GENDER DIFFERENCES IN EXPRESSING POLITENESS IN ENGLISH

This study presents a research conducted on gender differences in expressing politeness in English. The main objective was to describe female and male which have some different strategies in expressing politeness. It was conducted by using descriptive research. The sources of data were taken from the students questionnaires and interviewing. 46 students of the English Department of UNIMED were taken as the sample.The findings indicated that female and male have some different strategies in expressing politeness because they have difference reasons. For female, they always expressed politeness by saying some reasons to avoid their responsibility. That is why they always chose off record strategy in expressing politeness. While for male, they always expressed politeness by giving appreciation of ones wants in general or to the expression of similarity between egos and ones wants. Therefore, they were dominant to choose positive politeness strategy. In this case, male and female also showed their different strategies in expressing politeness in different ways. For female, they dominantly used directive, commissive, and expressive as their way to express politeness. It described that female always expressed politeness by requesting, offering, and apolozing to attract their listener. Meanwhile, for male, they used eommissive and expressive as their way to express politeness because they always had a commitment to be more polite by giving promising, offering, thanking, apolozing, and condoling to make their listeners thought they were responsible when expressing politeness. It was aimed to protect their face, tried to achieve high social status, and showed modeling correct behavior.