Hi there nyajao!
Ok….as promised, I've got a report here for you!
I'm going to give you the report first – below – and then after that
I'm going to give you some discussion and some pointers.
Note one thing first – in the report you will see areas where I've
inserted rows of stars with text ---
************ TEXT LIKE THIS ************
These are areas that need your attention.
ALSO: Please be sure to read what I've written after the report. It
will probably give you ideas of things you can add to your report or
ways to improve on it.
As I told you before, my plan is not to completely write the report
for you, but to use your words as much as possible in a structured
way. You may still want to add to what I have written. After reading
what I did here, it shoudl be clear to you where to put things.
------------------------
WORD COUNT: 1400
THE USE OF POLITE LANGUAGE BY MEN AND WOMEN IN DIFFERENT SOCIAL
CONTEXTS
===================
ABSTRACT
===================
Counting the frequency of use of certain words in our language can be
used as one way to measure a person's level of politeness. There may
be differences in how often men use certain polite terms versus how
often women use them. We designed a study to count how often men and
women use specific polite terms in different situations to see if
there was a difference between the sexes.
Our assumption is that the number of polite words a person uses can be
positively correlated with that person's overall level of politeness.
The more polite words a person uses, the more polite they actually
are.
==================
HYPOTHESIS
==================
Our team hypothesized that in general men would be more polite and use
more polite language than women.
But we also thought that that people in pubs, especially men, would
use fewer polite words than in shops or college; maybe because of the
effects of alcohol. So in the pub we expected to get lower numbers of
responses overall.
Our hypotheses were based on personal experience. In general we have
observed that men tend to use more polite words. They are friendlier
than women. Women tend, especially when dealing with other women, to
be impolite or even snippy.
===================
STUDY DESIGN
===================
We chose sex as our independent variable, rather than age, because it
is easy to identify without interviewing the subject.
Our dependent variable was the frequency of use of "polite words" as
an indicator of overall politeness. We selected the following polite
words:
Thank you
Sorry
Please
Excuse me
We used observational research to observe and record our data. We used
different researchers in different locations so that the research
would not be biased to one place. Also we didn't want to use just one
researcher in case that made a difference.
We selected our test subjects to balance the sex ratio, but otherwise
we chose them randomly during our observation periods. They were all
ages.
====================
PROCEDURE
====================
Our goal was to do something that encouraged the use of politeness
and/or required the subject to give some sort of acknowledgment. We
were careful to try to provide a neutral situation by not being so
extremely polite that it would encourage people to mirror us back.
Our group of researchers conducted this research project in five
different locations. The locations were chosen based on ease of access
and proximity to where we live or work.
Our Locations and technique for initiating response was as follows –
************ FILL IN THE TECHNIQUE YOU USED IN EACH LOCATION
***********
1 – SHOP
2- COLLEGE
3 – MALL - The researcher held the door at the exit for people
walking in and out of the mall.
4 – PUB
5 - UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE - We tried to obstruct people at the entrance
At each location we collected the following data for 20 interactions
(10 male, 10 female) in a chart like this one:
****** INSERT THE BLANK CHART THAT YOU USED **********
We recorded our results for each location by ticking how many male or
female used the above polite words or said nothing at all during an
interaction. Then we counted them up in the end to know whether men or
women used more polite words.
===============
DATA
===============
******** MAKE THE BELOW CHARTS MATCH THE FORMAT OF THE ONE YOU USED
ABOVE ***************
The data for each location was as follows:
---------------------------------------
1 – SHOP
---------------------------------------
MALE FEMALE
THANK YOU 3 2
SORRY 0 1
PLEASE 2 1
EXCUSE ME 4 5
NOTHING AT ALL 1 1
----------------------------------------
TOTAL 10 10
----------------------------------------
2- COLLEGE
-----------------------------------------
MALES FEMALE
THANK YOU 2 3
SORRY 0 1
PLEASE 1 1
EXCUSE ME 2 3
NOTHING AT ALL 0 1
------------------------------------------
TOTAL 5 9
-------------------------------------
3 – MALL
-------------------------------------
MALE FEMALE
THANK YOU 5 5
SORRY 1 0
PLEASE 0 1
EXCUSE ME 2 2
NOTHING AT ALL 0 1
-------------------------------------
TOTAL 8 9
--------------------------------------------
4 – PUB
--------------------------------------------
MALES FEMALE
THANK YOU 3 1
SORRY 3 0
PLEASE 0 0
EXCUSE ME 3 5
NOTHING AT ALL 1 1
----------------------------------------------
TOTAL 10 7
-----------------------------------------------
5 - UNIVERSITY ENTRANCE
-----------------------------------------------
MALE FEMALE
THANK YOU 2 3
SORRY 0 1
PLEASE 1 2
EXCUSE ME 0 1
NOTHING AT ALL 1 2
------------------------------------------
TOTAL 4 9
Our aggregate data was as follows –
************ FILL IN THIS DATA **************
---------------------------------------
TOTALS FOR ALL LOCATIONS
---------------------------------------
MALE FEMALE
THANK YOU
SORRY
PLEASE
EXCUSE ME
NOTHING AT ALL
----------------------------------------
TOTAL
------------------------------------------
# OF SUBJECTS | # OF TIMES POLITE
OBSERVED | WORDS WERE USED
------------------------------------------
SHOP 20 18
COLLEGE 14 13
MALL 17 16
PUB 17 15
UNIVERSITY 13 10
-------------------------------------------
TOTAL 81 72
======================
RESULTS
=======================
According to our aggregate results, out of 81 interactions, more women
(42 in total) used polite words than men (34 in total). It would
appear from this result that women are generally more polite than men.
