The question of the conformance of a researcher's features to the stereotype of a scientist is rarely addressed in the context of scientific research. We decided to examine its significance in two experiments involving women and men in which the persons conducting the experiment had features respectively conforming and not conforming to the stereotype of a scientist. Both experiments were carried out on an interactive model and the dependent variables were length of utterance and lexical choices. We chose to use linguistic material because, as classical research shows, it is particularly susceptible to the influence of social context and features of the interlocutor. To operationalise the dependent variable, we used Ertel's Speech Style Quotients. The results of both experiments were found to be significant for context comparisons but non-significant for gender, which confirms the importance of features of the interlocutor in determining utterance length and lexical choices.
Keywords: Lexical choices; Stereotype of a scientist; Utterance length.
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