Disagreement Strategies among Male and Female University Students

The study investigates facework strategies employed by male and female university students in performing the speech act of disagreement. Two hundred and eighty minutes of talk in a university class were recorded and tokens of disagreement were extracted and analyzed according to the sex of the disagreeing and the disagreed persons، using Brown and Levinson’s (1987) Politeness Model and Rees-Miller’s (2000) classification of disagreement strategies. The results of quantitative and qualitative analyses indicate that sex of the speaker and addressee has an impact on how disagreement is expressed. Generally، boys expressed more disagreements and used more aggravated disagreements than girls. In same-sex disagreements boys were more aggressive (by using aggravating devices) and girls avoided disagreement with other girls. In disagreement with the opposite sex، however، only one significant difference was found between males and females: boys employed more aggravated disagreements. Girls were found to be more sensitive to the sex of their addressee in their choice of facework stratetgy in disagreement.