000015589 001__ 15589 000015589 005__ 20150429092414.0 000015589 037__ $$aTAZ-TFG-2014-1261 000015589 041__ $$aeng 000015589 1001_ $$aPlaza Huanca, Camila 000015589 24500 $$aA comparative analysis of politeness in British and American films 000015589 260__ $$aZaragoza$$bUniversidad de Zaragoza$$c2014 000015589 506__ $$aby-nc-sa$$bCreative Commons$$c3.0$$uhttp://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/ 000015589 520__ $$aAbstract Many authors, especially Penelope Brown and Steven Levinson have focused the analysis of politeness use in spoken and written registers in order to explain how participants can be explicitly and overtly polite. These authors have further argued that gender and cross-cultural differences are crucial to study the way in which people make use of politeness in everyday conversation. The overall approach of these authors contends that, on the one hand, women use more positive politeness strategies than men and that, on the other hand, American speakers rely on positive politeness more often than British speakers do. The latter are said to generally draw on negative politeness strategies. However, although some authors like Janet Holmes follow Brown and Levinson’s postulates for the analysis of politeness, others, like Sara Mills regard their approach as insufficient to analyse how politeness works in conversation. The main aim of this dissertation is to analyse the use of pragmatic politeness and, as a secondary aim, to explore the extent to which these strategies are determined by gender and cultural differences. The analysis of a selection of British and American romantic comedies do not seem to coincide with Brown and Levinson’s observations regarding women as positively polite and men as negatively polite. Results, though exploratory, do not seem to support the existence of cross-cultural differences. Of note, the most frequent politeness strategy was hedging, not an unexpected finding given that hedges have been reported to be a highly frequent feature of conversational, spoken English.. In sum, the pragmatic strategies identified seem to be clearly determined by the context of language use. Rather than correctness, they aim at constructing a friendly and close relationship between the participants in the conversation. 000015589 521__ $$aGraduado en Estudios Ingleses 000015589 540__ $$aDerechos regulados por licencia Creative Commons 000015589 700__ $$aPérez-Llantada Auría, María Carmen$$edir. 000015589 7102_ $$aUniversidad de Zaragoza$$bFilología Inglesa y Alemana$$cFilología Inglesa 000015589 8560_ $$f630956@celes.unizar.es 000015589 8564_ $$s749490$$uhttps://zaguan.unizar.es/record/15589/files/TAZ-TFG-2014-1261.pdf$$yMemoria (eng)$$zMemoria (eng) 000015589 909CO $$ooai:zaguan.unizar.es:15589$$pdriver$$ptrabajos-fin-grado 000015589 950__ $$a 000015589 980__ $$aTAZ$$bTFG$$cFFYL