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Introduction:
Some of their researches (Booher, 1988; Smith and Bernhardt, 1996; Munter, 2006) have been concentrated on teaching students writing skills. On the other hand, some of their researches (Lakoff, 1975; Labov, 1990; Coates, 1998) have been carried on about identifying and instantiating possible differences in linguistic styles between males and females. However, little work has been undertaken on investigating gender differences reflected in business letters writing, especially job-application letter, by analyzing the genre components and politeness strategies. In this project, by providing a content analysis of 20 job application letters written by Chinese college job applicants, I try to explore the differences between Chinese male and female college job hunters presented in their job application letters.
Literature review:
Smeltzer and Welbal (1986) were the first to attempt to answer the question of whether or not males and females differ in their managerial written communication style. They reviewed and evaluated 16 dimensions, they found that there is no significant difference between males and females on these 16 dimensions. However, their research is also constrained with many limitations; for instance, the researchers asked nine female MBA students who were not enrolled in the course in which the samples were selected to join in their research study. Therefore, the samples were not totally random-selected.
There are many different ways to analyze written structures. However, Bhatia’s seven-move structural model (1993) is the most popular and widely used one. Here, according to Nwogu (1997), “move” means a “text segment” made up of a bundle of linguistic features that give the segment a uniform orientation and signal the content of discourse in it. So Bhatia’s seven-move structural model (1993) is a very important starting point to analyze the job application letter.
Meanwhile, I cannot completely employ the seven-move model (Bhatia, 1993) into analyzing Chinese college job hunters’ application letters. Take the move Using Pressure Tactics for example, it is rarely seen in Chinese college job hunters’ job application letters; on the contrary, Chinese employers often give priority to the applicants with political affiliation, such as Communist Party Member, which never occurred in Westerners’ job application letters. Therefore, I have adapted it into 10 specific moves usually appeared in Chinese college job hunters’ job application letters with each definition as follows:
Adapted Moves
Definition and Example
1. Opening
Dear Sir or Madam; To whom it may concern,
2. Source of information
I get the information from website of the Personal Section of your university.
3. Introducing candidature
I wish to make application for lectureship in …
4. Establishing credentials
I will graduate in July with MA degree.
5. Essential detailing of the candidature
I have been doing part-time job as an English teacher since 2008.
6. Indicating value of the candidature
I am good at WORD, EXCEL, and I am fluent in English and Cantonese.
7. Offering incentives
I am also quite qualified to teach a variety of courses at undergraduate levels, such as grammar, reading and listening.
8. Enclosing documents
My completed CV is enclosed.
9. Soliciting response
Feel free to contact me, my phone number is…
10. Polite ending
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Another theoretical model used in my project is model of politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987). It provides a good framework for identifying the different strategies male or female college job hunters prefer to use when they intend to communicate properly and efficiently in written forms. All the twenty application letters used in my project are written texts. Thanks to Greg Myers (1989), he extended the model proposed by Brown and Levinson to the scope of written text that can be understood as a form of interaction between author and reader in this certain circumstance.
Research Methods:
1. Participants:
Among twenty letters, five (3 males’ and 2 females’ letters) were taken for analysis from applicant files at English Program, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Harbin Institute of Technology this year, any information given would be totally anonymous. As for the remaining fifteen postgraduate job application letters (7 from male students and 8 from female students), they are gained from the first year postgraduate Chinese students, majoring in Science and Engineering at HITSGS from which they will graduate with MSc degree in June 2011.
2. Approach of data collection:
Five postgraduates’ job application letters were chosen randomly in the applicant files of Year 2010. All of the applicants were seeking a lectureship in English Program, HITSGS. In addition, each of the 15 postgraduate job hunters was asked to write a job application letter as if he or she were actually hunting a job. These students more or less have some knowledge of business letter writing skills. So this time there is no fixed model for them to follow. They compose it only as the way they think the job application letter should be.
Data Analysis:
1. Analysis of move structure:
I found that ten moves are generally applied in both Chinese male and female college job hunters’ application letters. Different moves are preferred to use by male college job hunters and female college job hunters respectively. There is no salient difference in using move one and three, because those are the basic information applicants should provide. Moreover, among the job application letters written by male college job hunters, they mainly focus on move three, eight and nine often, however, female job applicants use more moves than male counterparts. Figure 1 makes the point graphically.
