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Gender and Positive Politeness in Facebook

Communication

Marta Dąbrowska
Jagiellonian University

T he current paper is a contribution to the discussion in progress for about fortyyears which concerns the existence of possible differences in the speaking
styles of women and men, initiated on a more global scale by the publication of a semi-
nal paper by R. Lakoff (1975). The main thesis of her paper could be summed up in brief
by a statement that women’s language is deficient, as it is (according to the author) cha-
racterised by a number of features indicating that women speak from a position of power-
less persons. More specifically, they tend to be excessively polite (which manifests
itself through a large number of standard language forms, hedges, question tags, and
questions), they show lack of confidence in what they are saying due to a frequent use
of the hesitant, rising intonation. What is more, their language is overly affective as they
often “speak in italics”, and what they say lacks substance, which is visible in the high
frequency of the so called “empty” adjectives, as e.g. cute, lovely, etc. 

The above statements have proved quite controversial to both men and women, which
has led to extensive research into male-female linguistic differences (more than similari-
ties, for obvious reasons). This, in turn, has generated a wealth of data and has been able
to bring in new perspectives, especially as far as the language used by women is concer-
ned, moreover, in many cases it has disproved Lakoff’s original claims. A fairly long list
of differences in terms of male and female speaking styles could be drafted as a result,
especially as regards the use of language in interaction, e.g., a much greater tendency to
interrupt their interlocutors, to occupy a longer speaking time, and to initiate the subjects
of conversation on the part of men, a different meaning and frequency of the use of back-
channel noises in the speech of the two genders, the character and the meaning of hed-
ges and question tags, the male preference for generalisation as opposed to the female
personalisation, and indeed, among others, a greater tendency to resort to polite forms of
language on the part of women (cf. Swann 2000; Stockwell 2002). The latter feature,
among others, has particularly been singled out by feminist researchers who have ana-
lysed single-sex interactions (viz. Coates 1993; Cameron 1995), as a result of which a
new approach towards specifically the female style of speaking has been proposed follo-
wing the assumption that when interacting women employ a cooperative style of com-
munication and support each other. This goal can indeed be achieved by means of the
above-mentioned features of the female genderlect, and the polite style of speaking occu-
pies a prominent position among them.

The above processes progressed parallel to the developments in the study of lingui-
stic politeness, which has featured a number of influential approaches to date (viz. Leech
1980; 1983°; Fraser 1990; Janney and Arndt 1992), but the study which has proved most
seminal is that of Brown and Levinson (1987/1994). Brown and Levinson’s research
adopted Goffman’s (1967) concept of face as its foundation, as a result of which the

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notion of a Face Threatening Act, a speech act which can potentially be threatening to
both the hearer’s and/or the speaker’s face, was developed, and this, in turn led to the
distinction between four types of polite behaviour. And thus, depending on the intention
of the speaker behind a given speech act and the communicative strategies used, the
authors distinguished bald on-record politeness (most face-threatening, as it aims for
the clarity of expression more than showing attention to the addressee’s feelings), off
record politeness (most difficult to interpret, as the speaker uses many evasive methods
in order to express his or her meaning indirectly), on-record negative politeness (the
one which is most identified with the traditional concept of speaking politely, and one
which attends to the hearer’s negative face needs, i.e. the needs to be respected, unimpe-
ded in one’s actions, etc.), and finally on-record positive politeness, i.e. one which is
directed towards the hearer’s positive face needs, i.e. his or her wish to be accepted,
liked, admired. It is the latter type of politeness that I wish to elaborate on in the context
of the genderlect discussion. Positive politeness makes use of a number of strategies
which allow one to attend to the hearer’s positive face, most typical of which would be,
e.g., intensifying interest in the hearer, asserting common ground, using in-group identi-
ty markers, promising, giving gifts, seeking agreement, being optimistic, to name just a
few. These may be implemented by means of more specifically defined speech acts, as
thanks, offers, invitations, compliments, etc. (cf. Brown and Levinson 1987/1994). This
type of politeness, as indicated above, has been mostly identified with the female style of
speaking, which has been confirmed by a number of subsequent studies motivated by
Lakoff’s paper (cf. Tannen’s rapport talk (1990), Holmes’s affective speaking (1993,
1995), Coates’s (1993) and Cameron’s (1995) studies of all-female interaction).

