African American Women’s Language Use in Response to Male Partners’ Condom Negotiation Tactics

Abstract

African American women are vulnerable for sexual health risk; thus, condom use is essential. Guided by research linking goals to communicative content, this study explored women’s use of I-, you-, we-, and hedging language during condom negotiation. Female participants (N = 193) engaged in a condom negotiation role play with male confederates, where language use measures were coded. I-language was used the most frequently. Language use differed as a function of men’s tactics, such that women primarily used I-language in response to verbal attacks, you-language in response to seduction, and I- and we-language in response to information seeking. Women who engaged in more recent condom use were more likely to use you-language and, when confederates attacked, they responded with more you-language and less hedging.

Keywords:

• African American Women
• Condom Negotiation
• Condom Use
• Language Use
• Message Production

Notes

¹ Because African American individuals tend to have sex with partners of the same race/ethnicity (CDC, 2015), we employed only African American men to help increase the reality of the role play.

² Although there were no significant effects of either role-play partners or role-play scenarios on women’s language use, we conducted a series of repeated measures ANOVAs controlling for (a) RPPs, (b) scenarios, and (c) RPPs and scenarios, respectively. All results were consistent with those reported in the main text.

³ Because we have 16 exploratory tests, the issue of multiplicity is a consideration. Researchers (Chernick, 2007; Westfall & Young, 1993) have suggested using bootstrap methods for multiplicity adjustment in exploratory studies.

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the National Institute of Health/National Institute on Alcohol Abuse and Alcoholism (R01AA018096).