Gender and Politeness Strategies in Facebook Conversations among Students in UiTM Kelantan
Universiti Teknologi MARA Malaysia,
ABSTRACT
This study consists of three main purposes which are to investigate the language features that are commonly deployed by UiTM Kelantan students for conveying politeness, to identify the similarities of politeness strategies in Facebook's wall posts written by male and female students and also to identify the differences of politeness strategies in Facebook's wall posts written by both female and male students. This study combines both the qualitative and quantitative designs. Samples of this study were 100 male and female students of various Diploma courses in UiTM Kelantan. 100 wall posts from the selected participants' Facebook were collected. Later, the data were analysed by using triangulation technique. The result of this study revealed that gender is not the only factor which affects the application of politeness strategies. In computer mediated communication (CMC), people choose to apply different patterns of language and strategies of politeness based on the context of their conversations.
KEYWORDS
language, gender, politeness strategies, computer mediated communication (CMC)