时间：2022-10-02 08:11:22
of politeness impact on the male speakers and female speakers use feedback signals in the same-gender conversation
摘要:交流是每天日常生活中分享知识和经验所必不可少的一部分。对话作为交流手段的一种主要形式,是一种即时即地发生的社会活动。反馈语是交互子系统中的(即对话过程中的)一种特定用语,主要表现为使用特定或固定的语言学词汇来引出上下文或是帮助理解或是暗示说话人态度等等。男性和女性参与者在会话过程中使用不同的策略或是选择合适的反馈语表达他们的意见,想法,目的,态度等等进而展现他们的礼貌。
Abstract: Communication is an integral part of everyday life, which is the process of sharing of knowledge and experiences. Conversation as a major means of communication is a spontaneous ‘here and now’ social activity. Feedback is a part of the interactive subsystem, in which refers to the giving or eliciting of information concerning contact, perception, understanding and attitude, by regularized linguistic means. Male and female participants make use of different strategies or select suitable conversational patterns to express their opinions, ideas, purposes, and attitudes, and show their politeness.
关键词:同性对话 积极性 消极性 礼貌反馈信号语
Key words: same-gender conversation positive negative polite feedback signals
作者简介:孙璐 (1982-), 女,绍兴,讲师,获瑞典哈姆斯塔德大学英语专业文学硕士学位和瑞典达拉纳大学传媒专业理学硕士学位;研究方向主要是英语语言学中的社会语言学和比较语言学,主要涉及两性语言学和双语对比语言学(即英语和瑞典语的对比)。
1. Introduction
It is a common belief that there are two people turn taking in one conversation, that is, one people response for contribution, while the other one is the listener. Cooperation is very important no matter how the conversation goes on. So men and women use different interactional strategies, which help conversational speakers to accomplish their interactional goals. One of the most typical features of interactional strategies is feedback, which is any listener’s reaction to what the speaker has said. Feedback is associated with feedback signals, which are used to start, carry on and terminate the conversation. In contemporary English, there are many reported differences between men and women who are engaged in the use of feedback signals, such as support feedback signals (yes, ok), exclamation feedback signals (oh, gosh), etc. The evidence at present shows that men provide more feedback signals than women do in the course of the interaction. (Lu, 2005) However, women provide significantly more encouraging and positive feedback to their speech than men do. (Holmes, 2001:297) Gender and politeness are common factors investigated in conversation analysis. Since such linguistic gender differences have been shown to exist, men and women do use language differently. On a more scientific basis folk linguistic claims that women tend to use more linguistic forms associated with politeness, while men prefer to use directives to take the conversational floor. Politeness shows awareness of another person’s face in an interaction, which includes positive face and negative face. It also called positive politeness and negative politeness. (Brown, P & Levinson, S. C., 1987: 101)
2. Literature review
2.1 Polite feedback signals
‘Polite feedback signals’ is a new technical term in the field of linguistics, which theoretical basis of ‘ politeness’ and ‘feedback signals’ and has then become an integrated linguistic system. This part utilizes the politeness theory of Brown and Levinson and Lu’s previous work about the theory of feedback signals for classifying seven different types of feedback signals:
* Positive polite feedback signals: support (yes), non-verbal feedback (laughs)
* Negative polite feedback signals: request for clarification (you know), hedge (may)
* Neutral: exclamation (oh), exclamatory question (really), non-support (no)
Because the types of support feedback signals and non-verbal feedback signals often seek agreement, avoid disagreement and make offers, promise and cooperation, they are the positive polite feedback signals and express by the direct speech acts. The types of request for clarification feedback signals and hedge feedback signals give deference and minimize the imposition, so they are the negative polite feedback signals and express by indirect speech acts. For neutral which consists of exclamation feedback signals, exclamatory question feedback signals and non-support feedback signals, they express neither positive polite feedback signals nor negative polite feedback signals. They are as common feedback or response use for the intercommunication. However, it is necessary to mention that the regularization of polite feedback signals is not irreversibility. The judgement of feedback signals’ types depends on the context at all.
2.2 Polite feedback signals and Gender
According to famous linguists’ researches, there is a common comment on men and women’s conversational behavior in the same-sex groups, that is, in women’s collaborative way of speech, they always use minimal response, tag question, hedges and so on. On the other hand, men are more likely to interrupt, to ask directly and play as experts during the conversation and so on. Women like sensitive topics and personal feeling or experience which is at the heart of talk. They organize topic slowly and try to achieve consensus among the participants. Men like impersonal topic such as current affairs, sports, etc. Women do not like one-person-at a time modal of talking. They wait for appropriate turn or adopt turn-by-turn modal in talk. Men like playing as an expert and monologue which are the key properties in their speech. In the single-sex conversations, women use minimal response to show the positive attention to the current speaker, in addition, they are sensitive to use hedges, which ‘dilute’ the certainty about the speaker’s correct, to response both the speaker and listener’s faces. Compared to men, there are different pictures. Men do use minimal response but their minimal responses are always called ‘delayed responses’ which means they give response but after a pause. This could be explained as a result of intelligence or misunderstanding, however ‘delayed responses’ is the display of men’s non-cooperative behaviour. In women’s talk, overlap speech and co-constructive utterance always occur, which show women’s active listening and pay support to each other. In men’s talk, interruption is always to grab the floor to invite other participants to speak. Women’s linguistic behavior is often characterized as being concerned with co-operation (more positively polite than men) and avoidance of conflict (more negatively polite than men). (Mills, 2003:203) So far, this paper predicts women use more polite feedback signals than men do. Furthermore, it considers people prefer to use positive polite feedback signals, especially their wants and face need to support no matter men or women.
