Sara Mills

Gender and impoliteness

Abstract This article analyzes the complex relationship between gender and impoliteness. Rather than assuming that gender and impoliteness are concrete entities which can be traced in conversation, I argue that gender and impoliteness are elements which are worked out within the course of interaction. They are elements which are closely inter-related as stereotypically feminine gender identity is largely constructed around notions of “nice”, supportive, co-operative behaviour, either affirming or resisting those stereotypes of femininity. Challenging the notion that women as a whole are “nicer” than men in interaction, since much current research seems to highlight women’s interactional competitiveness, I argue that nevertheless supportiveness may play a role in other interactants’ judgments of women’s linguistic behaviour and may result in assertiveness being categorized as impoliteness.

Language, gender and feminism : theory, methodology and practice

1. Contemporary Issues in Language, Gender and Feminism 2. Why We Still Need Feminism 3. Theorising Gender 4. Feminist Linguistic Approaches 5. Methodological approaches 6. Sexuality 7. Sexism 8. Future Directions

Post-feminist text analysis:

This article argues that there is a need for a new form of feminist text analysis which would take account of the changes which have occurred in feminist theory, linguistic theory, critical text analysis and in sexism itself. Rather than relying on relatively simple models of interpretation, this new form of analysis, post-feminist text analysis, would demonstrate awareness of the complexity and context-specific nature of the meanings of words within texts; it would also be aware of the necessity to develop new models of analysis for sexism and gender relations. In the analysis of a British advertisement for a dating agency following this discussion, I have tried to indicate directions in which this form of analysis might take.1

Gender and Performance Anxiety at Academic Conferences

This chapter analyses the factors which lead to some women experiencing ‘stage fright’ or ‘performance anxiety’ when speaking in public, particularly in the presentation of papers at academic conferences.1 Performance anxiety is often considered something which women are more likely to experience than men when speaking to an audience. It is considered that the discursive rules operating in this setting are more in line with stereotypically masculine norms of speech. It is my contention that particular types of gender identity and preconceptions about the masculine nature of public speaking may be activated or challenged in the process of giving academic papers. Thus, women do not necessarily suffer from performance anxiety, and indeed many older women do not suffer from stage fright at all. But those who do may have internalised some sense of the discourse considered appropriate to the context and consider themselves unable to draw on this masculine discourse with ease. Some of the reasons for this may be: their marginal position within the university; their assessment of their expertise or status in relation to the audience; their assessment of their own personality and whether they feel that this is open to change. What seems to play a role in performance anxiety is the degree to which the individual has internalised or resisted stereotypical views of the gendered nature of the public sphere and public speaking. In order to test out these ideas, in this chapter, I discuss the results of a questionnaire which I sent to academics to investigate the factors which they considered to contribute to performance anxiety.

A discursive approach to the analysis of politeness data

Abstract This paper aims to provide an exemplification of the way that the discursive approach can work in relation to the analysis of data. As such, it argues for the validity of the discursive approach to politeness. Because the discursive approach has been seen as difficult to employ in the analysis of data, in recent years, there has been a proliferation of research returning to Brown and Levinson’s approach. Although discursive approaches to politeness have functioned successfully as a critique of Brown and Levinson’s work, they are not seen as a means of analyzing politeness and impoliteness in their own right. By tracing the development of the discursive approach to politeness, and by addressing the critiques that there have been, we argue that although the critical role of the discursive approach is paramount to the development of the field, discursive approaches are more than just a critique, and should be seen as constituting an approach to the analysis of politeness as well. As a case in point, we illustrate what a discursive approach consists of through analyzing an intercultural interaction between a group of close friends of Dutch and Italian origin.

