Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.5. Agreement as a Speech Act
2.5.4. Social Constraints: Power and Solidarity
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be divided into mitigated disagreement and aggravated disagreement. The sub-strategies of mitigated disagreement include account, apology, gratitude, justification, partial agreement, persuasion, self-defense, and suggestion.
Subcategories of aggravated disagreement contain accusation, confrontation, contradiction, request, rhetorical question, and moralizing. In the current study, pragmatic strategies mentioned above are adopted and adapted for data analysis.
2.5.4. Social Constraints: Power and Solidarity
Power and solidarity are also related to how people agree with each other when the social factor—gender is involved. In this section, the notion of power and solidarity, the general ideas of linguistic gender differences, and related works of gender differences in agreement are reviewed.
2.5.4.1. The Notion of Power and Solidarity
The concept of power and solidarity is initiated by Brown and Gilman (1968).
They propose that linguistic strategies are governed by two forces, power and solidarity. Power can be related to the differences of physical strength, wealth, age, gender, institutionalized role in the church, the state, the army or within the family.
Tannen (1986) also defines power as “controlling others –an extension of involvement, and resisting being controlled – an extension of independence.” In his paper The Concept of Power, Dahl (1957) gives a similar definition that power is when person A
has ability to get person B to do something that is against person B’s will. According to all the works above, power means people are in a hierarchical relationship with one dominating over the other.
As for solidarity, Tannen (1986) defines it as “the drive to be friendly, similar to what we have called rapport.” Later, Tannen (1994) further proposes that solidarity is
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associated with symmetrical relationship and emphasizes on social equality and similarity. However, she also mentions that the concept of power and solidarity can be ambiguous and paradoxical. For instance, a linguistic form may serve the function of showing power, solidarity, or both, and it depends on the varieties of participants, topics, and settings.
Among all the social factors power appearing along with, gender is chosen to be analyzed in this study. Hence, it is necessary to consult related studies on gender differences.
2.5.4.2. Gender Differences in Power and Solidarity
In different cultures, people have different language “performance expectations”
for each gender (James and Drakich, 1993: 286-301). How men and women speak is constrained by their cultural or social norms. Therefore, gender differences are recursively reinforced. For example, men are allowed to curse and cuss to show masculinity, while women who speak dirty words would be taken as the departed or even a person with lower social class. Consequently, men curse a lot in daily conversation, while women do not.
Many researchers find other general differences between men and women. For example, Woods (1997) noted that men emphasize more on competition and the ways of earning power and status; by contrast, female tends to be more cooperative, provides more support and solidarity. Besides, men are speaker-oriented, while women are listener-oriented. Similarly, Tannen (1990: 24) believes that for men, conversation is a way to negotiate for the upper status, and protect themselves from being put down. In contrast to men, women think that negotiation is for closeness and in which people try to exchange support and confirmation, and to reach consensus. It means that men value power more, while women value solidarity more. Tannen even
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thinks that men and women are like speaking two different languages and having cross-cultural communications. To examine Tannen’s theory of “double-track communication system” is one of the foci in this study.
For studies on gender difference of agreement, there are some evidences to support that women tend to seek agreement to a greater extent than men do, both in same-sex and mixed-sex contexts (Kalcik, 1975; Leet-Pellegrini, 1980; Edelsky, 1981;
Coates, 1989; Holmes, 1995: 60). For instance, Coates (1989: 118) concludes that women like to build on each other’s contribution, complete other’s sentences and affirm other’s opinions in a very cooperative state. Eckert (1990: 122) even comments that “not one topic is allowed to conclude without an expression of consensus” in her investigation on a group of adolescent girl. In their research on agreement markers, Guiller and Durndell (2006) also find that female are more likely to express agreement than men.
From the studies presented above, people can notice some inadequacies. First, it is not specifically pointed out that how men and women differentiate from each other in the usage of the agreement forms and pragmatic strategies. Second, there is a lack of Mandarin Chinese research on gender differences in agreement. Chinese people have lived in the patriarchal society for a long time. A similar result that women agree more and men agree less is expected because of their asymmetrical relationship as well as their different value toward power and solidarity. Nevertheless, it is still worthwhile to do this research on how Chinese proffer agreement because Chinese culture is distinct from Western culture. Through the analysis of this paper, people can know how different genders manipulate linguistic contents and strategies to agree with others in Mandarin Chinese.
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