The traditional genderlect studies naturally have focused on the spoken medium
most, i.e. on face-to-face interaction. The purpose of the current study is to examine some
real language samples generated by a new study context which is the Computer Mediated
Communication, according to some linguists possibly as a separate channel from speech
and writing (viz. Stockwell 2002). I have already studied different aspects of genderlects
in the context of email (viz. Dąbrowska 2007a, d, e). Examined here will be the CMC
context of a social network, represented by Facebook. The main goal will be to establish
whether women indeed do have a greater tendency than men to resort to positive polite-
ness in the semi-formal and informal language context, and if so, which strategies, if any,
appear to be most popular among the language users. The study will be based on langua-
ge samples collected among native British English Facebook users, so that integrity of
the study assumptions and findings can thus be maintained. In view of the latest obser-
vations made in the context of genderlect studies it is believed that in order to make any
justified comments about the two speaking styles, one needs to focus on the language of
fairly well defined language communities, and not merely make some vague and swee-
ping statements about all men and all women (cf. Bing and Bergvall 1996; Mills 2003).
Hence my choice of the native British English Facebook users. Firstly, it is the most
numerous group I interact with by means of Facebook, which allows me to investigate
the language samples of persons from different generations, and secondly, the studies of
genderlects have focused extensively on the speakers of English, mainly its American,

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British, New Zealand and Australian variants (cf. Lakoff 1975; Tannen 1990; Holmes
1993, 1995; Coates 1993; Cameron 1995; Eisikovits 1987, 1988), thanks to which it will
be possible to verify my findings against the already available knowledge.

As far as the choice of the medium for the selection of the language samples is con-
cerned, as I have already stated in my former papers concerning the analysis of the
Facebook data (cf. Dąbrowska 2011 and forthcoming), I believe that, due to its worldwide
recognition, social networks, and notably Facebook, contain a wealth of most natural,
informal and semi-formal language samples which are available in large quantities for a
sociolinguistic study. Facebook creates a friendly, encouraging environment in which the
users want to share their thoughts, feelings and experiences with their friends and acquain-
tances in a safe context, they also want to discover similar things about their Facebook
contacts. My assumption is, therefore, that focus is placed more on the social aspect of
interaction rather than on the referential one. For this reason Facebook is a source of pre-
dominantly naturally occurring language, though obviously modified up to a point by the
fact that it does, after all, make use of writing, writing that will be read by many, which in
the case of some users may evoke a greater attention to the language correctness. Another
important reason behind the choice of Facebook as a source of data is the fact that it is a
form of CMC whose main purpose is to maintain contacts with other people. This may be
done by sharing some factual information and initiating a discussion on some issues or
events happening in the world, but more often than not it is a space where one shares per-
sonal information and expects the same from their network contacts – it is a medium
which enhances positive relationships with people, and as such it also serves as a very
valuable source of data concerning the phatic aspect of human communication. Politeness,
and particularly the on record positive politeness has a very integral part in how we want
to nurture our contacts with others. Showing our friends and acquaintances that we care
about them, like or admire them as well as their views, experiences, etc. is a vital part of
building and maintaining friendships and enhancing good relations with people. We often
attend to the other’s positive face because we expect the same in return. My assumption
is therefore that a number of language samples collected through the Facebook medium
will serve as positive politeness carriers and as such will generate data which will allow
me to explore the gender-related aspects of language use more thoroughly.

The samples analysed here have been collected among the posts generated by 24
users of Facebook, all of them native speakers of English from Great Britain. The figure,
albeit not very high, comprises 12 female and 12 male users, and each of the groups is
composed of four young persons (aged between 20-35), four middle-aged (aged betwe-
en 36-55) and four senior ones (aged 56 and more), thereby allowing for a fairly balan-
ced representation of the two genders as exemplified by various age groups. It is obvious
that each user possesses some unique characteristics, however, it is believed that certain
common traits and behavioural tendencies can still be found across the gender and age
groups. The samples were as a rule collected from among posts written in the course of
one month, although there were a few exceptions of longer periods in the case of the per-
sons who are not very avid Facebook users. The examination of altogether 192 posts in
search for the manifestations of positive politeness (96 posts for each group) allowed me

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to identify 260 examples of speech acts which could be recognised as carriers of positive
politeness. More specifically, there were 141 (i.e., 54%) of positively polite speech acts
generated by the female users and 119 (46%) examples of positive politeness produced
by the male users. Thus, already at this stage it may be noted that there is a greater ten-
dency to make use of positive politeness strategies on the part of women, although inde-
ed the difference is not huge.  It might be an indication that, as in the case of emotional
aspects of language analysed in the email communication (cf. Dąbrowska 2007a) one of
the primary uses of which is that of maintaining social relationships, women and men do
not differ so significantly in terms of the language strategies selected as it might be the
case in public contexts (cf. Holmes 1995).

