A pioneering study done by the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad on the relationship between gender, politeness and e-mail content has come out with interesting details.
The e-mail survey was conducted by IIM-As Associate Professor in Communications Asha Kaul and academic associate Vaibhavi Kulkarni. For the purpose of the study, the authors sent e-mails to various organizations in India soliciting samples of work related e-mails.
Additionally, students and colleagues were requested to share task-oriented e-mails. 494 e-mails were received. Of these, 250 were written by men and 244 by women. All names were deleted from the e-mails. The gender, male or female, of the sender was written on top of the mails to facilitate coding on the basis of gender.
All mails either had a request (pertaining to work) to be made, job/task to be assigned, or information to be solicited. While all e-mails were task-oriented, they varied in the degree and form of politeness.
Some adhered to explicit expressions of politeness in the interest of securing cooperation, some indicated presence of more than one maxim of politeness, some made use of explicit expression of politeness through words or politeness indicators as Please, Thank you, and some directly violated the politeness maxims.
What are the findings of the survey?
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E-mails written by women showed extensive use of approbation and agreement.
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E-mails written by women showed a higher degree of adherence to principles of politeness than those written by men.
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Tact and approbation were two positive politeness maxims used frequently in e-mails by both men and women. However, it was found that there was high persistence of approbation maxim among males.
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Men, in their e-mails, used praise and approval of the recipients actions more than women.
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The e-mails written by women showed hesitancy to openly contradict or disagree. The mails were more appeasing and tentative rather than firm and clear.
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An interesting finding from the analysis of the e-mails was the tendency or desire to bond with the recipient through written communication. A variation in this bonding technique was found in the mails written by men and women.
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Men attempted bonding through the use of approbation or approval.
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Women attempted bonding by making inane talk.
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In other words, men played the role of the head in a patriarchic society, praising and motivating, which is typical of the Indian culture, and women indulged in relationship building by inquiring about the wellbeing of the recipient, family members, etc, before moving on to work related topics.
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In the e-mails sent by men, while there was adherence to the politeness principle, violations of maxims were also witnessed. Instances of violations were in the nature of sarcastic politeness or camouflaged politeness.
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Maxims of sympathy, modesty and generosity were used in almost equal proportion by both men and women.
An example of sympathy that women and men showed in their e-mails:
Women: Now that you mention it, I do remember your name (and IIM) from the programme. Israel (not only Eilat but also Tel Aviv, where I spent a night after the conference) was fabulous too bad you missed it.
Men: I am saddened by the devastation that your country and so many others have suffered.
Men and women, while assigning tasks, were both tactful and tactless. Women, however, were more tactful while assigning tasks, while men were more abrupt. Both men and women made use of explicit expression of politeness through words like requested, kindly, sincerely, please, can we, may we, suggested, grateful, etc., at the time of assigning tasks in their tactful mails,
but since most of the e-mails written by women were tactful in nature, obviously the use of explicit expressions of politeness through words used by women were also more.
What prompted IIM-A to embark on the study?
Professor Kaul says IIM-A embarked on the study to analyse the level or extent of politeness or type of principles used/abused to solicit cooperation in e-mails by males and females in India. The study is an attempt to get an understanding of e-mails written by men and women in India, claims Professor Kaul. An analysis of gender-segregated written communication patterns within e-mails would lead to a better understanding of how men and women approach task oriented communication, she pointed out.
IIM-A academic associate Vaibhavi Kulkarni said they were interested in the study because with the increasing number of women at workplace, task-oriented interaction between men and women has increased. Getting work done requires cooperation from other colleagues and external clients, etc where it becomes essential to maintain politeness , she said. At the same time, Kulkarni pointed out that as e-mails are being used frequently to communicate at work and they take the form of intellectual written shorthand and are often informal in nature.
The researchers claim that the study of gender in e-mail communication is a fertile ground for future researchers. The possibilities are manifold because of the comparative novelty of the medium. Additionally, the intrinsic similarity of this form of communication with face-to-face and written communication and extrinsic dissimilarity with the existing media of communication makes the former a challenging area for research.
Source: http://in.rediff.com
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