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Unveiling the sex differences and their diachronic changes of thanking in spoken British English

A local grammar based investigation

 | Sichuan International Studies University
 | Sichuan International Studies University
 | Sichuan International Studies University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with Sichuan International Studies University.

Published online: 15 December 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/ps.25072.su
Abstract
This study employs the local grammar approach to unveil sex differences and their diachronic changes of thanking in contemporary spoken British English. Using data taken from Spoken BNC1994 and Spoken BNC2014, the study found that sex differences do exist and change over time. In particular, the study revealed that in the 1990s male speakers performed thanking more frequently than their female counterparts and that female speakers tended to use formulaic expressions for thanking, which challenges the stereotypical view that women are more polite in their language use. These differences and diachronic changes have been accounted for in terms of (changing) social perceptions of sex roles, communicative conventions and socio-cultural norms. The study concludes that changes in speech act realisations correspond to changes in broader social contexts and as such (diachronic) investigation into speech act realisations could contribute to revealing the (trans)formation of socio-cultural norms in a given society.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.An overview of studies on thanking
  • 3.Local grammar approach to contrastive speech act analysis
  • 4.The current investigation
    • 4.1Corpora
    • 4.2Data retrieval
    • 4.3Data analyses
    • 4.4Results and discussion
    • 4.5Sex, speech act performance, and socio-cultural norms
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (42)
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