3. Materials
The material in the present investigation consists of two transcripts of informal, face-to-face conversations taken from A Corpus of English Conversation, which is a part of the London-Lund Corpus. This corpus is collaboration between London and Lund, which sets up at Lund University in Sweden by Jan Svartvik in 1975. The corpus adopted the original 87 texts of transcribed speech and the supplementary 13 texts to produce the complete London-Lund Corpus of one hundred 5,000-word texts. It was a great exploit not only in producing a spoken corpus of this size but also in terms of the collection and notation of an orthographically-and prosodically accurate body of data. It has a very important baseline record of data collected over a 25-year period from 1959. In addition, the recorded texts provide the prior knowledge of the main participants except that all the speakers are British, e.g. age, gender, occupation and so on.
The two conversations used in the present study are named S.1.7 and S.1.8, which are typical casual conversations by speakers of Standard British English. These two conversations were selected randomly, as representative samples of conversation that exhibit different participant patterns: the text S.1.7 is all-male conversations, while the text S.1.8 is all-female conversations. Bellow follows Table 2, showing information about each speaker’s identity in the conversations.
Extra information revealed in the course of each conversation is vital, since they might have influence on the findings in this study. Therefore, every possible variable should be considered in the discussion. In conversation S.1.7, speaker A and B go to speaker a’s home to record themselves reading in order to help speaker a’s academic research. Speaker a and speaker A talk first for about one-third of the time, then speaker B enters the conversation. So, only speaker a and speaker A are present and active throughout the entire conversation, speaker B does not have the equal time as speaker a and speaker A to contribute to the conversation. In conversation S.1.8, there are three female academics. They adhere to the topic of paintings throughout the conversation. Speaker B leaves after one-third of the time, then speaker C enters it. Therefore, only speaker A attends the conversation from the beginning to the end. Speaker B and speaker C communicate with speaker A respectively by turn and each has taking part of about half of the time of the conversation.
4. Methodology
The method used in the present study is a close reading of these two same-gender conversations in order to provide an elaborate and comprehensive analysis. This investigation has identified all feedback signals in the texts according to their possible different functions. Furthermore, the study makes use of politeness theory to illustrate how to act on feedback signals’ usages. Then, the frequency of polite feedback signals in different contexts was calculated. With the accurate number of different polite feedback signals, it is able to make comparisons between different gender-based conversations, which will identify the possible differences and similarities there are between male and female. In addition, reasons were speculated about as to the calculated results concerning the relationships, the social status, and age of speakers together with contexts in which the conversations taken place. Finally, looks at how the effects of politeness might be found on the speakers in terms of their choices and ways of using feedback signals. It is necessary to mention that intonation is not a factor taken into account in this study.
5. Results and Discussion
Table 2 collects the data of four different types of polite feedback signals in texts S.1.7 (all-male speakers) and S.1.8 (all-female speakers). All male speakers of S.1.7 use 644 polite feedback signals during the conversation. All female speakers of S.1.8 contribute 651 polite feedback signals to the communication. It needs to mention that both texts S.1.7 and S.1.8 are the 5,000 words long conversations. Compare to the characteristics of male speakers and female speakers in the same background, it is easy to know that female speakers use polite feedback signals a little bit more than male speakers do. Both data are very close. Therefore, it can be said that the activity and politeness of female speakers are more than male speakers’ in the same-gender conversation. However, the male speakers and female speakers also choose the rough equal in amount of the same type of polite feedback signals when speakers communicate with each other and show their politeness in the same-gender conversation, do not they? More details are shown in figure 1 according to table 2, which offers the data about all participants of S.1.7 and S.1.8 use the four different types of polite feedback signals, among which male speakers of S.1.7 use 349 support feedback signals, 138 hedge feedback signals, 60 non-verbal feedback signals and 97 request for clarification feedback signals while female speakers of S.1.8 use 382 support feedback signals, 176 hedge feedback signals, 19 non-verbal feedback signals and 74 request for clarification feedback signals.
According to figure 1, it is easy to compare the difference between the selective types of polite feedback signals of male speakers and female speakers: it is obvious that female speakers use more support feedback signals and hedge feedback signals than male speakers do; male speakers use more non-verbal feedback signals and request for clarification feedback signals than female speakers do. It is worth noticing that the texts S.1.7 and S.1.8 have the same basic information, in which each conversation consists of about 5,000 words. Therefore, the results are very impersonal and reliable. In order to explain these phenomena, it is linking to the literature review 2.2 Polite Feedback Signals and Gender, because the speech style of female speakers is collaborative speech style, which supports other speakers and uses language in a way that emphasizes their solidarity with the other persons. Moreover, female speakers use more hedges than male speakers do due to women lacking of confidence in their assertions. Consequently female speakers prefer to use support feedback signals and hedge feedback signals rather than use non-verbal feedback signals and request for clarification feedback signals.
