At a glance it may seem that because of the higher
proportion of imperatives, females tend to be more bald, on record and
therefore perhaps a little more confrontational, despite Tannen’s theory. In
some cases, this is the case (e.g. “calm down (.) put your tits away”, “pipe
down” and “shut up (.) just shut up”), however sometimes these imperatives are
also mitigated by the use of politeness strategies, as is the case with “so
then stop (1) please”. Here, there is a pause in which the speaker may have
realised her request would be better responded to with the addition of the
face-saving adverb “please”. This form of politeness also complies with
Lakoff's theory that women's language is inherently more polite – but since
there is only one example of such language, there is no way to say Lakoff is
correct.
Good development. In context, are any of these examples 'acted out' e.g. repeating what someone else has said or taking on a role? Are there some females who used more imperatives that skewed the data? What is the comparison of females vs males vis-a-vis imperatives - the proof of "more polite" seems shaky.
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