The analysis presented below will focus on the characteristics of the variety of speech
acts which were identified in the posts as carriers of positive politeness, and notably on
their numbers, their use across the gender groups, and the more specific traits which
might possibly characterise their use by the two genders. More specifically, the speech
acts which were identified as markers of positive politeness in the Facebook language
samples could be divided into 7 general categories, i.e. 1. wishes, 2. thanks, 3. praises,
compliments and congratulations, 4. expressions of positive hope, 5. expressions of inte-
rest, 6. expressions of a wish to meet, and 7. miscellaneous speech acts (comprising
expressions of satisfaction, promises, and invitations).

Wishes

In keeping with my original assumptions, wishes constitute the largest portion of
manifestations of positive politeness, since Facebook itself encourages users to send each
other wishes by sending them reminders of their friends’ birthdays. Thus, the number of
wishes, the overwhelming number of which were birthday wishes, amounts to 78 (70
birthday wishes and 8 wishes concerning other events), i.e. 30% of all the positively polite
speech acts. This figure, surprisingly, can be split into as many as 46 wishes sent by
males and only 32 sent by females. This group, however, represents one of only two
speech acts (the other being invitations, included in the miscellaneous category) in terms
of which the male Facebook users exceeded the female ones in terms of attending to the
addressee’s positive face, and constitutes as much as 42% of all the manifestations of
positive politeness (divided into the above-mentioned 7 categories) identified in the posts
written by men vs. only 24% of the positively polite speech acts found in the posts pro-
duced by women. It is believed that the Facebook’s “nudging” its users in order to send
wishes to their contacts is partly responsible for the high number of wishes found in the
case of men, considering that the remaining 58% covers all the other 6 categories of speech
acts, so the distribution of various strategies of positive politeness in the case of men is
markedly uneven. Also, the fact that only 17% of them are more elaborate structures
going beyond the traditional Happy birthday phrase (viz. 31% in the female posts) is also
to be noted. The overview of the forms of wishes used by the male Facebook users sin-
gles out the phrase Happy birthday X (where X stands for the name of the addressee) as
the most numerous one, exemplified by 23 posts, occasionally also in the abbreviated
CMC language, viz. Happy Bday X, as well as Happy belated birthday X. This group dif-

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fers just slightly from an even simpler one, i.e. Happy birthday, occasionally followed by
a smiley, used 8 times by men. The remaining group covers a variety of forms, viz. Many
very happy returns; Many happy returns mate; All the best, have a good one; Hooray for
your birthday; Hip hip hoorah for you and much love from me!; Belated hippo birdie 2
u; Enjoy your special day!,…And yet another year younger…. As indicated above, occa-
sionally the wish element got extended by some additional birthday-related comment. In
the case of the posts written by the males those may be represented by the following:
Happy birthday X. Have a great day and a blessed year!; Happy birthday X! Have a
great day with all your family and a year ahead; Happy birthday X. All the best. Finally,
the remaining group of wishes is small (5 items) and concerns a variety of things, e.g.,
Eid Mubarak to you too (on the Muslim celebration of Eid); Hope you have a gr8 wkend;
Good wishes; Good luck; Love to your tribe. Thus, it may be seen that the variety in
terms of the structures used and the meaning expressed is fairly limited, and otherwise
the users resort to the most typical, traditional phrases.

