Gender and Linguistic Politeness: The Case of Request and Apology in EFL Students’ Mixed Gender speech

Abstract

The present work deals with one of the current topics of gender and linguistic politeness, it is an attempt to explore the linguistic strategies of request and apology in relation to gender and the differences that can exist. To this end, the present study opts for a variety of well known methodological instruments. In addition to participant observation, this study uses a structured questionnaire directed to a random sample of first year students of English language at Ibn Khaldoun University followed by conversational analysis of nine excerpts of mixed gender short conversations. The findings confirm that females and males use different conversational politeness styles (including repair, turn taking, abbreviations…) in their mixed gender conversations. The obtained data also reveal that females are more likely to express positive politeness and use more apologies than men. Many reasons including the social and cultural construction of gender in particular seem to correlate with the respondents’ linguistic behaviours and attitudes.