Relationship between Students’ Gender and their Use of Politeness Strategies in the “Results and Discussions Section” of PhD Dissertations
Keywords:
Politeness strategies, gender, PhD Dissertations
Abstract
The researcher analyzed the Result and Discussion Sections of 10 dissertations of Iranian PhD students and 10 British PhD students by aiming to investigate their use of politeness strategies using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) taxonomy and its relationship with the gender of the authors. The results proved that Iranian writers most frequently used negative politeness strategies, followed by positive politeness strategies. British writers, like Iranians, used negative politeness strategies more than the others. The next frequent strategy was positive politeness strategies. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the frequency of politeness strategies used by Persian and British writers. Considering the gender, there is a significant difference between the positive strategies used by male and female Iranians. In fact, unlike the Male Iranian authors who used more positive strategies, the female Iranian authors used fewer strategies and this difference was significant. However, that there was no significant difference between the positive strategies used by British male and female participants. Also, there was a significant difference between the negative strategies used by male and female Iranians. In fact, the results show that the female Iranian authors used fewer strategies and this difference was significant. Moreover, there was a significant difference between the negative strategies used by British male and female participants.References
Agis, D. F. (2012). Gender and politeness: Politeness strategies in the popular Turkish series “Avrupa Yakası” (“European Side”). International Journal of Language Studies (IJLS) 6.1, 91-106.
Akbari, Z. (2002). The Realization of politeness principles in Persian. Karen's Linguistics Issues, May 2002.
Alizadeh, M. (2008). Differences between Iranian males and females in the use of politeness Strategies. MA Thesis. Ferdousi University
Allami, H., & Naeimi, A. (2011). A cross-linguistic study of refusals: An analysis of pragmatic competence development in Iranian EFL learners. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(1), 385-406.
Amany, F. Davoudi, M., and M. Haghi (2014). A corpus-based study on the translation of politeness strategies with emphasis on address terms. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World (IJLLALW). 5 (1), 502-522
Ang, S., Van Dyne, L., Koh, C., Ng, K. Y., Templer, K. J., Tay, C., & Chandrasekar, N. A. (2007). Cultural intelligence: Its measurement and effects on cultural judgment and decision making, cultural adaptation and task performance. Management and Organization Review, 3(3), 335-371.
Bacha, N.N.,, Bahous, R., & R.L., Diab (2012). Gender and Politeness in a Foreign Language Academic Context. International Journal of English Linguistics. 2(1), 29-42.
Basye, A. (1998). Business letter ready to go. Lincolnwood: NTC Busisness Books
Bhaskar-Shrinivas, P. Harrison, D.A. Shaffer, M.A., & Luk, D.M. (2005). Input-based and time-based models of international adjustment: Meta-analytic evidence and theoretical extensions. Academy of Management Journal, 482: 25-281.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Olshtain, Elite (1984). Requests and apologies: a cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5 (3), 196-213.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, House, Juliane, Kasper, Gabriele (1989). Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies (Appendix: the CCSARP coding manual.). Ablex, Norwood, NJ
Booher, Dianna. (1997). Great Personal Letter for Busy People: 300 ready to use letters for every ocassion. McGraw-Hill
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Cordella, M. (1991). Spanish speakers apologizing in English: A cross-cultural pragmatic study. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 14 (2), 115-38.
Cortés de los Ríos & Cruz Martínez. (2001). Nuevas perspectivas lingüísticas en la publicidad impresa anglosajona. Almería: Universidad de Almería
Crossouard, B., & Pryor, J. (2009). Using email for formative assessment with professional doctorate students. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education,34, 377–388.
Earley, P.C., & Gibson, C.B. (2002). Multinational work teams: A new perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ellis, R. (1994). The studies of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Erika. (2010). Politeness in computer-mediated discourse of a virtual team, Journal of Politeness Research, 6(1), 2010
Fairclough, Norman. (1989). Language and Power. New York: Addison Wesley Longman
Farghal, M., & Al-Khatib, M. (2001). Jordanian college students' responses to compliments: A pilot study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33 (9), 1485-1502.
Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 219-236.
Gelfand, M.J., Erez, M.E., & Aycan, Z. (2007). Cross-cultural organizational behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58: 479-514.
Getkham, K. (2013) Cross disciplinary differences of politeness strategies in research articles (Paper presented at AACL International Conference, San Diego, USA.
Gholami, R. (2011, December). Gender differences in task-based performance of EFL students. In Humanities, Science and Engineering (CHUSER), 2011 IEEE Colloquium on (pp. 765-770).
Goffman, Erving, (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago.
Hassani, R., Mardani, M., & Dastjerdi, H. V. (2011). A comparative study of refusals: Gender distinction and social status in focus. The International Journal - Language Society and Culture, (32). Retrieved 2013 from www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/tle/JOURNAL/
Hoseini, S.J., Fard, H.K., Fard, A.K., Fard, H.K., Saleh, S. (2014). Politeness Strategies in Business Letters of Iranian Managers, Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 3(1), 2014.
He Zhaoxiong. (2000). A New Introduction to Pragmatics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Jalilifar, A. (2009). Request strategies: Cross-sectional study of Iranian EFL learners and Australian native speakers. English Language Teaching, 2(1), p46.
Kamler, B. & Thomson, PI (2006). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. London: Routledge.
Koutlaki , S.A.(2002). Offers and expressions of thanks as face enhancing acts: tsDarof in Persian. Journal of Pragmatics 34, 1733-1756.
Lakoff, R. (1975): Language and Women's Place. New York.
Lee, C. (2005). A cross-linguistic study on Cantonese and English requests. Pragmatics, 15(4), 395-422
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Magistro, E. (2007). Promoting the European identity: Politeness strategies in the discourse of the European Union. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 1(1), 51-73.
Marcén Bosque, C. (1999). Linguistic politeness in professional written communication: A cross-cultural study of British and Spanish business correspondence. In A. Bocanegra Valle, M.C. Lario de Oñatey P. López Zurita (Eds.), Enfoques teóricos y prácticos de las lenguas aplicadas a las ciencias y a las tecnologías (pp. 196-201). Salamanca: Tesitex
Marti, L. (2006). Indirectness and politeness in Turkish-German bilingual and Turkish monolingual requests. Journal of Pragmatics 38, 1836-1869.
Meimei. (2001). A contrastive Study of Politeness Strategies in Chinese and English Prefaces. Unpublished dissertation, Zhejiang Normal University
Meldrum, G. (1994). The Politeness of Criticism in Applied Linguistics Articles: Readership and Aspects of Aggravation.Unpublished MA Dissertation in Applied Linguistics. University of Sheffield
Mills, S. (2003). Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615238
Monsefi, M., & Hadidi, Y. (2015). Male and Female EFL Teachers’ Politeness Strategies in Oral Discourse and their Effects on the Learning Process and Teacher-Student Interaction. International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL), 3(2), February 2015.
Murphy, M., & Levy, M. (2006). Politeness in intercultural email communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 12, 1-11.
Mutaka, N. M., & Lenaka, N. L. (1998). Maintaining Face in the Nso Culture: A Study of Politeness Strategies in Letters Between Schoolgirls. Journal of West African Languages, 27(2), 51-65.
Myers, G. (1989). The Pragmatics of Politeness in Scientific Articles. Applied Linguistics, 10 (l), 1-35
Nodoushan, M. A. (2008). Persian requests: Redress of face through indirectness. Iranian Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), 2(3), 257-280.
Pariera, K. (2013). The use of politeness strategies in email discussions about taboo topics. PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal, 2(1), 29.
Pishghadam, R., & Rasouli, P. (2011). Persuasive strategies among Iranian EFL learners. Studies in Literature and Language, 3(2), 111-117.
Sa’d, S. H. T., & Mohammadi, M. (2014). Iranian EFL learners’ sociolinguistic competence: Refusal strategies in focus. Language and linguistic studies, 10(1), 48-66.
