Polite requests as speech acts : a comparative study of gender variation of native speakers students at the university level

Abstract EN

Sociolinguistic research suggests that women use more politeness strategies in their requests than men do.

Holmes (1995) characterizes women’s speech as being more polite than men’s .

Researchers report that women use more positive politeness markers such as compliments, joking and claiming reciprocity than men do.

Women use a large number of positive-politeness strategies in talking with same-sexpeers while men do not in similar situations.

Women are more likely to apologize to soften criticism and to thank others than men.

However, most studies of gender variations in politeness have missed the relationship between language use and a situation a woman or man is in.

In this research paper, the results of the data collected from women and men students who have taken the test indicate almost different results .The results show that women students use more positive politeness markers such as “compliments” than men do.

The results show that men and women are almost similar in joking and claiming reciprocity.

As for the other claim that women use more negative politeness markers than men in their requests, the results also show that men and women are completely similar in using negative politeness markers such as “asking for an excuse” and are completely similar but partially different in saying “thank you” and in “apologizing”.