Figure 1: Comparison of the moves in male and female college job hunters’ job application letters:
2. Analysis of politeness strategies
Chinese people have its own convention to express their politeness, only a few politeness strategies can be used to analyze the gender differences presented in job application letters written by Chinese college job hunters, take positive politeness for example, there are showing interest, offering a contribution or a benefit, showing directness, being optimistic and glorifying the addressee. As for the negative strategies, only two strategies are used often in job application letters: giving deference and self- degradation.
By doing statistical analysis (Figure 2), I find that there is not much gender difference in Showing Interest, which both male and female students always use as leading-in sentence. However, some slight variations still could be found: male college job hunters use more bold-typed intensifier (e.g. very much) and lexical terms (e.g. promising or honored) to express their passion towards the future job. Female college job hunters only use placid words to express their interest in the job and they may think it is quite abrupt to state strong feeling at the beginning.
In addition, when we are looking at other positive strategies, it can be easily found that male college job hunters use more than female college job hunters in writing job application letters. By comparing the way male and female college job hunters use to describe their qualifications and contributions, male college job hunters seems to be overconfident without giving pertinent information than female college job hunters when applying for a job, which is easy to bore the addressee with irrelevant information and unnecessary superlatives. And the words male college job hunters choose are deliberate and purpose-oriented and sound more aggressive than those words used by female college job hunters. And this characteristic is saliently incarnated in Showing Directness politeness strategy, which is rarely seen in females’ job application letters. Moreover, when considering Being Optimistic politeness strategy, male college job hunters (80%) still outperform nearly twice as much as female college job hunters (50%).
Glorifying the Addressee is the only politeness strategy model that is not overtly stated in Brown and Levinson’s politeness model (1987). However, Chinese college job hunters like to use this strategy not only to express their appreciation, but also try to gain more favorable impression from the perspective employer. Likewise, male applicants make full use of this strategy (80%) twice as much as female applicants (40%).
Based on the Brown and Levinson’s model (1987), it is quite logical to get the conclusion that job hunters should use as more negative strategies as possible to show their respect to the addressee. On the contrary, the analysis I examined shows that there are only two negative strategies used by both male and female college job hunters compared with that of positive strategies.
More interestingly, female job applicants use overwhelmingly more negative strategies than male applicants. Take the first negative strategy for example: the common structure used by female graduates is “I would be grateful if you give my application letter a careful consideration.” or “I do appreciate your consideration of my application.” In contrast, only male 4 and 7 use this formulaic structure at the end of their application letters. Moreover, only a handful of female job applicants use self-degradation strategy, which is hardly seen in males’.
Figure 2: Comparison of politeness strategies in male and female college job hunters’ job application letters:
Discussion:
Findings about gender differences embodied in the job application letters written by Chinese male and female college job hunters reveal many interesting results in terms of arrangement of letters’ structures and the use of politeness strategies.
There are several differences between Chinese male and female college job hunters when applying Bhatia’s move structure (1993) into analyzing their own job application letters. First, the structures of female college job hunters’ job application letters are more completed than those of male college job hunters in terms of numbers of moves. On the contrary, male college job hunters are more practical and purpose-oriented than females. Furthermore, there is one move, namely Offering Incentive, male college job hunters use (20%) overwhelmingly less than female college job-hunters (80%), from which I can see that male college job hunters always require more from the addressee and seldom concentrate on self-description. With regard to the move 10 Polite Ending, it seems as a compulsory part in females’ job application letters, which, likewise, female college job-hunters place much importance on. In contrast with that, only half of males take the last move as serious as female college job-hunters. And the other half male college job-hunters merely end their job application letters with “sincerely, best, warmly, yours and regards” without further depiction. So males are more direct than females and not as polite as females, which is a reflection of gender-preferential language use.
As for the politeness strategies used by both parties, it is surprising to see that both Chinese male and female college job hunters prefer to make use of positive politeness strategies compared with negative politeness strategies. In addition, Chinese male college job hunters use more positive strategies than female college job hunters, which is against the intention of Brown and Levinson (1987). As we know, in most cases, the job applicants only employ positive politeness strategies when they emphasize solidarity, closeness and in-group relationship. That is to say, being equal and powerful are the prerequisites for the job applicants to use positive politeness strategies. However, how it is possible for job applicants to be equal and powerful with the perspective employer? If we take social distance between the two parties and respecting status differences into account, it seems smarter to use negative strategies. However, the data I got from the twenty application letters disclose that the strategies used in the Chinese college job hunters’ application letters are against our expectations: male college job hunters are prone to take the challenge, make themselves in a more risky situation and may produce exactly the opposite results. On the other hand, the result of analysis of negative strategies uncovers that neither male nor female college job hunters show interest in employing that, especially male college job hunters in that only two negative strategies are used, female college job hunters use more negative strategies than their male peers, especially in the strategy of Giving Deference, 70% compared with 20% used by male applicants, and male college job hunters never use Self-Degradation strategy when applying for the job.