Saville-Troike, M. (2003). The ethnography of communication: An introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Schallert, D. L., et al. (2009). Being polite while fulfilling different discourse functions in online classroom discussion. Computers & Education, 53, 713-725.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (1981). Narrative, literacy and face in interethnic communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Shehadeh, A., (1999). Gender differences and equal opportunities in the ESL classroom. ELT Journal. Volume 53/4 October 1999.Oxford University Press 1999.
Smith, J. (1992). Women in charge: Politeness and directives in the speech of Japanese women. Language in Society, 21 (1), 59-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500015037
Tabar, M. S. (2012). Cross-cultural speech act realization: the case of requests in the Persian and Turkish speech of Iranian speakers. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(13).
Tawalbeh, A., & Al-Oqaily, E. (2012). In-directness and politeness in American English and Saudi Arabic requests: A cross-cultural comparison. Asian Social Science, 8(10), p85.
Tsui, A.S., & Gutek, B. (1999). Demographic differences in organizations: Current research and future directions. New York: Lexington Books/Macmillan.
Tracy, K. (1990). The many faces of facework. In Giles, H. & Robinson, W. P (Eds.) Handbook of language and social psychology. (pp. 209-226). West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Van Dyne, L. & Ang, S. (2006). Getting more than you expect: Global leader initiative to span structural holes and reputation effectiveness. In W. H. Mobley & E. Weldon (Eds.), Advances in Global Leadership, 4: 101-122, New York: NY: Elsevier/JAI Press.
Vinagre, Margarita. (2008). Politeness strategies in collaborative e-mail exchanges. Computers & Education 50(3), 2008
Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantic of human interaction (Second ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Zhu, J., & Bao, Y. (2010). The pragmatic comparison of Chinese and western “politeness” in cross-cultural communication. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1(6), 848-851.
Akbari, Z. (2002). The Realization of politeness principles in Persian. Karen's Linguistics Issues, May 2002.
Alizadeh, M. (2008). Differences between Iranian males and females in the use of politeness Strategies. MA Thesis. Ferdousi University
Allami, H., & Naeimi, A. (2011). A cross-linguistic study of refusals: An analysis of pragmatic competence development in Iranian EFL learners. Journal of Pragmatics, 43(1), 385-406.
Amany, F. Davoudi, M., and M. Haghi (2014). A corpus-based study on the translation of politeness strategies with emphasis on address terms. International Journal of Language Learning and Applied Linguistics World (IJLLALW). 5 (1), 502-522
Ang, S., Van Dyne, L., Koh, C., Ng, K. Y., Templer, K. J., Tay, C., & Chandrasekar, N. A. (2007). Cultural intelligence: Its measurement and effects on cultural judgment and decision making, cultural adaptation and task performance. Management and Organization Review, 3(3), 335-371.
Bacha, N.N.,, Bahous, R., & R.L., Diab (2012). Gender and Politeness in a Foreign Language Academic Context. International Journal of English Linguistics. 2(1), 29-42.
Basye, A. (1998). Business letter ready to go. Lincolnwood: NTC Busisness Books
Bhaskar-Shrinivas, P. Harrison, D.A. Shaffer, M.A., & Luk, D.M. (2005). Input-based and time-based models of international adjustment: Meta-analytic evidence and theoretical extensions. Academy of Management Journal, 482: 25-281.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, Olshtain, Elite (1984). Requests and apologies: a cross-cultural study of speech act realization patterns (CCSARP). Applied Linguistics, 5 (3), 196-213.
Blum-Kulka, Shoshana, House, Juliane, Kasper, Gabriele (1989). Cross-Cultural Pragmatics: Requests and Apologies (Appendix: the CCSARP coding manual.). Ablex, Norwood, NJ
Booher, Dianna. (1997). Great Personal Letter for Busy People: 300 ready to use letters for every ocassion. McGraw-Hill
Brown, P., & Levinson, S. (1987). Politeness: Some universals in language use. Cambridge: Cambridge University press.
