A case study of women's language used by Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama in the Oprah 2020 vision tour interview

Since the seventeenth century, it has been believed that women’s language lacks certainty (Lakoff, 1973) and women own cooperative communication styles (Coastes, 2004; Coastes, 2015). To test these two hypotheses in high-status women's conversation, this sociolinguistic study used a descriptive qualitative method to examine the forms and functions of language features used by Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama in the Oprah Winfrey's 2020 Vision Tour's live talk show with Michelle Obama to determine the type of language language (facilitative or tentative) (Holmes, 1984; Lakoff, 1973) and communication styles (Coastes, 2004) used by high social status women. This study focused on four key elements: lexical hedges, tag questions, interruptions, and back-channeling responses (Coastes, 2015; Lakoff, 1973 ). Overall, the study found that both Oprah Winfrey and Michelle Obama communicated cooperatively through their usage of collaborative functions of the aforementioned four language features, which supported Coastes’s (2004) theory on women’s cooperative communication style. Besides, the findings also indicated that lexical hedges, fillers, and tag questions not only served to express uncertainty but also to emphasize solidarity between speakers, which contradicted Lakoff's theory of women's language being tentative. Additionally, the findings suggest that each linguistic element has a particular purpose depending on the situation's context and the speaker's aim. Due to the changes in women's roles and societal circumstances since the 17th century, it appears that additional research is required to enhance the researcher's conclusions.