A Pragmatic Study of Politeness and Gender: The Influence of Gender on Language Use: Lady Members of the American and British Parliaments as Case Study

Abstract

Politeness and Gender are represented in social and political interviews. Politeness is the main concept in linguistic pragmatics, and it is associated with human communication. While gender is simply described as being either male or female. The problem of this study is to organize which types of politeness strategies are used by Hillary Clinton and are not used by Margaret Thatcher. The study aims at explaining the role of different types of politeness strategies by the two women in order to show how social and cultural factors affect human behavior. It also intends to analyze the different kinds of politeness types, and politeness strategies (bald on record, positive politeness, negative politeness, and off record) which are used by both Parliament’s members. To achieve this aim, it is hypothesized that: 1-there is a relation between gender and politeness. 2- British females are politer than American females. The model of the study is Brown and Levinson (1978- 1987) of politeness because they categorize politeness types in clearest way with the strategies of politeness. The study is limited to some selecting internet interviews of the two members of parliaments, and some selected strategies of politeness. The data are collected from the internet as a data source case study and are analyzed according to the model chosen. The results show that British women use very small number of politeness strategies in their speech than American women.