Gender and Demand Strategies: A Sociolinguistic Study

Abstract

The investigation on the impact of gender as a sociolinguistics factor on the use of different strategies for demands or requests by men and women is the aim of this research. Six strategies reviewed in this study: Direct Request, Conventional Indirect Request, Hints, Alerters, Supportive Moves, and Internal Modifiers. To discover the role of gender on the use of these strategies in demands, 80 students of Jahrom University, Iran participated in this study. They divided into two 40 groups according to their gender.  A questionnaire of six-items was designed to collect data. Each of the items in the questionnaire explained different situations. T-test and Chi-squared test applied for the data analysis. The result revealed that men use the strategies of direct request, conventional indirect Request, hints and alerters in their requests more than women. On the other hand, women use the strategies of supportive moves and internal modifiers in their demands more than men. The result also showed that female students paid more attention to the way of their demands than male students especially in formal social contexts and act more conservative. This can be related to this fact that women try to observe in social face in their speech acts.