The examination of the posts written by women demonstrates a smaller number of the
expressions of wishes, but a greater variety of those in terms of the form they have taken.
This time the primary choice is the simplest form Happy birthday, used 13 times, inclu-
ding also Belated happy birthday (1), yet this phrase is more often than in the case of men
followed by another sentence with some additional wish. Second to this is the phrase
Happy birthday X with its 10 uses, also sometimes followed by another sentence. The
phrases which represent some variation of the form are exemplified by 5 posts, viz. Have
an unreal birthday!; Happy birthday from all of us; Happy 18th X; Hope you have an
enjoyable celebration; Have a super first in (country) celebration. It may thus be seen
that the variants are slightly more traditional and also more emotional than those used by
some men – the latter, on the other hand, showed a greater tendency towards using more
humorous expressions. As said above, more women chose to go beyond just the expres-
sion of the wish and added some additional phrase to enhance the emotional value of the
wish. These took a variety of forms, e.g., I hope you have a lovely day; Best wishes for
the year ahead; Just for you!; Happy memories of kangaroos and cold in (name of a
city); Have a great day but be careful!; but what stood out most in terms of the frequen-
cy were some more emphatic additions like Love; Love and hugs!, Love you both; Lots
of love!, Love from us both!, Much love (in 7 wishes), which were missing in the posts
written by men. Another, seemingly unimportant feature, which, however, was found
only in the wishes offered by women (apart from other speech acts analysed) was the use
of the traditional x or xxx as a symbol of a kiss – they were found in as many as 12 posts
expressing wishes written by women, but in none whatsoever among those written by
men (cf. Dąbrowska forthcoming), which is an undeniable sign of affection, as one does
not use this device if one does not want to stress positive feelings towards the other per-
son, and therefore, a manifestation of positive politeness as well. Finally, in order to
cover the question of wishes, it needs to be added that women also sent wishes to their
friends on other occasions, though these were very limited (3 items), i.e. Happy 2nd anni-
versary!; Stay safe, X!, Good luck, X, you deserve to get a fantastic grade. In summary
of this speech act it therefore needs to be stressed that, albeit there were numerically more

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posts with wishes written by men, the female way of offering wishes tends to be more
elaborate and affectionate than that of men, and this may be marked by both some addi-
tional comments aiming to stress the importance of the occasion or show others how
much they are loved, or by the use of the xxx in order to stress the emotional bond with
that person and show how much the female senders liked them. When it comes to any
possible age differences in relation to the age groups the post authors represented, most
likely due to the fact that wishes tend to be highly conventionalised, as the above analy-
sis has demonstrated, no particular distinctions could be found. 

Praise, Compliments and Congratulations

Telling someone that we admire them or the items which belong to them or else the
activities performed by them is certainly one of the principal ways of showing positive
politeness towards that person. Also, the Facebook context, with the help of which the
users share with their contacts what they have done, what has happened to them, etc. greatly
encourages some sort of response, and, as the overview of Facebook posts has proved,
these are hardly ever negative responses. Because of the nature of Facebook, which is
meant to connect rather than divide people, the users would rather withhold any reaction
at all when disagreeing with or disapproving of what another person has written on their
wall than comment on it in outwardly negative terms. On the other hand, when liking what
the other person writes, the user has a choice of either marking it with the thumbs up sym-
bol, by far the most popular way of showing positively polite attitude towards others, or
writing something below the original post. The comment may obviously focus on the fac-
tual aspect only, however, the present analysis has proved that in addition to that Facebook
friends very often say something nice about what the author has written. It is therefore
self-explanatory that expressions of praise, compliments and congratulations, which I
have decided to put together due to their similar nature, occupy the second highest posi-
tion on the list of the most frequent positively polite speech acts to be found on Facebook,
after wishes. However, unlike in the case of wishes, which are induced by Facebook, and
ignoring of which may be viewed as an outward manifestation of negative feelings
towards or about the birthday addressee, as giving wishes is an expected social custom, in
the case of reacting to the other persons’ posts the recipients are free to take no steps at all,
and this entails no anathema or negative feelings. Therefore, when they do decide to
respond to the posts, and what is more, when they respond by praising, complimenting or
congratulating, the positive value of such a response is particularly high.

The overall number of praises, compliments and congratulations for both groups con-
sisted of 49 examples. Out of this figure 15 (31%) were offered by men, whereas as many
as 34 (i.e. 69%) were found in the posts written by women. This is one of the three cate-
gories of positively polite speech acts (beside expressions of interest in the addressee and
expressions of hope for another meeting) where the discrepancy between the two genders
was most visible.

