Gender and Questions as Complaints: An Interlanguage Pragmatic Study

Abstract

This paper investigates how male and female Thai EFL learners use questions to perform complaints similarly or differently. The participants were first-year English major Thai undergraduate students. The role play was a research instrument used for data collection. The chi-square analysis showed statistically significant differences between the male and female questions. The male learners utilized “appeal” more frequently while the female learners opted for “inquiry” more frequently. The male learners tended to use the questions to solve the problems while the female learners tended to opt for the questions to inquire about the problems and to ask for information.