On the other hand, the speech style of male speakers is competitive speech style, which emphasizes their own individual and the hierarchical relationships. Furthermore, male speakers seem to have definite confidence for their proposals. Therefore, male speakers prefer to use request for clarification feedback signals to ensure the listeners understand theirs claims and propositions. With regards to non-verbal feedback signals, all speakers’ occupations are teachers that prove all the speakers no matter which experimental group they come from, text S.1.7 or S.1.8, all have received a very well education, so they use non-verbal feedback signals almost want to show their politeness rather than rudeness or discourteousness, etc. Nevertheless, the figure 1 illustrates that male speakers use more non-verbal feedback signals than female speakers do. It conjectures that male speakers need to use non-verbal feedback signals to show their politeness when they ask the other speakers to clarify meanings or to mention a proposal. In other words, the male speakers use non-verbal feedback signals are in proportion to use request for clarification feedback signals. Furthermore, it is noticeable that the blue rectangles represent support feedback signals are higher than any other rectangles, so it proves that all speakers prefer to use support feedback signals for expressing their politeness regardless of their gender.
These four different types of polite feedback signals can be divided into positive polite feedback signals and negative polite feedback signals. Table 3 illustrates the situation of male speakers and female speakers using positive polite feedback signals and negative polite feedback signals respectively in same-gender conversations. According to the data, male speakers use 409 positive polite feedback signals and female speakers use 401 positive polite feedback signals, it is clear to see that male speakers’ uses more than female speakers’ do. On the face of it, female speakers use more negative polite feedback signals than male speakers use do because 250 negative polite feedback signals come from female speakers of text S.1.8 and 235 negative polite feedback signals are from male speakers of text S.1.7. These statements of investigative results are consistent with what this paper’s forecast at literature review 2.2. Form the point of view of male speech style, as you know, male speakers have competitive speech style, they are more likely to ask directly and play expert role in talk. So compared with the female speakers, male speakers prefer to use positive polite feedback signals to express their courtesy too. From aspect of female speech style, they are collaborative speech style and use more standard and euphemistic phraseological usage, e.g. hedge, etc. tend to avoid the face-threatening and show their refined and courtesy relative to male speakers. These are the reasons why female speakers use less positive polite feedback signals than male speakers do and male speakers use less negative polite feedback signals than female speakers use.
6. Conclusion
Men and women are linguistically different from each other. In terms of using polite feedback signals, there are many stereotypes about both the genders; one cannot deny that there are clear differences between men and women who are engaged in different gender-based conversations. It is generally believed that women use a more cooperative speech style, supporting other speakers and using language in a way that emphasizes their solidarity with the other person. Men, on the other hand, are believed to use conversational strategies in a competitive style, stressing their individuality and the hierarchical relationships. Therefore, men and women tend to use different types of polite feedback signals in their conversations. In this study, firstly, it is worth emphasizing the range of polite feedback signals. This paper claims four different types of polite feedback signals, which are support feedback signals, non-verbal feedback signals, request for clarification feedback signals and hedge feedback signals, be chosen from the seven different types of common feedback signals. According to the theory of politeness of Brown and Levinson, this paper classifies these four different types of polite feedback signals into positive polite feedback signals and negative polite feedback signals. This kind of new classifiable system cannot be decided on whether or not they in fact are polite feedback signals, but nevertheless exhibit enough traits to suggest that they probably are. Secondly, the results found in this study are female speakers use more polite feedback signals than male speakers do in the same-gender conversations; both male speakers and female speakers prefer to use support feedback signals most and use non-verbal feedback signals the least. In addition, with regard to gender differences, in this study, the reasons for different linguistic usage of polite feedback signals between men and women are also combined with other variables such as topic-choosing, conversational roles, and occupational status. The findings of male speakers, there are some speakers use more positive polite feedback signals than negative polite feedback signals, but other male speakers’ results are opposite. For the female speakers’ findings, of course, there is more use of positive polite feedback signals than negative polite feedback signals. Nevertheless, this paper strives to be as objective as possible and claims the number of positive polite feedback signals and negative polite feedback signals are chosen by male speakers and female speakers should be depend on the topics, the relationships between the speakers, the circumstances and other factors. It is not formulation simply.
References:
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen C. 1987. Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge
Holmes, Janet. 2001. An Introduction to Sociolinguistics. London: Longman.
Mills, Sara. 2003. Gender and Politeness. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Lu, Sun. 2005. How do participants provide feedback signals in mix-gender conversation? Sweden: Kristianstad University
Svartvik, Jan & Randolph Quirk (eds). 1980. A Corpus of English Conversation. Lund: Liber