Cordella, M. (1991). Spanish speakers apologizing in English: A cross-cultural pragmatic study. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics, 14 (2), 115-38.
Cortés de los Ríos & Cruz Martínez. (2001). Nuevas perspectivas lingüísticas en la publicidad impresa anglosajona. Almería: Universidad de Almería
Crossouard, B., & Pryor, J. (2009). Using email for formative assessment with professional doctorate students. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education,34, 377–388.
Earley, P.C., & Gibson, C.B. (2002). Multinational work teams: A new perspective. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
Ellis, R. (1994). The studies of second language acquisition. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Erika. (2010). Politeness in computer-mediated discourse of a virtual team, Journal of Politeness Research, 6(1), 2010
Fairclough, Norman. (1989). Language and Power. New York: Addison Wesley Longman
Farghal, M., & Al-Khatib, M. (2001). Jordanian college students' responses to compliments: A pilot study. Journal of Pragmatics, 33 (9), 1485-1502.
Fraser, B. (1990). Perspectives on politeness. Journal of Pragmatics, 14(2), 219-236.
Gelfand, M.J., Erez, M.E., & Aycan, Z. (2007). Cross-cultural organizational behavior. Annual Review of Psychology, 58: 479-514.
Getkham, K. (2013) Cross disciplinary differences of politeness strategies in research articles (Paper presented at AACL International Conference, San Diego, USA.
Gholami, R. (2011, December). Gender differences in task-based performance of EFL students. In Humanities, Science and Engineering (CHUSER), 2011 IEEE Colloquium on (pp. 765-770).
Goffman, Erving, (1967). Interaction Ritual: Essays on Face to Face Behavior. Aldine Publishing Company, Chicago.
Hassani, R., Mardani, M., & Dastjerdi, H. V. (2011). A comparative study of refusals: Gender distinction and social status in focus. The International Journal - Language Society and Culture, (32). Retrieved 2013 from www.educ.utas.edu.au/users/tle/JOURNAL/
Hoseini, S.J., Fard, H.K., Fard, A.K., Fard, H.K., Saleh, S. (2014). Politeness Strategies in Business Letters of Iranian Managers, Academic Journal of Interdisciplinary Studies, 3(1), 2014.
He Zhaoxiong. (2000). A New Introduction to Pragmatics. Shanghai: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
Jalilifar, A. (2009). Request strategies: Cross-sectional study of Iranian EFL learners and Australian native speakers. English Language Teaching, 2(1), p46.
Kamler, B. & Thomson, PI (2006). Helping doctoral students write: Pedagogies for supervision. London: Routledge.
Koutlaki , S.A.(2002). Offers and expressions of thanks as face enhancing acts: tsDarof in Persian. Journal of Pragmatics 34, 1733-1756.
Lakoff, R. (1975): Language and Women's Place. New York.
Lee, C. (2005). A cross-linguistic study on Cantonese and English requests. Pragmatics, 15(4), 395-422
Leech, G. (1983). Principles of Pragmatics. London: Longman.
Magistro, E. (2007). Promoting the European identity: Politeness strategies in the discourse of the European Union. Critical Approaches to Discourse Analysis Across Disciplines, 1(1), 51-73.
Marcén Bosque, C. (1999). Linguistic politeness in professional written communication: A cross-cultural study of British and Spanish business correspondence. In A. Bocanegra Valle, M.C. Lario de Oñatey P. López Zurita (Eds.), Enfoques teóricos y prácticos de las lenguas aplicadas a las ciencias y a las tecnologías (pp. 196-201). Salamanca: Tesitex
Marti, L. (2006). Indirectness and politeness in Turkish-German bilingual and Turkish monolingual requests. Journal of Pragmatics 38, 1836-1869.
