Women, Men and PolitenessWomen, Men and Politeness focuses on the specific issue of the ways in which women and men express politeness verbally. Using a range of evidence and a corpus of data collected largely from New Zealand, Janet Holmes examines the distribution and functions of a range of specific verbal politeness strategies in women's and men's speech and discusses the possible reasons for gender differences in this area. Data provided on interactional strategies, 'hedges and boosters', compliments and apologies, demonstrates ways in which women's politeness patterns differ from men's, with the implications of these different patterns explored, for women in particular, in the areas of education and professional careers. |
Contents
1 Sex politeness and language | 1 |
2 Who speaks here? Interacting politely | 30 |
hedges and boosters as politeness devices | 72 |
4 What a lovely tie Compliments and positive politeness strategies | 115 |
5 Sorry Apologies and negative politeness strategies | 154 |
6 Why politeness matters | 192 |
References | 230 |
Index | 251 |
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Common terms and phrases
Allan Bell analysis apologies appear appropriate boys Brown and Levinson cent chapter Cheshire classroom compliments contribute conversation corpus cultures described different contexts disagree discussion elicitations emphasise encourage epistemic epistemic modal evidence express positive politeness face needs face-threatening acts facilitative female and male focus formal contexts frequently friends function gender differences girls groups hedges and boosters high rising terminal Holmes identified illustrated in example instance interaction interpreted interruptions interviewer intimates invitations involved language linguistic forms linguistic politeness Maori negative politeness obvious occur offence overall Pakeha participants patterns perceived person polite speech acts politeness behaviour politeness strategies positive politeness devices pragmatic particles public contexts regarded relationships relative role social distance Sociolinguistic solidarity sorry speaker status Street harassment subordinate suggests tag questions talk Tannen teachers Tzeltal utterance verbal Wolfson woman women tend women’s and men’s young Zealand data Zealand English Zealand women