Gender differences in politeness : Strategies among Moroccan arabic speakers

Abstract

The thesis attempt to investigate how and why eastern Moroccan men and women mark politeness differently. Three speech acts selected for study, notably apology, compliment and bargaining. I try to see how both sex-groups pay compliments and make apologies. I investigate their strategies in responding to compliments and apologies. In both speech acts, women were found to be more likely than men to avoid threatening the face needs of their addressees for want of kepping good social relationship/solidarity with them. Conversely, men’s linguistic behaviour quite often displayed less concern for their audience to maintain social distance with their receivers. Regarding bargaining exchanges, it is noticed that male sex-groups use more solidarity linguistic devices than women ; because they have more social freedom to deal with salespersons. Women are realised to look probably at bargaining as a manifestation or a sign of one’s skilfulness in dealing with housework and a daring act of assertiveness in society by using extensively insisting strategies of bargaining more than men. The latter fell that such strategies could threaten their needs and reduce their inherited social power. Men’s sense of assertiveness is manifested in their excessive use of quality depreciation of commodity.