Gisela Redeker & Kyra van Ingen Politeness and Hedging in Email Requests Among Male and Female Friends

University of Groningen
Department of Language and Communication
P.O. Box 716
NL-9700 AS Groningen
THE NETHERLANDS
g.redeker@let.rug.nl

Abstract

Research on computer-mediated communication (CMC) has consistently shown gender differences between women and men in participation and in interactional style, especially politeness and hedging. Most of this research, however, concerns communication between strangers or members of online-communities and usually involves male and female participants. This raises the question if the gender differences found in CMC may be mediated by those contextual factors instead of reflecting essential language use characteristics of the men and women involved.

We analysed the formulation and embedding of requests in 66 personal emails from two groups of (ex-)students: 11 male friends and 11 female friends (each person contributed three mails). We found no gender differences in the formulation of the request (direct or indirect, with or without mitigation), in the bolstering with motivations and justifications, or in the use of hedges. This finding suggests that the gender-specific interactional styles found in mixed-gender email discussion lists and online chats may contain traces of gendered self-presentation that are absent in our sample of emails among same-gender friends.

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