Gender, Politeness and Pragmatic Particles in French

This study aims to investigate politeness in women’s and men’s speech, with a particular focus on the use of c’est-à-dire, enfin, hein and quoi in contemporary spoken French . Politeness is defined as going beyond the notion of the face-threatening act, englobing both everyday ideas of politeness and the creation of sociability in face-to-face interaction. The pragmatic particles studied are demonstrated to serve both psycholinguistic and sociolinguistic purposes: they lubricate reformulation an