Linguistic Politeness and Gender: Apology Strategies: A Sociolinguistic Research

Abstract

This paper addresses Geoffrey Leech's (2014) three semantic classifications of apology on The Portrait of a Lady which was written by Henry James. The researchers apparently address Leech’s three semantic classifications and also there are two charts and a statistic table in order to be scientific while answering the preceding assumption about gender differences in apology strategies. Apology strategies sound well-known in Anglophone. In the literature of gender, this paper targets the linguistic politeness and gender to give the readers extra vision by studying the fiction. Moreover, the researchers' purpose in this paper is to address the stereotypical assumption that women used to be politer than men. In order to find out whether these differences in number of utterances by the two groups are statistically significant or not, the researchers have used some statistical tools, namely a (T-test). An analysis of the linguistic politeness and gender can help to deep insight into each character’s personae and experiences in the fiction as well as appreciate the special gist of the fiction as well.