GENDER, POLITENESS AND STEREOTYPES

Abstract

This article aims to interrogate the relationship between impoliteness and gender identity.  I question the way that previous research on politeness has assumed a stereotypical correlation between masculinity and impoliteness and femininity and politeness.  Furthermore, I aim to move politeness research away from the Brown and Levinson (1978) model, whereby individual speech strategies are considered to be inherently polite or impolite, towards a more complex model of the way that politeness and impoliteness operate.