Maltz and Borker claim that, since men and women form their own sub-cultures, at least two sets of rules contributing to friendly conversational maintenance exist. The participants in this research are homogenous white middle-class Americans, which makes us think how people in such homogenous culture form two sub-cultures by interacting on a daily basis, and how they learn the norms for interactions foster friendliness. According to Maltz and Borker "these [...] rules [...]were not learned from adults but from peers, and that they were learned during precisely that time period, approximately age 5 to 15, when boys and girls interact socially primarily with members of their own sex" (P202). Furthermore, they argue that “by examining the differences