Among the objects of praise those which evoked a very similar number of reactions
from both genders were various items belonging to the post authors, and notably photos
or things they were the authors of (e.g. a cake, a decoration of a coffee jar). In this cate-

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gory men wrote 7 posts and women 8, viz. great photo; that is a really beautiful picture;
great photo X; wonderful picture J, vs. I like your profile picture; great pic; nice picture
of your mum; looks great!; best dressed coffee I’ve ever seen. The fact that both groups
chose to praise those objects in a similar way proves that complimenting others on their
belongings appears to be safest of all, least face-threatening. A similar approach, though
of a much lower frequency, can be found in the case of ideas that the post authors expressed,
and which were offered by men 4 times, and by women – 3, e.g. Sounds like a good plan;
That’s cool, Nice one, X; vs. Really like your idea; Fantastic; Wonderful. What needs to
be noted here is the use of informal language and structures, illustrated by, e.g. the dele-
tion of the subject phrase of the sentence, the use of common, often “empty” adjectives,
etc. The situation appears to be similar in the case of praising events, although there
seems to be a slightly greater discrepancy between men (2 praises) and women (6 prai-
ses). Some examples to be quoted here are: Hey X, nice memory! vs. It was lovely X J, I
was impressed by your Long Walk last year; Had a great time with X; Great working with
you.

The aspect where the greatest differences between the two genders are to be obser-
ved, however, are praises, congratulations and compliments offered to the other in terms
of their achievements (men – 2, women – 11), looks (men – 0, women – 3) and also peo-
ple (men – 0, women – 2). The first of the three is particularly striking, as it would have
seemed only natural to commend someone on what they did or congratulate them on their
success. Women do it quite readily, viz. Congratulations, lovely lady! Well done for get-
ting a fab degree, can’t wait to see the pics; Awesome – congratulations to you both J
xxx; Congratulations to you too as I gather you are now Dr X!; Well done you!;  Well
done to X on getting on to her college course; Well done to X!; Wehay! Well done to X!;
Congratulations on your graduation day! vs. Well done for getting the grades fresh
ones!; Congrats X! in the case of men. Congratulating someone on their achievements,
as can be seen, is typically accompanied by high emotionality, which is reflected in may
examples by means of exclamation marks, smileys and, in the case of women, xxx.
Female Facebook users appear to offer such comments to their contacts freely, as it does
strengthen their bonds of friendship with the others. The comparative lack of such
expressions on the part of men may possibly stem from some hidden feeling of jealousy
– men on the whole like to compete against each other (cf. Tannen 1990), so possibly
acknowledging the other person’s success may not come to them easily (cf. also the use
of compliments in Holmes (1995)). 

If congratulating others on their achievements is considered face-threatening, then
complimenting others on their looks is an even greater danger to the male face, as stu-
dies of some materials have demonstrated (cf. Herbert 1989, 1990; Holmes 1995). Men
hardly praise the other person’s looks – it is a risky action with regard to a female addres-
see, as it may be perceived as an act of sexual harassment, and it is even more risky when
addressed to another man, as then the speaker may be accused of homosexual orienta-
tion. That is why the collected material contains only a few comments from women, viz.
Nice hair.. x; you look gorgeous, X!, X, you look like such a cool customer!, and none
from men. In a similar way, praising people for what they are like as people (not just their

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looks) may lie more in the domain of women, hence the two additional comments offered
by female Facebook users, viz. I have such wonderful friends and You are very kind.
Thus, the overview of the use of this group of speech acts shows unmistakably that, to
quote Holmes’s (1993) title she used for one of her papers, “[New Zealand] women are
good to talk to,” as they strive to make their interlocutor feel nice and appreciated (cf.
also Coates 1996).

Thanks

Thanks are also on the whole used as markers of positive politeness in that they
express gratitude, i.e. they indicate approval of the other person. Unlike the two previous
speech acts, thanks, represented by 45 examples, present little difference in terms of their
use by the two genders, as the male users thanked their Facebook friends for something
22 times, and women – 23 times. Thus, the figures in both cases are fairly high when
compared to the numbers of various other speech acts used here. This may be caused by
the fact that thanking is perceived as a primary sign of good upbringing and politeness in
the very conventional sense. One is expected to thank the speaker on receiving gifts (cf.
Brown and Levinson 1987/1994), here verbal gifts, as e.g. wishes of various kind or prai-
ses and compliments discussed above. 

