Abstract
Gender and language studies in general have not been fully explored in most parts of the globe particularly in Nigeria. The objective of the study therefore was to examine the politeness and hedging strategies in the English language conversation of Igbo native speakers in Nigeria as well as establish whether men and women’s conversational styles have been gendered As a cross-sectional questionnaire and interview-based survey, the sample population was studied by means of ten-item questionnaire in the form of Discourse Completion Task and structured interview at seven Universities systematically selected from the South-East and South-South geo-political zones in Nigeria. The study instruments were completed, returned, transcribed and statistically analysed using the quantitative and qualitative tools for analysis of production and perception data respectively. Results showed that politeness and hedging are indispensable sociolinguistic elements in the conversational English of the study sample. Also, results revealed that to accomplish a communicative goal, the samples adopted different politeness/hedging strategies given the discourse situation. Also, findings showed that the female respondents were found to adhere more to linguistic politeness principles than their male counterparts considering the context hence demonstrating a difference in conversational style. The study found evidence to establish that females are more polite than males in conversations. In conclusion, findings of this study showed that respondents yielded to certain sociolinguistic factors such as age, culture, hierarchy, disposition and religion as they were believed to inform the use of a particular strategy or another.
Highlights
The concept of gender in conversation has generated so much attention nay controversy among researchers in sociolinguistics
The objective of the study was to examine the politeness and hedging strategies in the English language conversation of Igbo native speakers in Nigeria as well as establish whether men and women’s conversational styles have been gendered As a cross-sectional questionnaire and interview-based survey, the sample population was studied by means of ten-item questionnaire in the form of Discourse Completion Task and structured interview at seven Universities systematically selected from the South-East and South-South geo-political zones in Nigeria
The result of the study indicated that considering the various contexts portrayed in the study instruments, the female samples were found to adhere more to linguistic politeness principles than their male counterparts
Summary
The concept of gender in conversation has generated so much attention nay controversy among researchers in sociolinguistics This assertion appears to stem from an understanding that there exists a dichotomy in the speech/conversational style of men and women, the complexities of which involve the understanding of the language in use and appreciation of the context of use. Human conversation in general and the Igbo bilinguals’ is known to be fraught with strategies aimed at achieving the desired goal of communicativeness. Among these strategies are: politeness, hedging, turn-taking, code mixing, code switching, adjacency principle etc.
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