Politeness

Emma Katherine Gibson: Gender, polite questions and the fast‐food industry

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Would you like manners with that?
A study of gender, polite questions and the fast‐food industry EMMA KATHERINE GIBSON* Abstract The purpose of this research project was to examine the effect that gender has on polite questioning techniques used in mixed‐gender interaction. While theorists such as
Lakoff (2004) and Montgomery (1998) claim that women question in a more polite manner than men, the results of this study contradict such theories. Data were gathered by analysing the questions used by cashiers at fast food retailers in response to an ambiguous request. Politeness was rated both holistically and by counting the number of morphemes used in a question, with the assumption that the number of morphemes and the level of politeness are proportional. It was found that the cashiers studied were more polite to the face of a member of the opposite sex than they were to that of someone of their own sex. If we assume that this study represents the average population, this study proves that men are more polite to the face of a woman than to that of a man, and vise versa. This study disproves proposals made by Lakoff and
Montgomery and brings new ideas to the area of politeness and gender.

1. Introduction According to Cutting (2002: 44) there is more to politeness than “minding your
Ps and Qs” and not wiping your mouth with the back of your hand. So what is politeness? Grundy (2000) defines politeness as: the term we use to describe the extent to which actions, including the way things are said, match addressees’ perceptions of how they should be performed.
(Grundy 2000, cited in Bloomer, Griffiths & Merrison 2005: 111) Holmes (1995) goes into more detail:

ʹpolitenessʹ will be used to refer to behaviour which actively

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