Offering and hospitality in Arabic and English

Abstract This paper examines the conventional linguistic practices involved in everyday hospitality situations. We compare offers in Arabic and English and, rather than focusing on the differences between the ways interactants in these two cultures make offers, we challenge the notion that offering is in essence differently handled in the two languages. We argue instead that we should focus just as much on the similarities between the ways offers are made, since no two cultural/linguistic groups are diametrically opposed. Furthermore, no cultural or linguistic group can be argued to be homogeneous. Through a detailed analysis of four naturally occurring hospitality encounters, we explore the nature and sequencing of offering and receiving hospitality in each cultural community and discuss the extent to which offers and refusals are conventionalized in each language. In this way we hope to develop a more contextual discursive approach to cross-cultural politeness research. Drawing on Spencer-Oatey’s notion of sociality face, we examine the conventions for being hospitable in order to appear sincere. A qualitative analysis of the data reveals that, while there are similarities in offering behaviour in both English and Arabic, in Arabic, the interactional moves of insisting and refusing are slightly more conventionalized. This however does not constitute a radical difference between the offering norms of these two cultural groups.

Special issue of the Journal of Politeness

Introduction The papers in this special issue of the Journal of Politeness Research arose from a workshop which took place at the University of the West of England, Bristol, in February 2003 entitled ‘Politeness and (business) communication across national borders’. The aim of the workshop was to draw together researchers on politeness in business contexts or in the workplace working mainly on British English with others working on politeness in other cultures or in cross-cultural contexts. Some papers focus more closely on the workplace (Bargiela-Chiappini and Harris; Mullany); others more closely on politeness in different cultural settings (Kerbrat-Orecchioni; Beeching on French; Arnáiz on Spanish) and others on cross-cultural phenomena (Daller and Yıldız on Western European cultures such as the UK and Germany in contrast with Turkey, Belarus and Uzbekistan; Traverso on French and Syrian). The studies, moreover, cover a range of levels of analysis from an extralinguistic to a macro- and micro-linguistic level. The subject of some studies involves a broad consideration of cultural factors, including power and distance, that of others involves an exploration of speech events and linguistic rituals, whilst still others study the implementation of politeness at a micro-level. All of the researchers acknowledge the primacy of the Brown and Levinson politeness framework yet many attempt to adjust the theory so that it accounts in a more satisfying way for the sometimes apparently contradictory nature of the empirical data investigated.

Opposition as victimhood in newspaper debates about same-sex marriage:

In this article, we take a queer linguistics approach to the analysis of data from British newspaper articles that discuss the introduction of same-sex marriage. Drawing on methods from critical discourse analysis (CDA) and corpus linguistics, we focus on the construction of agency in relation to the government extending marriage to same-sex couples, and those resisting this. We show that opponents to same-sex marriage are represented and represent themselves as victims whose moral values, traditions and civil liberties are being threatened by the state. Specifically, we argue that victimhood is invoked in a way that both enables and permits discourses of implicit homophobia.

Sociocultural Approaches to (Im)politeness

This chapter investigates sociocultural approaches to the analysis of politeness. Rather than viewing politeness as a choice on the part of the individual, as much theorising has done, sociocultural approaches examine the wider forces which have an impact on the individual. Politeness is a profoundly social phenomenon, and forms which we recognise as politeness are those which have been enregistered as such. Individuals indicate their social status and their awareness of the social status of others through their use of politeness. Sociocultural approaches focus on this marking of social status. This chapter analyses a text aiming to instil politeness and etiquette in children. The interesting element for a sociocultural approach is that politeness and etiquette advice is enmeshed with social control. Politeness cannot be explained as ‘being nice to others’; instead we need to examine the way politeness and etiquette advice often play a role in consolidating the status quo.

Introduction: Language, Culture, (Im)politeness and (In)directness

This book focuses on the complex relationship between indirectness, directness, politeness and impoliteness. This complexity most clearly shows up when we examine these phenomena across languages and cultures. It is for this reason that our examination of directness and indirectness focuses on both cross- and inter-cultural language use.2 Our primary aim is to contribute to the theoretical understanding of politeness phenomena, and the relationship between (in)directness and (im)politeness,1 if there is any; however, we have a secondary aim of helping to improve intercultural communication, by focusing on those elements within speech that might lead to misunderstanding. Directness and indirectness seem to be two of the elements which most often lead to breakdown of communication between members of different linguistic or cultural groups, and lead to judgements of people from a particular culture as being ‘rude’ or ‘distant’. Throughout this book, we engage with research on directness and indirectness in various languages and cultures, as well as introducing our own data and analysis of directness and indirectness across cultures. We try, as far as possible, to question some of the assumptions that there have been in the past about culture, (in)directness and politeness.