On a closer examination of the thanking strategies opted for by Facebook users it may
be noticed that the options are not very numerous, and with a slightly lower number of
thanks used by men there is somewhat greater variation in the forms here (5 categories
used by men vs. 4 used by women). The form that by far exceeds the others is the sim-
plest thanking formula, viz. thanks, which may stand alone or be followed by some more
elaborate phrase. It was used by men 14 times, and by women as many as 18 times, e.g.
Thanks!; Thanks X!; Thanks for remembering!; Thanks for the email; vs. Thanks!;
Thanks X; Thanks friends; Thanks guys; Thanks for inviting us; Thanks to everyone that
came on Saturday; Thanks for the likes and reading the posts!; Thanks for the invite;
Thanks to all of you for the surprise birthday & leaving dinner!. Occasionally the word
thanks was modified to make the meaning more affective, which in fact was found more
often in the phrases used by men, viz. Hi thanks a lot!; Hi X thanks a lot; Hey X thanks
a million (such variants were used 4 times) as opposed to only one phrase of this type
used by a woman, i.e. Thanks so much. Next to the most neutral and at the same time
informal word thanks the more official thank you was also found, usually with the com-
plement to follow, but it was used far less frequently than the above option, i.e. twice by
men and three times by women, viz. Thank you; Thank you, I will vs. Thank you everyone
for the birthday wishes; Thank you for the ‘congratulations’ texts; Thank you for being
there for me when I need you. It may be noticed, therefore, that the full phrase is used to
carry thanks in slightly more serious contexts where the use of thanks might be perceived
as too neglectful. In addition to the bare form of thank you men decided to use two more
options which are again more emphatic as a result of modifying the phrase by the inten-
sifying adverbs so and very, thereby making the expressions of thanks stronger but also
more formal sounding, i.e., Thank you very much; X thank you so much for your gree-
tings. On the other hand, only one person, this time a young woman, went for a much

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more colloquial option, typically found with the younger generation, i.e. cheers, as in
Cheers ma, you too! To sum up, it may, therefore, be stated that thanks, although quite
abundant, but simple in their form, are used by Facebook users probably more out of con-
vention; any more affectionate form of thanks would have probably been reserved for a
more personal, one-to-one message.

Expressions of Positive Hope

The next item on the list of the speech acts which carry positively polite meanings
towards one’s friends are what I have decided to call expressions of positive hope, as I
was quite struck by the number of expressions addressed towards a friend which started
with [I] hope that…and then they were followed by some sort of an indirect wish about
either the present situation (which appeared to be the most numerous), the future or, least
often, about the past. The numbers, similar for both genders, one more time showed a
slight bias towards the female users. They were used 34 times in all – 15 times by men
and 19 times by women. Both groups had almost the same numbers for the expressions
of hope about the present (9 and 10, respectively), about the future (5 in each group), only
with regard to the expressions of hope concerning some past event women exceeded men
more (4 for women vs. 1 for men). The structure of those is similar, i.e. for the present:
I hope that all is well with you and that you are doing well; Hope all is well with you;
Hope you are all well; I hope you and yours are flourishing; Hope you are having a great
time (men) vs. Hope you are doing OK, Hope you are all well and lovely; I hope you and
your family are well; Hope that you are making the most of it in your new home; Hope
you’re taking full advantage of chilling out before the job starts!!! Xx; Hope life is good;
Hope all well at hospital? (women); for the future Hope we can see you sometime; I hope
to see you or talk to you soon; Hope it’s a great day and a blessed year X; Hope u hve a
gr8 wkend (men) vs. Hope to do it again some time soon; I hope you have a great day x;
I hope we will all come see you; Hope you have an enjoyable celebration (women); and
the past Hope X was OK for you (men) vs. Hope you had a great day; Hope you all had
a good time; Hope you celebrated (women). Thus, the overview of the collected exam-
ples demonstrates that the senders show their addressees that they like them and care for
them as they express all those positive hopes with regard to their friends. The frequent
use of this strategy proves to be a specially useful device in that it shows that others are
important to us, that we care about them. 

