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LINGUISTIC POLITNESS AND GENDER
© Mahdikhani M., Ghasemi Z., Hamzehloo S.
English Department, Farhangian University, Isfahan, Iran
The main purpose of present study is to investigate the connection between, linguistic politeness and gender. Over the last three decades these matters have been among the most controversial notions in pragmatic and sociolinguistic researches. In this paper some main differences in men and women's language is discussed according to Difference and Dominance theory. It is believed that Men and women have some main differences in their language according to this theory. In order to find the well-known phenomenon of politeness in connection with gender we decide to review the «Lakoffs Politeness Theory» and «Brown & Levinson's Politeness Theory». These studies come to conclusion that based on gender identity and language differences; women are more likely to use politeness patterns and compliments, than men. But it is not enough to simply analyze male's and female's use of politeness strategies within particular interactions.
Keywords: Linguistic Politeness, Gender, Lakoffs Politeness Theory, Brown & Levinson's Politeness Theory, Difference and Dominance Theory.
Introduction
Politeness can be shown in a variety of ways, linguistically, which is concerned with verbal communication, non-linguistically, which is concerned with other concepts of communication such as body language or a variety of both [14, p. 2]. Linguistic politeness has occupied a central place in the social study of language. The area of linguistic politeness has grown since the works of Lakoff in the 1970,s and those of Brown and Levinson's in the 1980,s; However questions still remain, largely in the area of politeness and gender. Various theories concerning whether women are more polite than men, and the possible reasons for why this could be true, are discussed by theories such as Debora Tannen's Difference and Dominance and Brown and Levinson's theory. In recent years, there has been a sudden increase of studying on gender, language, and politeness issues, like Lakoff (1975), Brown & Levinson (1987), Sara Mills (2003), Freeman & McElhin-ny (1996), and Uchida (1998). Since linguistic politeness is influenced by gender, we tend to investigate the relationship between these two notions.
Large number of studies comes to conclusion that men and women are differing in communicating and interacting. There is a general agreement that based on gender identity and language differences; women are more likely to use politeness patterns and compliments than men. Wardlaugh believes that females tend to use phrases like (Please, if you wouldn't / don't mind) which are politeness maker more often than males in conversations [24, p. 321].
Downtowners soften the utterance and have polite effect on addressee. Studies suggest that females usage of downtowners like (just, possibly, really) is
higher than males [12, p. 85] believes that females speech include many «super-polite forms» like would you mind..., consultative devices, and also question tags. Lakoff claims that women's use of tag questions is a part of speech that makes women sound more polite, as it does not force agreement on the hearer [14, p. 50].
Montgomery's study involved men and women of different race, age, social status and gender being interviewed to assess the frequency of their multiple modal use. He claimed that the sex of interviewer is the single most important factor contributing to the occurrence of multiple modals [16, cited in Baily and Tillery, 1999; p. 389]. The frequency of multiple modal uses was found to be twice that of men when with female interviewers, irrespective of location or any social categories. According to this finding, Montgomery argues that: «Both men and women are more sensitive to the face of women they are speaking with, than to that of man. In other Words, they are more polite to women» [16, cited in Baily and Tillery, 1999; p. 389]. On the other hand, Steffen and Eagly (1985) suggested that high-status persons were supposed to speak directly and less politely, and were also thought more likely to gain consent. He also claimed that people in lower positions are concerned more with face-saving and also discern talks of their super ordinates as more direct and thus less polite. As a result, «The higher status, the more direct and less polite, the style of talk was perceived to be» [22, p. 531].
Sara Mill's research offers a systematic interrogation of the premises that underlie the association between the concepts of gender and politeness that has informed much scholarship over the past three decades. She believes that politeness is in fact very multilateral. From her point of view politeness is set of strategies rather than a choice of suitable utterances.
Gender
Speaking of gender, it is described simply as «being either male or female» (MacMillan Dictionary). Sometimes it is hard to understand exactly what is meant by the term «Gender», and how it differs from the closely related term «Sex». «Sex» refers to the biological and physiological characteristics that define men and women. Nevertheless, gender refers to socially constructed roles, often discussed in the field of sociolinguistics.
