Politeness in Damascus Arabic: Do gender and social class variables determine its use?

This paper examines sociolinguistic variation in the use of pragmatic strategies related to politeness in Damascus Arabic. It aims to determine whether differences exist in the use of these strategies, considering the variables of gender and social class. For this purpose, a quantitative analysis of ten mechanisms for implementing politeness strategies was conducted. Five of these mechanisms are employed in strategies of positive politeness, and five in strategies of negative politeness. The research is based on a corpus of texts collected in Damascus and comprises 25 men and 25 women. The results reveal that although both genders use politeness strategies in relatively similar proportions, women are more productive than men, exhibiting a significantly higher number of instances. The most notable quantitative distinction is observed when crossing the variables of gender and social class, with middle-class women standing out compared to other social groups. They excel in both the frequency of usage of the mechanisms analyzed and the number of instances generated.