Expressions of Interest in Others

The number of elements in this category is significantly smaller than in the above-
mentioned ones, giving us 20 items in all, but this strategy is worth mentioning in grea-
ter detail as one of those where the gender difference may also be noted, albeit on a small
scale. Out of the overall number only 7 examples of this speech act were found in the
posts written by men, and as many as 13 in the posts written by women. Expressing inte-
rest is most typically shown through questions about the other’s well being, less often by
stating that we are missing that person. The first option may be illustrated by the follo-
wing posts:  How are you/U; How and where are you these days?; All OK with you?;

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How are you celebrating tonight? vs. How are things with you; How is your voice?; The
second category of speech acts illustrating this strategy here are I sometimes wonder
about you and what you are doing; Thinking of you often (men) vs. Missed you this wee-
kend; I miss you already; I’m missing you too; Miss you too; Thinking of you (women).
The remaining few are Much sympathy; Send photos of the new place!. The overall exa-
mination thus shows that there is a significant numerical difference between the two gen-
ders, with women as natural carers and affectionate persons having expressed interest
about the others more. What is particularly striking is the use of phrases like Miss you
too, I miss you already, I’m missing you, etc. Men never ventured such an open display
of emotionality.

Expressions of a Wish to Meet

This category of items which fall under the strategy of positive politeness is difficult
to label. In other genres, notably letters and email messages, they would most likely be
described as closing turns, as they usually come at the end of the message. However, a
closing turn, strictly speaking, would include expressions of good-byes which might or
might not be complemented by additional elements like those of expressing a wish to
meet again. I am interested in that last item in particular, since expressions which contained
such type of message constituted a visible part of the collected material – they, however,
do not always come at the end of the post or a whole sequence of posts, but may consti-
tute a separate item, and the posts may not contain farewell words at all, hence the diffi-
culty with their classification. 

This group of positively polite phrases, which altogether consists of 17 items, also
belongs to the types of expressions which bring out differences in the Facebook beha-
viour of men and women. Whereas men expressed a wish to meet with the addressee
again 6 times, women indicated their willingness to see the person again or soon 11
times. Thus, although the group is altogether small, the numerical values still mark the
gender differences quite clearly. The expressions used by men are not only less nume-
rous, but also less emphatic, and there is hardly any difference in how they approach both
male and female addressees. The expressions recorded are See you in a few weeks; See
you soon; Look forward to see you in X; I long to see you and the family; Much looking
forward to see you  in September and looking forward to welcoming all of the freshlings
to X. The expressions used by women, both to female and male addressees, may make
use of neutral forms, as e.g. See you Monday/Saturday/on the 3rd; Looking forward to
seeing you soon; and we will look forward to seeing you whenever you make it; Look for-
ward to catching up with you and X soon, but some of the expressions, in particular those
written on the walls of other females, take a more affective form, e.g.: Can’t wait to see
you xxx, And I can’t wait to meet up with you in X. In conclusion, making use of this type
of expressions makes the overall message particularly pleasant to read, they are therefore
a useful marker of positive politeness, and making such expressions more emphatic,
which is typically the case of women, make the speaker’s intention sound particularly
genuine.

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Miscellaneous (expressions of satisfaction, promises, invitations)

The final category of items which can be classified as markers of positive politeness
in the collected material includes the remaining types of speech acts whose number was
much lower than that of the expressions discussed above, and for this reason they have
been classified together. There are 17 items in all, and they fall into three categories:
expressions of satisfaction connected with the other person (best represented - 9 items
altogether, spread equally between the two groups, i.e., 4 written by men and 5 by
women), promises (4 items, 2 written by men and 2 by women) and, finally, invitations
(4 items, all produced by one man). A brief discussion of each is as follows:

- expressing satisfaction in connection with the other person (i.e. about meeting with
them or experiences related to them). Most of them do relate to the fact that the author
of the post had a chance to meet with the other person. Examples of the strategy are as
follows: Glad to meet you at X; Glad you can come up man!; Glad you’re enjoying it out
there! and Glad to see your film again at X a couple of days ago, which were written by
men, as opposed to It was nice to see you this summer; Nice to see you in spite of the cir-
cumstances; Glad you like it lol x; Lovely to see X’s new set up and visit friends in X; Was
delighted to hear you and X are moving in produced by women. Such a small group does
not allow for much generalisation, it might be, however, possible to conclude that if men
decide to make a comment of this type, it will refer to the most obvious and least face-
threatening subject as a meeting, while women might show a greater inclination towards
expressing happiness about a variety of aspects connected with the other person, which
on the whole creates a pleasant atmosphere of approval.