According to [19, p. 3], «Gender is taken to refer to a culturally based complex of norms, values, and behaviors that a particular culture assigns to one biological sex and another». The notion of gender develops by claiming that it is a social issue; one is influenced by outside factors. The important place of gender within the field of grammar is not ignorable. Common gender divisions are masculine, feminine and neutral; or animate and inanimate. In linguistic, grammatical gender is a specific form of noun-class system in which the division of noun classes forms an agreement system with another aspect of the language such as adjective, articles, or verbs.
Gender role
Gender role is explained as the outer manifestation of personality that reflect the gender identity... and is manifested within society by observable factors such as behavior and appearance. People are taught how to behave with surrounding such as family, school, and media since childhood. Large number of scientific evidences demonstrates that children learn gender stereotypes from adults.
One of the tools for notifying and warning children is language when they are not submitting the right patterns of behavior, e.g. saying to children what girls and boys do and don't do. In some countries daughters are taught to do female oriented duties, chores, cleaning and taking care of siblings. On the other hand, sons are responsible for taking care of animals, secure household [10, p. 520-521]. The way of clothing is another way; boys often wear hats and pants whereas girls wear skirts, scarves, and jewelry in most cultures. In other words, gender stereotype is «beliefs about how men and women differ in their psychological makeup» [1, p. 11]. Gender roles are defined by behaviors, but gender stereotypes are beliefs and attitudes about masculinity and femininity [2, p. 160]. Traditionally, the females stereotypical features are: religious, aware of feeling of others, tactful, don't use harsh language. Men's stereotypical features are: aggressive, adventurous, competitive, unemotional, act as leaders, not dependent.
Politeness
Politeness is described as a concept that people have a social self-image and try to protect it. «We think of politeness in general terms as having to do with ideas like being tactful, «We think of politeness in general terms as having to do with ideas like being tactful, modest and nice to other people» [26, p. 119].
Leech suggests a rule «The more words you use, the more polite you are». Politeness is the theory that accounts for the redressing of the affronts to face posed by face-threatening acts to addressees. We will present some of the most widely used models of politeness theories.
Deborah Tannen Difference and Dominance Theory
The question «Do men and women speak the same language?» is not new, but since the early 1990s it has been the interest of many sociolinguistics. The important subject is, according to [24, p. 315] «the connection, if any, is between the structures, vocabularies, and ways of using particular languages and the social roles of the men and women who speak these languages».
According to «Difference Theory» males and females really do converse differently. Deborah Tannen believes the differences start in childhood, where parents use more words about feelings to girls and use more verbs to boys. Males and females belong to differet sub-cultures speak differently. As she claims in her book, You Just Don t Understand, there are six main differences between the ways males and females use languages:
1. Status VS. support: men see language as a means of defending dominance; women see it as a way of confirming / supporting ideas.
2. Independence V.S. intimacy, men «go it alone»; women seek support.
3. Advice V.S. understanding: men see language as problem solving; women see it as means of empathy.
4. Information V.S. feelings: men are concerned with the facts; women with emotions.
5. Orders V.S. proposals: men use imperatives; women use hidden directive.
6. Conflict V.S. compromise:men will argue; women will try to find a middle ground.
Christine Howe found things that match the different approach. She mentioned: men are much more likely to respond to what is being said and keep explaining their ideas clearly and effectively.Women are more active listeners. They use words (yeah, really?) or sounds (uh huh) while someone else is speaking (back channeling). Males use them less frequently and in the meaning that they are agreeing but females use them more frequently and in the sense that they are listening [24, p. 327].
Another theory is «Dominance Theory» that believes males have always controlled and dominated in both home and workplace, and females have to play domestic roles, therefore, there is a difference in language they use. One believer of this theory to some extent was [12, p. 235]. He believed gender differences have also been investigated at the level of specific phrases. Lakoff identified in women's language two specific types of phrases, hedges (e.g. «it seems like») and tag questions (e.g. «... aren't you?») that can be inserted into a wide variety of sentences as number of studies have reported greater female use of tag ques-tions[e.g., McMillan, Clifton, McGrath, 1977; 17], although other have found the opposite (Dubios and Crouch, 1975). Lakoff claims that in the same situation women use extra-polite forms than men, this claim was supported by empirical work [8, McMillan 1977, 18].