Conclusion:
There are visible gender differences in job application letters written by Chinese college job hunters, the result of the study also indicated that politeness strategies are often badly used and managed by both male and female college job hunters, especially male college job hunters. They avoid using negative politeness strategies and make full use of positive politeness ones. There is a degree of risk involved in using positive politeness strategies in such social interactions, because the employers never think that both applicants and perspective employer can be mentioned in the same breath (Maier, 1992; Upton& Connor, 2001). Male college job hunters may not have noticed the appropriateness of these strategies in such a contextual communication interaction.
Moreover, there are differences in the genre component preferences, too. Male college job hunters mainly focus on following moves: move 3 Introducing Candidature, move 8 Enclosing Documents and move 9 Soliciting Response, which, in their opinions, can express them briefly and directly rather than consider the all the elements a job application letter should consist of which could make their application letters completely. On the other hand, female college job hunters are more polite, more indirect and more considerate when organizing their job application letters’ structure.
In sum, from what I have found, the differences presented in the organization of application letters and in the use of politeness strategies are deeply rooted in gender differences. And the findings in my project correspond to the previous research about gender-preferential language: for example, females reported to use more negative politeness strategies than male (Tannen, 1990; Goodwin, 1990; Holmes, 1995).
It should be emphasized that my project still has certain limitations: firstly, it was limited to 20 participants, 15 of whom are in one university and the only 5 job-hunters are graduated from other universities. Secondly, 15 postgraduate job hunters didn’t take the job application as serious as the first five job hunters, because all the postgraduates wrote their job application letters as an assignment rather than use them to apply for a job. So the degree of seriousness for preparation is hard to measure, which is beyond the scope of my project. Last but not least, in terms of research method, I mainly focus on qualitative analysis rather than quantitative analysis due to the limitation of my corpus, because Pearson Chi-square only can be used when two assumptions are met, one of which is that the expected frequencies should be greater than 5. Although it is acceptable in larger contingency tables to have up to 20% of expected frequencies below 5, the result is a loss of power. So the text may fail to detect a genuine effect (Field, 2005). So I have to state that all the outcomes in my project only serve to these 20 Chinese college job hunters’ application letters.
References:
Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993): Analyzing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.
Booher, Dianna. (1988): Letter Perfect: A Handbook of Model Letters for the Busy Executive. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen. (1987): Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coates, Jennifer. (1998): Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Crosby, Fay and Nyquist, Linda. (1977): The female register: An empirical study of Lakoff’s hypotheses. Language in Society, 6, pp313-322.
Field, Andy. (2005): Discovering Statistics Using SPSS: (Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Goodwin, Marjorie H. (1990): He Said, She Said: Task as Social Organization Among Black Children. Bloomington. IN: University of Indiana Press.
Holmes, Janet (1995): Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
Labov, William. (1990): The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2, 3: pp205-254.
Maier, Paula. (1992): Politeness strategies in business letters by native and non-native English Speakers. English for Specific Purposes 11, pp189-205.
Munter, Mary. (2006): Guide to managerial Communicating: Effective Business Writing and Speaking. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Person /Prentice Hall.
Myers, Greg. (1989): The Pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics. 10, pp1-35.
Nwogu, Kevin. (1997): The medical research paper: Structure and functions. English for Specific Purposes. 16, pp119-138.
Smeltzer, Larry R. and Werbal, James. O. (1986): Gender differences in managerial communication: fact or folk-linguistics? The Journal of Business Communication. Vol 23, issue2, pp 41-50.
Smith, Edward L. and Bernhardt, Stephen A. (1996): Writing at Work: Professional Writing Skills for People on the Job. Lincolnwood, III: NTC Pub Group.
Tannen, Deborah. (1990): You Just Don’t Understand. New York: Morrow.
Upton, Thomas A. and Connor, Ulla. (2001): Using computerized corpus analysis to investigate the textlinguistic discourse move of genre. English for Specific Purposes 20, pp313-329.