- promises: making promises is to reassure the addressee that something they care
about will happen, it appeases them, and as such may be considered to be a type of a gift
that Brown and Levinson (1987/1994) speak about. There were very few promises made
on Facebook, however. It might be that promises are more readily used in speech, and
not so much in spontaneous writing in a public context, especially in CMC. The four
items found in the material are: Will do my best to get over and see you; We promise to
leave at 9 before the X starts (written by men) and I will be in touch once we have the
opening night; I will be in touch soon about next week (written by women). Thus, as can
be seen, they concern some arrangements made earlier. Here making a promise acts as an
additional bond strengthening friendship, as the senders want to show that they care
about the other person’s feelings, hence their classification as a positive politeness stra-
tegy.

- invitations: this speech act is certainly a very clear marker of positive politeness
since, when we invite someone over for a visit, we show particularly strongly how much
we like or admire the person - inviting someone over goes further than just uttering kind
words, it also entails quite a lot of action, often troublesome for the inviter. It is proba-
bly for this reason that invitations were generally not found, except for one person, as
they, however encouraging they may sound to the invitee, are also very face-threatening
to the speaker. The fact that four items of this speech act were found in the case of one
man is connected with his life circumstances (he and his wife have just moved to a new
place and after settling down there they were particularly keen on having their friends

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over). Hence such expressions as When are you and X coming for a visit?; When are you
coming to X; How about coming to X for a holiday in our little guest house which is
going up next week?; We look forward to a visit from you both, seriously! In order to eva-
luate the use of this speech act properly, however, it would be necessary to find other per-
sons experiencing similar life circumstances. The lack of such an opportunity forces us
to merely take note of the option. 

Conclusion

The above discussion constituted a scrutiny of language strategies which may be used
to indicate positively polite behaviour, one of four types of politeness put forward by
Brown and Levinson (1987/1994) which appears to be particularly visible in a popular
form of CMC which social networks nowadays constitute. As many as 9 different lingui-
stic strategies (grouped into 7 categories) were found to express this specific type of mea-
ning, thereby stressing the predominantly phatic character of the CMC Facebook com-
municative style and function.

The brief analysis of the male and female behaviour recorded in the context of
Facebook, an example of a social network, has managed to demonstrate that, in keeping
with the initial assumption, the behaviour of native English speakers does show diver-
gent tendencies in terms of the gender of the users. Out of the 9 categories of speech acts
analysed, as many as 5 demonstrated a higher frequency of use on the part of women,
and in particular in 3 of them, i.e. praises, compliments, congratulations, expressions of
interest about the other, and expressions of a wish to meet were almost twice as often
used by women than by men. 

As regards the remaining 4 types of speech acts, two of them, i.e. thanks and promi-
ses, respectively, did not show any significant divergence in terms of distribution betwe-
en the two groups. The last two groups, i.e. wishes and invitations turned out to have been
more often used by men, although for the lack of comparable context the category of
invitations must be treated just as a possibility to be tested in other contexts. As regards
the high number of wishes produced by men, it is possible that the Facebook reminders
tend to make the male users more keen to fulfil the expectations. It is probably similar in
the case of thanks (in the case of which the two groups behaved almost identically) –
their frequent use might result from the fact that it is a kind of a social obligation not only
to acknowledge the other person’s birthday but also thank for wishes. 

In the analysis of the material no particular differences concerning the age of the post
authors were found, with the numbers of particular types of expressions distributed
among the three age groups very evenly. On the other hand, however, an additional dif-
ference could be found in terms of gender, namely a much greater emotional character of
the posts written by women. This could be seen both in the more affective character of
posts indicated by suitable structures and vocabulary used and the liberal use of the xxx
to end the posts. Hardly any use of the above was found in the group of posts written by
men.

To sum up, it is to be concluded that male and female native English speakers do tend
to behave somewhat differently in an informal or semi-formal context, of which

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Facebook appears to be a particularly good example. It remains to be tested whether a
similar tendency is also to be found in the case of other cultural and ethnic groups as well
as in other language contexts.

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