Unveiling the sex differences and their diachronic changes of thanking in spoken British English
A local grammar based investigation
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21200920 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Hang Su (0000-0002-9186-5805, Sichuan International Studies University), Jun Ye (0000-0001-6399-5058, Sichuan International Studies University), Ziyi Xiong (0000-0002-2361-2849, Sichuan International Studies University) |
| Year | 2025 |
| Publication date | 2025-12-15 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Pragmatics and Society (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1878-9714 • E-ISSN: 1878-9722 |
| Publisher | John Benjamins Publishing Company (PUBLISHER • NL) |
| DOI | 10.1075/ps.25072.su |
| OpenAlex | W7115163565 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 33 |
This study employs the local grammar approach to unveil sex differences and their diachronic changes of thanking in contemporary spoken British English. Using data taken from Spoken BNC1994 and Spoken BNC2014, the study found that sex differences do exist and change over time. In particular, the study revealed that in the 1990s male speakers performed thanking more frequently than their female counterparts and that female speakers tended to use formulaic expressions for thanking, which challenges the stereotypical view that women are more polite in their language use. These differences and diachronic changes have been accounted for in terms of (changing) social perceptions of sex roles, communicative conventions and socio-cultural norms. The study concludes that changes in speech act realisations correspond to changes in broader social contexts and as such (diachronic) investigation into speech act realisations could contribute to revealing the (trans)formation of socio-cultural norms in a given society
Grammar · Perception · Politeness · Sociolinguistics · Speech act · Spoken language · Language, Discourse, Communication Strategies · Linguistic Variation and Morphology · Swearing, Euphemism, Multilingualism
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| Citation velocity | historical |
|---|---|
| Highly cited | No |