Gender and socioeconomic status: A pragmatic analysis of politeness strategies used by Iranian EFL students in Persian and English requests

Abstract

Politeness strategies that speakers deploy when performing a speech act have been seen to be influenced by several factors among which gender and socioeconomic status are two prominent ones. The current study was an attempt to examine the relationship between gender and socioeconomic status (SES) on one hand, and choice of politeness strategies on the other. The focus was specifically on the realization of speech act of request in Persian (L1) and English (L2). The participants were 100 advanced-level Iranian EFL students. Based on their gender and responses to the socioeconomic status questionnaire, they were divided into four equal groups of twenty-five: 1. male-high; 2. male-low; 3. female-high; and 4. female-low. The data collection instruments were the English and Persian versions of a discourse completion test (DCT). The results revealed a significant relationship between gender and use of politeness strategies in speech act of request in L1 as well as L2. The findings, however, demonstrated no significant relationship between the participants’ socioeconomic status and their use of politeness strategy neither in L1 nor in L2. This study can be another proof for Brown and Levinson’s claim about the universality of politeness strategies.