Meimei. (2001). A contrastive Study of Politeness Strategies in Chinese and English Prefaces. Unpublished dissertation, Zhejiang Normal University
Meldrum, G. (1994). The Politeness of Criticism in Applied Linguistics Articles: Readership and Aspects of Aggravation.Unpublished MA Dissertation in Applied Linguistics. University of Sheffield
Mills, S. (2003). Gender and politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511615238
Monsefi, M., & Hadidi, Y. (2015). Male and Female EFL Teachers’ Politeness Strategies in Oral Discourse and their Effects on the Learning Process and Teacher-Student Interaction. International Journal on Studies in English Language and Literature (IJSELL), 3(2), February 2015.
Murphy, M., & Levy, M. (2006). Politeness in intercultural email communication. Journal of Intercultural Communication, 12, 1-11.
Mutaka, N. M., & Lenaka, N. L. (1998). Maintaining Face in the Nso Culture: A Study of Politeness Strategies in Letters Between Schoolgirls. Journal of West African Languages, 27(2), 51-65.
Myers, G. (1989). The Pragmatics of Politeness in Scientific Articles. Applied Linguistics, 10 (l), 1-35
Nodoushan, M. A. (2008). Persian requests: Redress of face through indirectness. Iranian Journal of Language Studies (IJLS), 2(3), 257-280.
Pariera, K. (2013). The use of politeness strategies in email discussions about taboo topics. PSU McNair Scholars Online Journal, 2(1), 29.
Pishghadam, R., & Rasouli, P. (2011). Persuasive strategies among Iranian EFL learners. Studies in Literature and Language, 3(2), 111-117.
Sa’d, S. H. T., & Mohammadi, M. (2014). Iranian EFL learners’ sociolinguistic competence: Refusal strategies in focus. Language and linguistic studies, 10(1), 48-66.
Saville-Troike, M. (2003). The ethnography of communication: An introduction. Malden, MA: Blackwell Publishing.
Schallert, D. L., et al. (2009). Being polite while fulfilling different discourse functions in online classroom discussion. Computers & Education, 53, 713-725.
Scollon, R., & Scollon, S. (1981). Narrative, literacy and face in interethnic communication. Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.
Shehadeh, A., (1999). Gender differences and equal opportunities in the ESL classroom. ELT Journal. Volume 53/4 October 1999.Oxford University Press 1999.
Smith, J. (1992). Women in charge: Politeness and directives in the speech of Japanese women. Language in Society, 21 (1), 59-82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/S0047404500015037
Tabar, M. S. (2012). Cross-cultural speech act realization: the case of requests in the Persian and Turkish speech of Iranian speakers. International Journal of Business and Social Science, 3(13).
Tawalbeh, A., & Al-Oqaily, E. (2012). In-directness and politeness in American English and Saudi Arabic requests: A cross-cultural comparison. Asian Social Science, 8(10), p85.
Tsui, A.S., & Gutek, B. (1999). Demographic differences in organizations: Current research and future directions. New York: Lexington Books/Macmillan.
Tracy, K. (1990). The many faces of facework. In Giles, H. & Robinson, W. P (Eds.) Handbook of language and social psychology. (pp. 209-226). West Sussex, England: John Wiley & Sons.
Van Dyne, L. & Ang, S. (2006). Getting more than you expect: Global leader initiative to span structural holes and reputation effectiveness. In W. H. Mobley & E. Weldon (Eds.), Advances in Global Leadership, 4: 101-122, New York: NY: Elsevier/JAI Press.
Vinagre, Margarita. (2008). Politeness strategies in collaborative e-mail exchanges. Computers & Education 50(3), 2008
Wierzbicka, A. (2003). Cross-cultural pragmatics: The semantic of human interaction (Second ed.). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Zhu, J., & Bao, Y. (2010). The pragmatic comparison of Chinese and western “politeness” in cross-cultural communication. Journal of Language Teaching and Research, 1(6), 848-851.
Published
2019-06-11
How to Cite
Koohzad, A., Ghonsooly, B., Ghapanchi, Z., & Gholami, R. (2019). Relationship between Students’ Gender and their Use of Politeness Strategies in the “Results and Discussions Section” of PhD Dissertations. Dinamika Ilmu, 19(1), 75-95. https://doi.org/10.21093/di.v19i1.1475
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