Method
1. We decided to investigate by watching episodes of Come Dine With Me
where the guests were arguing and bickering over the quality of the food of
one of the contestants. This conjures emotional outbreaks from the
contestants as they may feel personally victimised as people are protesting
the event.
2. We made a tally of the amount of times men and women used expletives in
a five minute clip.
3. We watched several videos to give us a more generalisable result.
5. Conclusion
• We found that on average, men swore nearly three times more than women,
therefore proving our hypothesis.
• However, this result may not be entirely accurate due to the fact that we
analysed reality TV. Come Dine With Me may have been scripted; the
conversations should have been realistically constructed, but could not be
entirely accurate to everyday conversation. People may have changed their
behaviour accordingly because they are aware that people are watching and
they want to appear more socially acceptable and hence conform to the
stereotypes of the society in the way that ‘women should not swear’.
6. Evaluation
• In order to get a more accurate insight into everyday speech, we think next
time we should look into real conversation between friends or family, in their
natural environment. This would eliminate the chance of demand
characteristics displayed by the participant.
• Also, we feel like next time we should analyse longer conversations as some
people take a while to show their ‘true colours’, this way, we are more likely
to get results that are more precise.