Some of their researches (Booher, 1988; Smith and Bernhardt, 1996; Munter, 2006) have been concentrated on teaching students writing skills. On the other hand, some of their researches (Lakoff, 1975; Labov, 1990; Coates, 1998) have been carried on about identifying and instantiating possible differences in linguistic styles between males and females. However, little work has been undertaken on investigating gender differences reflected in business letters writing, especially job-application letter, by analyzing the genre components and politeness strategies. In this project, by providing a content analysis of 20 job application letters written by Chinese college job applicants, I try to explore the differences between Chinese male and female college job hunters presented in their job application letters.
Literature review:
Smeltzer and Welbal (1986) were the first to attempt to answer the question of whether or not males and females differ in their managerial written communication style. They reviewed and evaluated 16 dimensions, they found that there is no significant difference between males and females on these 16 dimensions. However, their research is also constrained with many limitations; for instance, the researchers asked nine female MBA students who were not enrolled in the course in which the samples were selected to join in their research study. Therefore, the samples were not totally random-selected.
There are many different ways to analyze written structures. However, Bhatia’s seven-move structural model (1993) is the most popular and widely used one. Here, according to Nwogu (1997), “move” means a “text segment” made up of a bundle of linguistic features that give the segment a uniform orientation and signal the content of discourse in it. So Bhatia’s seven-move structural model (1993) is a very important starting point to analyze the job application letter.
Meanwhile, I cannot completely employ the seven-move model (Bhatia, 1993) into analyzing Chinese college job hunters’ application letters. Take the move Using Pressure Tactics for example, it is rarely seen in Chinese college job hunters’ job application letters; on the contrary, Chinese employers often give priority to the applicants with political affiliation, such as Communist Party Member, which never occurred in Westerners’ job application letters. Therefore, I have adapted it into 10 specific moves usually appeared in Chinese college job hunters’ job application letters with each definition as follows:
Adapted Moves
Definition and Example
1. Opening
Dear Sir or Madam; To whom it may concern,
2. Source of information
I get the information from website of the Personal Section of your university.
3. Introducing candidature
I wish to make application for lectureship in …
4. Establishing credentials
I will graduate in July with MA degree.
5. Essential detailing of the candidature
I have been doing part-time job as an English teacher since 2008.
6. Indicating value of the candidature
I am good at WORD, EXCEL, and I am fluent in English and Cantonese.
7. Offering incentives
I am also quite qualified to teach a variety of courses at undergraduate levels, such as grammar, reading and listening.
8. Enclosing documents
My completed CV is enclosed.
9. Soliciting response
Feel free to contact me, my phone number is…
10. Polite ending
Looking forward to hearing from you soon.
Another theoretical model used in my project is model of politeness (Brown and Levinson, 1987). It provides a good framework for identifying the different strategies male or female college job hunters prefer to use when they intend to communicate properly and efficiently in written forms. All the twenty application letters used in my project are written texts. Thanks to Greg Myers (1989), he extended the model proposed by Brown and Levinson to the scope of written text that can be understood as a form of interaction between author and reader in this certain circumstance.
Research Methods:
1. Participants:
Among twenty letters, five (3 males’ and 2 females’ letters) were taken for analysis from applicant files at English Program, Graduate School at Shenzhen, Harbin Institute of Technology this year, any information given would be totally anonymous. As for the remaining fifteen postgraduate job application letters (7 from male students and 8 from female students), they are gained from the first year postgraduate Chinese students, majoring in Science and Engineering at HITSGS from which they will graduate with MSc degree in June 2011.
2. Approach of data collection:
Five postgraduates’ job application letters were chosen randomly in the applicant files of Year 2010. All of the applicants were seeking a lectureship in English Program, HITSGS. In addition, each of the 15 postgraduate job hunters was asked to write a job application letter as if he or she were actually hunting a job. These students more or less have some knowledge of business letter writing skills. So this time there is no fixed model for them to follow. They compose it only as the way they think the job application letter should be.
Data Analysis:
1. Analysis of move structure:
I found that ten moves are generally applied in both Chinese male and female college job hunters’ application letters. Different moves are preferred to use by male college job hunters and female college job hunters respectively. There is no salient difference in using move one and three, because those are the basic information applicants should provide. Moreover, among the job application letters written by male college job hunters, they mainly focus on move three, eight and nine often, however, female job applicants use more moves than male counterparts. Figure 1 makes the point graphically.
Figure 1: Comparison of the moves in male and female college job hunters’ job application letters:
2. Analysis of politeness strategies
Chinese people have its own convention to express their politeness, only a few politeness strategies can be used to analyze the gender differences presented in job application letters written by Chinese college job hunters, take positive politeness for example, there are showing interest, offering a contribution or a benefit, showing directness, being optimistic and glorifying the addressee. As for the negative strategies, only two strategies are used often in job application letters: giving deference and self- degradation.