This result did not confirm our hypothesis that men tend to use more
polite words than women.
However, when we looked at each of the individual locations, some of
the results (those in the pub) were different and confirmed our
hypothesis.
Pub: More men used polite words than women.
Holding the door at the Mall: Both men and women were equal.
Obstructing at the University entrance: More women than men used
polite words.
Shop: Again men and women were equal.
College: Less men used polite words than women
We had also predicted that there would be fewer responses overall in
the pub. This proved not to be true. The number of times people used
polite terms in the pub (15 times out of 17 interactions) was roughly
the same as in the other locations.
=========================
INTERPRETATION OF RESULTS
=========================
We think that the reason women tend to use more polite language is
because men and women are generally very different biologically.
Women must be naturally more caring, considerate, nurturing and kinder
than men. Maybe this is because they are the child bearers. This
might give them a "soft side" and make them more likely to use more
polite words than men.
In some of the specific locations that we tested, we think the
location or what we did might have affected the individual results.
Pub: We thought that in this case maybe men used more polite words
than women because they were being served by a woman. Men in pubs are
probably just trying to flatter the women. Alcohol could make them act
different than they normally would. Also, we have observed in the past
that women in pubs tend to be less polite to other women.
Holding the door at the Mall: We thought that the results for men and
women were the same because the subjects were aware that we were
watching them or maybe because they were in a hurry.
Obstructing at the University entrance: More women than men used
polite words. This might have been different depending on who did the
obstructing.
===================
CONCLUSION
===================
Our aggregate data did not support our original hypothesis.
As far as the individual locations went, only the pub data supported
our original statement – that men would be more polite than women.
We think this may be because we were basing our hypothesis on how we
have seen men and women act with us and with each other in pubs and we
just assumed that this same behavior would carry over to other
locations and with other people.
What we learned is that there may be more to how polite people are
than just their sex. Where they are and who they are talking to could
also make a difference.
===================
FURTHER RESEARCH
===================
When we decided how to do this study, we didn't understand that so
many things could affect how people act or how polite they are.
Now we know that we had too many variables in our study. The
locations, the sex of the person trying to encourage the use of polite
words, and alcohol use were some of the variables we didn’t consider.
To continue this research it would probably be better to do all 100
observations in the same location (like in a mall) just to see who is
more polite in that one location, men or women.
----------------------------
So that's that nyajao!
Now.. here are my thoughts on this whole thing. You may want to
consider them and expand your report.
The difficulty here was in interpreting your results because you had
too many variables in your study design. (SEE the link to "STUDY
DESIGN TIPS AND DEFINITIONS" below)
You have stated that you wanted to see who used "polite words" more
often – men or women.
But you have introduced other variables such as location, alcohol
consumption, time of day, type of interaction (helpful vs. hindering),
even possibly the sex of the person "causing" the interaction. (For
example a man might be more likely to apologize to a woman as opposed
to another man).
In order to properly measure a single behavior and compare between
sexes, you must remove every other variable from your equation. The
subject's sex must be the ONLY difference in the interactions you are
observing. The circumstance you present to the subject must be
identical in every single case. And your results must be presented as
applicable ONLY in that circumstance.
For example, a result might look like this –
"Our data, based on 100 samples, shows that if a woman holds a door
for a man exiting a grocery store while pushing a cart, the man will
thank her 80% of the time. If she holds a door for a woman pushing a
cart, the woman will thank her 50% of the time."
Or something like that.
I suspect that your professor will award you points for acknowledging
this deficiency in your study (in the CONCLUSION and FURTHER RESEARCH
portions of your report)and coming up with your own ideas of how to
remedy it the next time.
SPECIFIC POINTS -----------
Use Excel or the table function in your word processor to make your
charts. They will look nicer.
I have used the terms "Our team" and "we" because I thought this was a
group effort and most reports are written to include the team. If I
misunderstood, just go back and change every thing to "I"
Normally in a report like this, there would be statistical analyses,
to determine if your results are valid. In other words, did you test a
big enough sample and are your results meaningful. I have not included
a statistical interpretation of your results because A) It didn't seem
that you were trying to delve that deep and B) I don't know enough
about statistics to do it right.
If you need stats run on your data, you'll need to post that as a new
question.
FURTHER HELP ----------------
I found a couple of websites that would be useful to you in learning
how to conduct and report linguistic politeness or other psychological
research.
STUDY DESIGN TIPS AND DEFINITIONS
This shorter-link site will redirect you to the correct site:
Your shorter link is:
http://makeashorterlink.com/?G62E21954
Vocabulary Terms for Research in Psychology
http://psychlab1.hanover.edu/classes/Research/Terms.html
A good report to use as an example ---
Requesting strategies in English and Greek:
Observations from an Airline’s Call Centre
http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/english/nlc/economidou.pdf
Vol. 3 (April 2002): Linguistic Politeness and Context
http://www.history-journals.de/articles/hjg-eartic-j00094.html
LANGUAGE AND SEX
http://teachers.englishclub.com/articles/language.htm
That should be everything you need to put the final touches on your
report and have it ready to turn in by the 30th.
If anything I've said is not clear, please feel free to ask me for
clarification.
Thanks for your question. You've done a great job of answering my
questions so that we were able to write this report together.
Good luck with it!
-K~ |
