Politeness Strategies And Gender Differences

After the introduction of politeness theory and the comparison of different models of language and gender, this paper proposes a more feasible methodology to analyze the gender differences in the employment of politeness strategies. Eighty interviews collected from American TV talk shows are analyzed in four dyads according to the gender of the interviewer and interviewee that may have been involved. When interacting with the different gender, the interlocutors'variation in face-saving strategies has been observed and analyzed. This excels the common practices in which only a simple counting was made of the frequency of occurrences of a linguistic form.The collected data are analyzed with special focus on behaviour strategies as seen in the performance of such speech acts as compliments, interruptions and requests, and linguistic strategies such as minimal responses, hedges, ellipsis and tag questions. Brown and Levinson's politeness theory and especially the face-saving strategies are the main source of the mentioned politeness strategies. The research results of other linguists have also been used as a reference in the analysis process.Gender, along with other contextual variables, determines the employment of politeness strategies chosen by the interlocutors in expressing politeness. The achievement of polite communication relies on the context which consists of various factors, gender being only one of them.