Positive And Negative Politeness example essay topic

Men's and Women's Languages Physically, men and women are obviously different; that is, men have a larger head and longer vocal cords than women do. From this point, women are stereotyped as being weak, subordinate, and minority in society. Moreover, in Lakoff's study Language and Woman's Place, she claims it does not matter whether women talk the way they are supposed and expected to do or not. "If they talk like a lady, they are ridiculed and thought that they are unable to think clearly and participate in a serious discussion. If they do not talk like a lady, they are also ridiculed and criticized as unfeminine". (p. 6) Another point Lakoff claims that women lack power, seriousness, and confidence.

This shows that women are hesitant, tentative, unassertive, and deficient; whereas, men are opposite. Therefore, men and women use language differently. According to Janet Holmes (1995), women use language to establish and develop personal relationships. She states that most of them enjoy and consider talking as the way of keeping in touch, especially with friends and intimates. Women compliment and apologize more than men do. When they talk to somebody, their utterances show concern for the feelings of their interlocutor more often and clearly than men's.

Also, they use some devices (questions, phrases: you know) to encourage other people to talk (Holmes 1995, p. 2). Lakoff believes that women's language, mainly for the English speakers, is formed by (p. 53-56): 1. Many words related to their specific interest and work, such as magenta 2. "Empty" adjectives, such as divine, charming, cute, etc. (examples from Lakoff 1975) 3. Question intonation: tag questions and rising intonation in statement context 4. Hedges: showing uncertainty, such as well, you know, sort of, etc.

5. Using intensive "so"6. Hypercorrect grammar, such as saying without dropping "g"7. Super polite forms, such as please 8. No telling jokes 9. Speaking in italics (more like lady and feminine): showing uncertainty in their own self-expression All these forms are used much more frequently than by women.

Holmes describes that men use language to obtain and convey information. Also, they use the devices that women do to qualify certainty and validity of the information they are asserting. Most of the reasons that men talk are to focus on the content of the talk or outcome. They tend to dominate public talking time. (Holmes 1995) From all these previous points, we can see that men and women use language differently. Another example that men and women use language differently is that women are more polite than men.

Women are the preservers of morality and civility, and they speak around and treat other people in an especially polite way, and then other people treat them politely in return (Lakoff 1975). Moreover, women do care about other's feelings when they talk to them. Politeness There are some definitions of politeness defined by scholars. Lakoff (1975) defines that politeness is developed by societies in order to reduce friction in personal interaction. She claims that there are three rules of politeness: Formality (keep aloof), Deference (give options), Camaraderie (show sympathy) (p. 65). All these three rules are formed to predict why a particular act or speech in a particular culture is polite, or not polite.

Brown and Levinson explain that politeness is motivated to enable people to communicate and avoid the aggression (Brown & Levinson 1987). Additionally, politeness expresses the concern for people's face which is based on "losing face" and "saving face", and divided into two kinds of face needs: Positive and Negative Politeness (Goffman 1959 and Brown & Levinson 1987). Positive politeness is to show warmth, likeness, approval toward addressees; while, negative politeness is to avoid threatening the other person's face. According to this approach, a face-threatening act will be performed whenever a person threatens another person's face.

A face-threatening act has four different forms: doing a face-threatening act with no politeness, doing it with positive politeness, doing it with negative politeness, and doing it indirectly or off-record (Goffman 1959 and Brown & Levinson 1987). Therefore, in general, politeness is one approach that helps people communicate with each other smoothly in society, and may be expressed verbally and non-verbally.