Research on verbal interjections in German parliaments suggests that the speaker’s gender affects the quantity and quality of verbal interjections during their speech. However, no studies so far have used quantitative statistical methods with a large data set to either confirm or refute this hypothesis. This is what the present study aims to do by means of a two-step statistical analysis using descriptive methods and a generalised linear mixed effects regression in R. Based on previous research, we first formulate the following research question: is there a relation between the gender of the speaker and the quantity and quality of verbal interjections occurring during their speech? The data consist of 10,052 verbal interjections which were collected from the official plenary minutes of the German Bundestag and annotated as negative, neutral, or positive. The speaker’s and the interrupter’s gender, party affiliation and age are included as additional factors. The descriptive statistical analysis shows that most interjections are negative in nature and that, in contrast to the results of previous research, female speakers do not receive proportionally more negative verbal interjections than male speakers. This is confirmed by the results of the analysis in R: the speaker’s gender fails to have a significant effect on the chances of negative interjections occurring during their speeches, and so do all the additional factors.

Keywords: gender, political communication, verbal interjections