A Pragmatic Study Of Gender Differences In Conversations Of Movies

The research of gender differences is a major issue in sociolinguistics. Based on theory of sociolinguistics and pragmatics, this thesis makes a pragmatic study of gender differences in daily conversations. It aims to demonstrate how females and males differ in observing and flouting the pragmatic principles: the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle and the Face Theory in daily conversations and explores the reasons and consequences of gender differences in order to get a better understanding about gender differences and the discourse styles from the pragmatic perspective, to minimize the misunderstanding between females and males and improve cross-gender conversations.Collecting and analyzing thirty-four conversations in several Chinese-speaking movies, this thesis reveals gender differences in observing or flouting the pragmatic principles in daily conversations. Females and males use different communicative strategies, males tend to be competitive, while females tend to be cooperative in cross-gender conversations. In daily conversation, females can make adequate and relevant responses to the other party's speech and tend to observe the Cooperative Principle, while males tend to flout this principle without making adequate and relevant responses to the other party's speech. In daily conversations, females like using questions, requests and indirect expressions and seldom use swear or taboo language. So females tend to observe the Politeness Principle, while males tend to flout the Politeness Principle by using more imperatives, directives, swear or taboo language. From the perspective of Face Theory, females and males also differ in employing face strategies. Females tend to employ negative face strategies since they are shy and like using hedges. Males tend to employ positive face strategies. They are optimistic, voluble and like interrupting others.This thesis also analyzes the reasons that cause gender differences in daily conversations. Gender differences are mainly caused by different sub-cultures, social status and psychological factors between females and males. Gender differences also have some negative effects. Gender differences cause females' disadvantage in work. This is closely related to females' speech style besides growing and educational factors. For example, females like using hedge to show that they are indecisive, have no their own judgments, and are not suitable for being leaders. Gender differences also cause miscommunication in cross-gender conversations. For example, between a couple, the husband will not talk about something that he thinks to be trivial, but the wife feel that they are neglected since there is a difference of what is important and what is trivial between female and males. This will in turn impose contradiction, misunderstanding or even conflict between females and males.In order to improve negative effects caused by gender differences in daily conversations, to enhance the women's status and improve cross-gender conversations, this thesis initiates some suggestions. Additionally, different context, ages, professions, statuses, etc. also influence females' and males' language use in conversation. And all of these are worth further study in the future.