Gender Differences In Language Use

As a social variant of language,gender language has attracted increasing attention from a great many linguists at home and abroad.The differences between male and female language have already been studied in almost all languages at all linguistic levels.However,the application of pragmatic theories to the study of gender differences as reflected in the conversations in a novel is a new vision and an efficient way as well.Based on the theories of sociolinguistics and pragmatics,the current thesis makes a pragmatic analysis of the cross-gender conversations in Villette,a novel by the famous English woman writer-Charlotte Bronte.It intends to demonstrate how females and males differ in observing or violating such pragmatic principles or theory:Grice's Cooperative Principle(CP),Leech's Politeness Principle(PP) and Brown and Levinson's Face Saving Theory(FST) in the conversations.The main reasons that may result in gender differences in language use and the particular rasons that possibly led to the striking gender differences in the conversations in Villette are discussed.The main purpose of the author is to help people get a better understanding about gender differences in language use,promote a harmonious dialogue between men and women in current society.Through detailed analysis of some cross-gender conversational fragments selected from Charlotte Bronte's classic novel Villette,it is found that women can observe both Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle well in communication and work hard to keep conversation going by speaking sincerely,relevantly and clearly while providing sufficient information,or using questions,requests and indirect expressions,etc.;sometimes their violation of the Manner maxim of CP is out of politeness needs,solidarity,and feeling dependence,etc..In contrast,men tend to be less cooperative and impolite.To achieve a certain purpose,they frequently violate the CP and PP by speaking too long,too little or giving false or irrelevant information,or using imperatives,interruptions,swears or taboos,etc.which often result in impossibility of smooth conversation,even termination of the communication.The analysis also shows us how men do face threatening acts(FTAs) bald on record and how women try hard to adopt face-saving strategies such as positive politeness, negative politeness,or the FTAs off record to avoid or minimize somebody's face threat in the cross-gender conversations in Villette.Gender differences in language use are mainly caused by different labor of division,different subcultures and different psychological factors etc.Yet,the extreme polarization of roles based on gender in Victorian society and Charlotte Bront(e|¨)'s living circumstances as well as her unwonted personality may construct the particular reason why there exist so polarized gender differences in the cross-gender conversations in Villette.The investigation of the historical and social roots reveals Charlotte Bronte's unique feminist view and her rebellious spirit that she intended to criticize the social reality through Villette,this very autobiographical work,hence fought for women's recognition and approval in a male dominant society with no female floor.This is the very reason why she was regarded as one of the forerunners who did battle for the equality of the sexes later.In order to serve better for the further studies of gender-language and appreciation of literary works from the perspective of pragmatics, the limitations of the present study are pointed out at the end of the thesis,some suggestions are simultaneously provided.