By doing statistical analysis (Figure 2), I find that there is not much gender difference in Showing Interest, which both male and female students always use as leading-in sentence. However, some slight variations still could be found: male college job hunters use more bold-typed intensifier (e.g. very much) and lexical terms (e.g. promising or honored) to express their passion towards the future job. Female college job hunters only use placid words to express their interest in the job and they may think it is quite abrupt to state strong feeling at the beginning.
In addition, when we are looking at other positive strategies, it can be easily found that male college job hunters use more than female college job hunters in writing job application letters. By comparing the way male and female college job hunters use to describe their qualifications and contributions, male college job hunters seems to be overconfident without giving pertinent information than female college job hunters when applying for a job, which is easy to bore the addressee with irrelevant information and unnecessary superlatives. And the words male college job hunters choose are deliberate and purpose-oriented and sound more aggressive than those words used by female college job hunters. And this characteristic is saliently incarnated in Showing Directness politeness strategy, which is rarely seen in females’ job application letters. Moreover, when considering Being Optimistic politeness strategy, male college job hunters (80%) still outperform nearly twice as much as female college job hunters (50%).
Glorifying the Addressee is the only politeness strategy model that is not overtly stated in Brown and Levinson’s politeness model (1987). However, Chinese college job hunters like to use this strategy not only to express their appreciation, but also try to gain more favorable impression from the perspective employer. Likewise, male applicants make full use of this strategy (80%) twice as much as female applicants (40%).
Based on the Brown and Levinson’s model (1987), it is quite logical to get the conclusion that job hunters should use as more negative strategies as possible to show their respect to the addressee. On the contrary, the analysis I examined shows that there are only two negative strategies used by both male and female college job hunters compared with that of positive strategies.
More interestingly, female job applicants use overwhelmingly more negative strategies than male applicants. Take the first negative strategy for example: the common structure used by female graduates is “I would be grateful if you give my application letter a careful consideration.” or “I do appreciate your consideration of my application.” In contrast, only male 4 and 7 use this formulaic structure at the end of their application letters. Moreover, only a handful of female job applicants use self-degradation strategy, which is hardly seen in males’.
Figure 2: Comparison of politeness strategies in male and female college job hunters’ job application letters:
Discussion:
Findings about gender differences embodied in the job application letters written by Chinese male and female college job hunters reveal many interesting results in terms of arrangement of letters’ structures and the use of politeness strategies.
There are several differences between Chinese male and female college job hunters when applying Bhatia’s move structure (1993) into analyzing their own job application letters. First, the structures of female college job hunters’ job application letters are more completed than those of male college job hunters in terms of numbers of moves. On the contrary, male college job hunters are more practical and purpose-oriented than females. Furthermore, there is one move, namely Offering Incentive, male college job hunters use (20%) overwhelmingly less than female college job-hunters (80%), from which I can see that male college job hunters always require more from the addressee and seldom concentrate on self-description. With regard to the move 10 Polite Ending, it seems as a compulsory part in females’ job application letters, which, likewise, female college job-hunters place much importance on. In contrast with that, only half of males take the last move as serious as female college job-hunters. And the other half male college job-hunters merely end their job application letters with “sincerely, best, warmly, yours and regards” without further depiction. So males are more direct than females and not as polite as females, which is a reflection of gender-preferential language use.
As for the politeness strategies used by both parties, it is surprising to see that both Chinese male and female college job hunters prefer to make use of positive politeness strategies compared with negative politeness strategies. In addition, Chinese male college job hunters use more positive strategies than female college job hunters, which is against the intention of Brown and Levinson (1987). As we know, in most cases, the job applicants only employ positive politeness strategies when they emphasize solidarity, closeness and in-group relationship. That is to say, being equal and powerful are the prerequisites for the job applicants to use positive politeness strategies. However, how it is possible for job applicants to be equal and powerful with the perspective employer? If we take social distance between the two parties and respecting status differences into account, it seems smarter to use negative strategies. However, the data I got from the twenty application letters disclose that the strategies used in the Chinese college job hunters’ application letters are against our expectations: male college job hunters are prone to take the challenge, make themselves in a more risky situation and may produce exactly the opposite results. On the other hand, the result of analysis of negative strategies uncovers that neither male nor female college job hunters show interest in employing that, especially male college job hunters in that only two negative strategies are used, female college job hunters use more negative strategies than their male peers, especially in the strategy of Giving Deference, 70% compared with 20% used by male applicants, and male college job hunters never use Self-Degradation strategy when applying for the job.