Both Difference and Dominance model have inherent problems. Women and men belong to many interconnected social groups in addition to that of their own sex, and an individual is more than a «woman» when interacting with others [23, p. 285] but difference model ignores the interaction with sex [7, p. 345].
Dominance approach has its own problems and limitations. The theory is frequently based on men's power and dominance in society, and women being depicted as «weak, helpless victims of patriarchy that force them to act in weak, passive, irrational or ineffective ways» [5, p. 236] and portraying women as dis-empowered members of society.
Lakoff's Politeness Theory
Robin Lakoff is one of the extremely influential sociolinguists. She became increasingly involved in the American feminist movement which led to the publi-
cation of language and gender entitled «Language on women's place». Lakoff's theory of politeness suggests that people follow a certain set of rules when they interact with each other, which prevent interaction from breaking down [9, p. 79]. Lakoff explains politeness as «a system of interpersonal relations designed to facilitate interaction by minimizing the potential for conflict and confrontation inherent in all human interchange» [13, p. 34]. We represent the Lakoff's pragmatic competence in the diagram below[25, p. 60].
Table 1
Pragmatic Competence (PC)
Be clear. Rules of conversation (= Grice's CP) Be polite. Rules of politeness.
R 1: Quantity Be as informative as required. Be no More informative than required. R 1: Don't impose.
R 2: Quality Only say what you believe to be true R 2: Give options.
R 3: Relevance Be relevant. R 3: Make a feel of good - be friendly.
R 4: Be perspicuous. Don't be Obscure. Be succinct.
The rule «Be polite» consist of three rules:
R1) Do not impose, is formal politeness, often carry hidden meaning, and mostly use complex grammar structures.
R 2) Give options, on the contrary, might be expressed as informal politeness, short sentences with simple grammar, structures, and lexical meaning.
R 3) Make a feel of good - be friendly is the most instable in terms of cultural meaning and usually form as intimate politeness.
Brown & Levinson Politeness Theory
Brown & Levinson developed a theory of politeness that is based on the term face and FTA (Face-threatening act). According to Brown and Levinson there are two kinds of face, which reflect two different desires present in every interaction [9, p. 132].
Negative Face Desire to express one's ideas without resistance. Positive Face Desire to have one's contributions approved of "Model Person" established in Brown and Levinson's essay. In this model, person accommodated by rationality and face, which are claimed to be universal features, i.e. possessed by all speakers and hearers. Rationality is the availability to our MP Model Person of a precisely definable model of reasoning from ends to the means that will achieve those ends [3, p. 58]. Model person's face means to be free of action and imposition and respected by others, thus leading to positive and negative face.
On the basis of the result of computation, speakers select a specific strategy according to which they structure their communicative contributions. When
speakers find themselves in a situation where a face-threatening act (FTA) may have to be performed their computations lead to the decision, which result in five possible communication choices.
1. Don t do FTA: This strategy is the most polite one. Brown and Levinson declare that an intelligent person is inclined to elude FTA or at least do their best to minimize the threat [3, p. 68].
2. Bald on record: This strategy is used in situation where people are familiar. It is usually used in emergency situations. A person can shout «Watch out» if see someone. This form can be followed by expression like «please and would you» which are called mitigating device. In this kind of strategy the speaker is not making an attempt to minimize the face threat. This strategy is often used among family, friends, or intimates. In simple words, this strategy is a direct way of expressing things without any minimization to the imposition in a direct, clear, unambiguous and concise way. For example, imperative form without any redress: «Wash your hands».
3. Off record: Off record means not directly expressing actor's intention so that he / she eludes responsibility for doing a FTA. This strategy requires the hearer to interpret what the speaker is saying. In this strategy, by being indirect the speaker avoids responsibility for a face-threatening act (i.e. you indirectly ask someone to do something by commenting on something, e.g., its really hot in here). There are a number of ways that off record strategies can be constructed (e.g., giving hints, giving association clues, presupposition, understating, overstating, using tautologies, using contradictions, being ironic, using metaphors and so on.
