A Pragmatic Study Of Gender Differences

The research concerning gender differences in language has become one of the heated issues in sociolinguistics. With the progress of the study, more and more attempts have been made to explore such phenomenon from various perspectives in the past several decades, as the methods involve diverse theories in other disciplines and the data selected for the detailed investigation cover almost every form of communication, either spoken or written. The current study is an endeavor to examine gender differentiation in conversations of fictional texts from the perspective of pragmatics.Based on the theories of sociolinguistics and pragmatics, the paper intends to analyze gender differences embedded in the conversations of Pride and Prejudice, a fiction by the celebrated British woman writer Jane Austen. It explores men's and women's differences in observing or violating such pragmatic principles as the Cooperative Principle, the Politeness Principle and the Face Theory with the hope of helping people get a better understanding about gender differences in language use. The study then discusses the causes and social effects of these differences, with some tips for harmonious cross-gender communication suggested so as to minimize the misunderstanding and maximize the effectiveness of communication.Through detailed analysis of the conversational fragments selected from the fiction, it is concluded that men tend to be less cooperative and polite while women are more concerned about the face of the listeners and the smoothness of the communication. In daily conversations, males are more likely to violate the Cooperative Principle by making inadequate and irrelevant responses, or giving false information to the other speaker, while females''violation of certain maxim is often out of politeness needs and solidarity concerns in the ultimate purpose of guaranteeing the ongoing of the conversation. Moreover, Men frequently use imperatives, directives, swear or taboos in their speech while women tend to use questions, requests and indirect expressions instead. Besides, males and females exhibit differentiation in their adoption of face-saving strategies. Men seem to do more FTAs than women and are less likely to use politeness strategies to redress the face wants of the hearers. Women, however, are inclined to adopt positive and negative strategies to avoid or minimize the face threat towards others. Gender differentiation in language is a result of biological, psychological, historical and sociological causes. Yet the major factor causing the differences is social related, as distinct gender roles in society, social stereotypes and diverse value orientations are involved in the occurrence of such differences. The differences exert some negative influences in our life, as they lead to miscommunication between males and females, cause girls to fail to fulfill their potential in school and put females into a disadvantageous position in work. In order to gradually minimize the negative effects of gender differentiation, it is suggested to develop cross-gender awareness, familiarize with others' communication styles as well as learn to be open and flexible.At the end of the thesis, the limitations of the present study are pointed out and some suggestions are proposed for the further studies of gender language and the appreciation of literary works from the perspective of pragmatics.