Conclusion:
There are visible gender differences in job application letters written by Chinese college job hunters, the result of the study also indicated that politeness strategies are often badly used and managed by both male and female college job hunters, especially male college job hunters. They avoid using negative politeness strategies and make full use of positive politeness ones. There is a degree of risk involved in using positive politeness strategies in such social interactions, because the employers never think that both applicants and perspective employer can be mentioned in the same breath (Maier, 1992; Upton& Connor, 2001). Male college job hunters may not have noticed the appropriateness of these strategies in such a contextual communication interaction.
Moreover, there are differences in the genre component preferences, too. Male college job hunters mainly focus on following moves: move 3 Introducing Candidature, move 8 Enclosing Documents and move 9 Soliciting Response, which, in their opinions, can express them briefly and directly rather than consider the all the elements a job application letter should consist of which could make their application letters completely. On the other hand, female college job hunters are more polite, more indirect and more considerate when organizing their job application letters’ structure.
In sum, from what I have found, the differences presented in the organization of application letters and in the use of politeness strategies are deeply rooted in gender differences. And the findings in my project correspond to the previous research about gender-preferential language: for example, females reported to use more negative politeness strategies than male (Tannen, 1990; Goodwin, 1990; Holmes, 1995).
It should be emphasized that my project still has certain limitations: firstly, it was limited to 20 participants, 15 of whom are in one university and the only 5 job-hunters are graduated from other universities. Secondly, 15 postgraduate job hunters didn’t take the job application as serious as the first five job hunters, because all the postgraduates wrote their job application letters as an assignment rather than use them to apply for a job. So the degree of seriousness for preparation is hard to measure, which is beyond the scope of my project. Last but not least, in terms of research method, I mainly focus on qualitative analysis rather than quantitative analysis due to the limitation of my corpus, because Pearson Chi-square only can be used when two assumptions are met, one of which is that the expected frequencies should be greater than 5. Although it is acceptable in larger contingency tables to have up to 20% of expected frequencies below 5, the result is a loss of power. So the text may fail to detect a genuine effect (Field, 2005). So I have to state that all the outcomes in my project only serve to these 20 Chinese college job hunters’ application letters.
References:
Bhatia, Vijay K. (1993): Analyzing Genre: Language Use in Professional Settings. London: Longman.
Booher, Dianna. (1988): Letter Perfect: A Handbook of Model Letters for the Busy Executive. Lexington, MA: Lexington Books.
Brown, Penelope and Levinson, Stephen. (1987): Politeness: Some Universals in Language Usage. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Coates, Jennifer. (1998): Language and Gender: A Reader. Oxford: Blackwell.
Crosby, Fay and Nyquist, Linda. (1977): The female register: An empirical study of Lakoff’s hypotheses. Language in Society, 6, pp313-322.
Field, Andy. (2005): Discovering Statistics Using SPSS: (Sex and Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll). SAGE Publications Ltd.
Goodwin, Marjorie H. (1990): He Said, She Said: Task as Social Organization Among Black Children. Bloomington. IN: University of Indiana Press.
Holmes, Janet (1995): Women, Men and Politeness. London: Longman.
Labov, William. (1990): The intersection of sex and social class in the course of linguistic change. Language Variation and Change 2, 3: pp205-254.
Maier, Paula. (1992): Politeness strategies in business letters by native and non-native English Speakers. English for Specific Purposes 11, pp189-205.
Munter, Mary. (2006): Guide to managerial Communicating: Effective Business Writing and Speaking. Upper Saddle River, N.J.: Person /Prentice Hall.
Myers, Greg. (1989): The Pragmatics of politeness in scientific articles. Applied Linguistics. 10, pp1-35.
Nwogu, Kevin. (1997): The medical research paper: Structure and functions. English for Specific Purposes. 16, pp119-138.
Smeltzer, Larry R. and Werbal, James. O. (1986): Gender differences in managerial communication: fact or folk-linguistics? The Journal of Business Communication. Vol 23, issue2, pp 41-50.
Smith, Edward L. and Bernhardt, Stephen A. (1996): Writing at Work: Professional Writing Skills for People on the Job. Lincolnwood, III: NTC Pub Group.
Tannen, Deborah. (1990): You Just Don’t Understand. New York: Morrow.
Upton, Thomas A. and Connor, Ulla. (2001): Using computerized corpus analysis to investigate the textlinguistic discourse move of genre. English for Specific Purposes 20, pp313-329.