4. Positive politeness: This strategy tries to minimize the threat to addressee's positive face. This can be done by attending to addressee's need and feeling of belonging to the group, joke to put hearer at ease and optimism and making offers and promises.
5. Negative politeness: This strategy is in relation with addressee's negative face. This can be done by being indirect, using hedges or questions, minimizing imposition. In this kind of strategy, the speaker minimizes the threat to the negative face to show respect and also not to show an imposition on the listener or it expresses respect and consideration. In other words, negative politeness which attends to a person's negative face also includes indirectness and apologies (e.g., asking somebody in street for directions). Strategies used in this super strategies consist of being conventionally indirect, questioning or hedge, being pessimistic, minimizing the imposition, giving deference, and apologizing.
Conclusion
Large number of studies come to conclusion that men and women are differing in communicating and interacting. This paper shows that men and women are
different in speaking, there are six main differences between the ways men and women use language. Men see language as a means of defending dominance, women see it as a way of confirming and supporting ideas; men see language as problem solving, women see it as means of compassion; men are concerned with the truth, women are concerned with emotion; men use imperatives, women use hidden order; men will argue, women will try to find a middle ground; men «go it alone»; women seek support. There is a general agreement that is based on gender identity and language differences; women are more likely to use politeness patterns and respects than men. It is shown that in the same situation women use extra-polite forms than men. Female's speech includes many «Super-polite forms» like consultive devices, and also question tags. Men were supposed to speak directly and less politely, and were also thought more likely to gain approval. There are two kinds of face, which reflect two different desires present in every interaction. When speakers find themselves in a situation where a face-threatening act (FTA) may have to be performed, their computations lead to the decision which result in five possible communication choices first: do their best to minimize the threat, secondly, Bald on record, third, Off record, fourth, Positive politeness and the last one Negative politeness which are described in the article.
Because each person is a set of definite characteristic and background, it is not effortless to decide which factors of interactants were the most crucial in communication. When analyzing linguistic politeness in relation to gender, it is not enough to simply analyze male's and female's use of politeness strategies within particular interactions apparently; what must be focused on is the gendered domains of speech acts like politeness and perceived norms of community of practice.
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ПРОЦЕСС АССИМИЛЯЦИИ И СОВРЕМЕННОЕ ПОЛОЖЕНИЕ АЙНОВ В ЯПОНСКОМ ОБЩЕСТВЕ
© Елкин М.Е.*
Национальный исследовательский Томский политехнический университет,
г.Томск
Статья посвящена рассмотрению процесса ассимиляции народа айну в японском обществе, а так же проблеме наличия дискриминации представителей этого народа в наши дни. В работе рассматриваются причины возникновения данного явления и современное состояние проблемы. Были обозначены и описаны основные этапы контактов между айнами и японской нацией. На основе проведенного исследования, было выявлено и проанализировано текущее положения данной народности в японском обществе. Ключевые слова Айны, Япония, дискриминация, этносы и культуры.
Айны - народ, являющийся древнейшим населением японских островов и имеющий сложную и долгую историю ассимиляции в японском обществе. На данный момент существует множество теорий о происхождении народа айну, так, доподлинно неизвестно откуда представители этого народа прибыли на японский архипелаг [3, с. 42]. Все эти теории можно разделить на три большие группы:
1. Айны происходят из индоевропейской семьи. Приверженцами этой теории были известные историки: С. Мураяма и Д. Бэчелор.
2. Айны прибыли на японские острова с юга и являются представителями австронезийской расы. Эта теория была основной в советской этнографии и была выдвинута Л.Я. Штернбергом.
3. Айны прибыли на японские острова с севера (из Сибири) и относятся к палеоазиатским народностям. Этой теории придерживаются японские этнологи.
Однако нет сомнений, что именно айны являются основателями древнейшей культуры, следы которой обнаружены в Японии - культуры Дзё-мон1. В этот период истории Японии айны прибыли на территорию японских островов. Так, в одной из древних айнских легенд говорится: «Айны жили в этом месте сотни тысяч лет, пока не пришли Дети солнца» [5, с. 32].
* Студент кафедры Истории и регионоведения Института социально-гуманитарных технологий.
1 Дзёмон - период истории айнов и японской истории с 13000 года до н. э. по 300 до н.э. [1].
