This essay examines the relation between gender and adherence to Brown and Levinson's Politeness Principle. Women and men tend to use language for different purposes and for the purpose of achieving various goals. In order to examine this relation, a research study was conducted. Two women and three men were observed discussing subjects given by an interviewer. The collected interview data gathered from the conversation was analyzed and related to the Politeness Principle. Aspects from sociolinguistics, such as theories from gender and language studies, and the Cooperative Principle as proposed by H P Grice, were also considered and formed part of the analysis. The results indicate that there is a small difference between women’s versus men’s adherence to the Politeness Principle. More specifically, women tend to use more aspects of linguistic politeness. However, as the sample group of the research study consisted of only five participants, the limits of the study in terms of the generalizability of the results are recognized and suggestions have been made for further research.

人們常因為禮貌或其他因素避免對立的情況發生。然而，異議在我們日常溝通中又扮演了不可或缺的角色。之前，眾多對於異議及其相關語言活動的研究均未曾探究異議內容的本質(對於事實內容的異議或對於議題評估的異議)與異議的建構有何關係。此外，台灣鮮少研究社會因素對異議建構方式的影響。基於上述不足，本研究旨在探討何種異議(內容異議或評估異議)在日常生活中較常出現，不同異議類別的語言形式與語用策略為何，以及年齡是否會影響異議的數量多寡與建構方式。本研究採用言談分析(conversational analysis, CA)作為研究框架，並以言語行為理論(speech act theory),合作原則(Cooperative Principles)及禮貌理論(Politeness Principles)為理論基礎。 本研究以12份日常交談為語料，進行異議分析。在這12份語料中，8組對話者為同齡(4組年長者，4組年輕者)，4組對話者為跨齡。在分析過程中，先依異議的本質進行分類，進而分析討論異議中所使用的語言形式、語用策略、社會因素(年齡)，以及四者彼此之間的互動。 研究結果顯示，第一，人們使用評估異議的頻率為內容異議的兩倍之多。個人主觀式遠多於社會文化評估的異議。第二，就語言形式而言，在異議的建構中，否定句、預告詞及肯定句(依此順序)的使用頻率高於其他語言形式。然而，語言行式的選擇會隨異議的本質而有所改變。內容異議通常使用直接句型，如否定句與肯定句；評估異議則平均使用直接性的否定句與間接性的預告詞。第三，就語用策略而言，更正、解釋與質疑(依此順序)的使用頻率高於其他語用策略。語用策略的選擇亦隨異議本質的不同而有所改變。超過一半的內容異議使用更正策略，但在評估異議中，更正、解釋與質疑的使用頻率相當。第四，在評估異議中，在各個語用策略中，語言形式的種類比內容異議多。這個結果影射著評估異議對面子的威脅程度可能比內容異議來得嚴重。因此，在進行評估異議時，語言形式與語用策略的挑選用必須格外注意。第五，年齡與異議的建構有顯著的相關性。同齡組比跨齡組更容易產生異議。最後，在異議中，聽話者的角色比說話者的角色更具有影響力。 / Although people try to avoid opposition for the sake of politeness or other reasons, disagreement, which may threaten interpersonal relationship and the success of communication, is inevitable in our daily life. Previous studies on disagreement (including dispute, argument, conflict, etc.) have not probe into the nature of the referential content—whether it is content-based (in this study, C-disagreement) or evaluation-based (in this study, E-disagreement), and the influences of social factors on disagreement have rarely been examined in Taiwan. Therefore, the purposes of this study are to see what type of disagreement are most likely to occur in daily conversations and to examine whether age is an influential factor on linguistic choices for in disagreement in Chinese society. This study uses the framework of conversational analysis (CA), and adopts speech act theory (Austin, 1962; Searle, 1975), Cooperative Principles (Grice, 1975) and Politeness Principles (Brown and Levinson’s, 1978, 1987; Leech, 1983) as the theoretical foundations. 12 conversations by speakers of 8 same-age groups (including 4 old groups and 4 young groups) and 4 cross-age groups were examined for disagreement. Related data are categorized, analyzed, and discussed by types of disagreement, linguistic markers, pragmatic strategies, social variable (in this study, age), and the interaction among the four. The results of the data analyses show, first, people adopt nearly twice more E-disagreement than C-disagreement; moreover, E-disagreement based on personal judgment emerges more often than E-disagreement based on socio-cultural evaluation. Second, for linguistic markers, negation, pre-announcement marker, and affirmative (in this order) are adopted more in disagreement. However, preferences for linguistic markers change according to types of disagreement. In C-disagreement, direct syntactic markers, such as negation and affirmative, are used more frequently than the others; however, in E-disagreement, direct negation (syntactic) and indirect pre-announcement (lexical) are used with equal frequencies. Third, among pragmatic strategies, correction, account, and challenge (in this order) are adopted more frequently than the others. The usage of pragmatic strategies varies with types of disagreement. In C-disagreement, correction is highly adopted. But in E-disagreement, correction, account, and challenge are used with equal percentages. Fourth, the fact that more varieties of linguistic markers are used in each pragmatic strategy in E-disagreement than in C-disagreement may imply impoliteness, since face-threatening force is more serious in E-disagreement than in C-disagreement, which, in turn, indicates that more careful manipulation is needed in using E-disagreement. Fifth, age is influential in disagreement. More disagreements are found in the same-age groups than in the cross-age groups. Last, the hearer’s role is found to be more influential than the speaker’s role.

This diploma thesis deals with the way to teach politeness in elementary schools. Based on the theoretical literature, in the first theoretical part on the background of the Czech language there are defined basic terms such as pragmalinguistics, politeness principle, politeness strategies, face etc. Considering the didactic character of this work, both verbal and nonverbal aspects of politeness are described in the relation to the teacher-student communication. The practical part of the thesis focuses on the analysis of how the aspects of politeness are taught in Czech language lessons and included in three contemporary textbook series. Other source studied is the analysis of the relevant survey among teachers. On the basis of the survey results there are made up some activities with presumably good influence on practicing examined aspects of politeness.