Gender speech styles among Malaysians in semi-formal and informal context /
Men and women are often required to employ a specific style in their speech for effective communication. Direct and assertive statements are associated with men while women are perceived to use an indirect style. However, the ways men and women speak are not always different and their language choic...
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| Main Author: | |
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| Format: | Thesis |
| Language: | English |
| Published: |
Gombak, Selangor :
Kulliyyah of Islamic Revealed Knowledge and Human Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia,
2016
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| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | Click here to view 1st 24 pages of the thesis. Members can view fulltext at the specified PCs in the library. |
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| Summary: | Men and women are often required to employ a specific style in their speech for effective communication. Direct and assertive statements are associated with men while women are perceived to use an indirect style. However, the ways men and women speak are not always different and their language choices often depend on many factors such as the context, other speakers and setting. Using Holmes' (2006) theoretical framework, the study explores how Malaysian men and women engage in mixed-gender and same gender interactions through the use of linguistic features specifically hedges, intensifiers, tag questions, empty adjectives and polite forms in two contexts; semi-formal and informal. Holmes (2006) explains the masculine style which involves imperatives and need statements whereas the feminine style is less direct such as the use of linguistic features mentioned above. The data in the present study were gathered from a talk show, The Breakfast Show which represents the semi-formal context and a total of 13 English short films used in the informal context. The results indicate that men and women use the same interactional style which is feminine in both contexts with more linguistic features appearing in men's speech than in women's. On the other hand, in the same gender interaction which involves only female speakers, as predicted, women preferred a feminine style but more linguistic features were found here than in the presence of men. Therefore, it can be concluded that masculine or feminine style of interacting is not gender specific but rather the choices of styles depend on the situation and the objective that they want to achieve in that setting. |
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| Physical Description: | xii, 97 leaves : ill. ; 30cm. |
| Bibliography: | Includes bibliographical references (leaves 92-97). |