Politeness and Females
Gender and its connection with linguistic behavior has been a major subject of debate and discussion in research circles for last many decades. How men and women differ in the speech is an interesting topic that has been shown to have direct correlation with societal influences and conditioning. Women are conditioned to behave in a submissive manner and research indicates that it is because of this factor than biological construction that is responsible for women being more polite than men. A large body of research on the subject reveals that women generally use more polite language than men because they are expected to behave in a submissive, timid and less aggressive manner. Pierre Bourdieu (1977, p. 662) argued, "Politeness contains a politics, a practical and immediate recognition of social classifications and hierarchies."
Females are more polite because people in any setting are expected to use more polite words if they are in a subordinate position. For example employees are always more polite than employers, it applies in classroom setting too where students are expected to use softer language than the teacher. In the very same manner, females are socially expected to use polite language with more frequent use of 'thank you' and 'please' combined with hedges. It has been found that women use more hedges when describing something negative than man would- showing their respective use of politeness. Hedges are words than soften the impact of an otherwise harsh comment. For example describing someone as 'mean' or 'rude', women would soften the blow by using words like 'sort of' 'kind of' rephrasing the comment to sound something like 'he is sort of mean'. This helps them remain polite while using negative or harsh terms.
Brown and Levinson's (1978) model of politeness was the first serious work in the field of gender and its connection to linguistic behavior. They maintained that politeness is a device used by people to avoid 'face threatening actions' or to least mitigate the impact of the same. Brown and Levinson explain that, "face is something that is emotionally invested, and that can be lost, maintained or enhanced, and must be constantly attended to in interaction.'(Brown & Levinson, 1978:66) Therefore...
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This was the most consistent pattern observed in connection with this experiment. The researcher concluded that this was a function of the convergence of two independent social norms and expectations: namely, the expectation of politeness with respect to the dependent variable (i.e. door-holding behavior) and the independent social norm and expectation that males will be chivalrous in their interactions with females in virtually all ordinary circumstances, including those involving
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Such results of studies clearly show a paradox: similarities yet differences between language use by gender. Far from one coming from Mars and the other from Venus, men and women seem to come from different states in the same country. It is obvious that they grew up in different groups, which have subtle style differences. Yet, although subtle, the language differences have judgmental consequences. Observers perceive the female and male
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