This paper analyzes whether gender affects how people respond to a refused friend request combined with an impolite private message that expresses condescension and criticism. The private message was designed to elicit a response to the face-threatening acts of request, refusal and negative impoliteness. The study adopted an explanatory mixed methods approach to analyze 120 participant responses. Firstly, Culpeper et al.’s (Culpeper, Jonathan, Derek Bousfield & Anne Wichmann. 2003. Impoliteness revisited: With special reference to dynamic and prosodic aspects. Journal of Pragmatics 35(10–11). 1545–1579.) model of response to the refusal options was applied to identify counter-offensive and counter-defensive responses. After that, replies were categorized according to Culpeper’s (Culpeper, Jonathan. 1996. Towards an anatomy of impoliteness. Journal of Pragmatics 25(3). 349–367., Culpeper, Jonathan. 2005. Impoliteness and entertainment in the television quiz show: The weakest link. Journal of Politeness Research 1(1). 35–72.) (im)politeness super-strategies and Bousfield’s (Bousfield, Derek. 2007. Beginnings, middles and ends: A biopsy of the dynamics of impolite exchanges. Journal of Pragmatics 39(12). 2185–2216) defensive counterstrategies. The results show that men predominantly utilize defensive and aggressive counterstrategies, particularly mock politeness. Women, in contrast, heavily use counter defensive strategies, specifically abrogation, to deny responsibility for the triggering act. Social media is an increasingly crucial communicative tool in contemporary society, and this study provides evidence that gender-based differences can be observed in etiquette and norms on social media, which may be influenced by face-to-face dynamics. In addition, the study investigates how culture-specific expressions are discursively employed on social media to denote sarcasm or impoliteness, giving further insight into how language usage patterns may be impacted by social media.
Impact Factor: 1.1
Journal
Open Access
Journal of Politeness Research
Language, Behaviour, Culture
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Editor-in-Chief:
Jim O'Driscoll
Language:
English
First published:
February 23, 2005
Publication Frequency:
2 issues per year
About this journal
Starting 2025, Journal of Politeness Research will be transferred to Gold Open Access on a year-by-year basis. All articles will thus immediately appear under the Creative Commons license CC-BY. There will be no publication costs for the authors. The Open Access transformation is based on Subscribe-to-Open, an alternative model that enables the full Open Access transformation of journals through the continuation of existing subscriptions. The prerequisite for successful transformation is that subscriptions are continued to the same extent as before. The editors of Journal of Politeness Research and the publisher De Gruyter would therefore like to thank all subscribers for their support, which has made the transformation to Open Access possible.
Objective
Contributions to the Journal of Politeness Research focus on various aspects of politeness as a complex linguistic and non-linguistic phenomenon. The multidisciplinary journal broadens and sharpens the understanding of the nature of politeness by providing a much-needed forum for synergies to develop between researchers approaching politeness from different disciplinary angles. The journal also strengthens and widens the existing cross-cultural and intercultural body of politeness research by encouraging new contributions from lesser-studied cultures and languages. Journal of Politeness Research is associated with the work of the international Linguistic Politeness Research Group (LPRG).
- Impoliteness
- Politeness
- Pragmatics
- Sociolinguistics
Article formats
Research articles, Book reviews; Review articles; Response articles
Your Benefits
Your benefits:
- Multidisciplinary forum for research into linguistic and non-linguistic politeness phenomena
- In-depth empirical reports across cultures, languages, and interactional contexts
- Fascinating new insights into theories and methodologies of politeness with contributions from researchers from different backgrounds
- Rigorous peer-review
History
The Journal of Politeness Research was founded in 2005 by Chris Christie together with the publisher De Gruyter Mouton.
Other publications in the field
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Open AccessWhat pronouns do you use? The pronoun-sharing practice from an (im)politeness perspectiveJuly 17, 2025
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Issue 2
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Issue 1Special Issue: 20 years (further) on: whither politeness studies now? Opening up the binaries; Guest Editors: Michael Haugh and Jim O’Driscoll
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Issue 2
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Issue 1Special Issue: Alternative Approaches to Politeness and Impoliteness Guest Editors: Dániel Z. Kádár, Vahid Parvaresh and Rosina Márquez Reiter
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Issue 2Special Issue: (Im)Politeness in professional contexts, Issue Editors: Piotr Jagodziński, Dawn Archer, and Derek Bousfield
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Issue 1
Journal of Politeness Research publishes special and thematic issues focussed on important and emerging topics in the field of study. The journal has established a rigorous process to ensure that any special issue manuscripts follow the same high-quality standards and peer review processes as regular manuscripts. For further information on the journal’s peer review policy please see the "Instructions for Authors".
Recent Special Issues
| Journal Impact Factor | 1.1 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| 5-year Journal Impact Factor | 1.5 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| Journal Citation Indicator | 1.03 | 2024, Journal Citation Reports (Clarivate, 2025) |
| CiteScore | 2.6 | 2024, Scopus (Elsevier B.V., 2025) |
| SCImago Journal Rank | 0.990 | 2024, SJR (Scimago Lab, 2025; Data Source: Scopus) |
| Source Normalized Impact per Paper | 1.223 | 2024, CWTS Journal Indicators (CWTS B.V., 2025; Data Source: Scopus) |
Submission
You can easily submit your manuscript online. Simply go to...
http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/jplr
...and you will be guided through the whole peer-reviewing and publishing process.
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Submission process
- Submission of your paper via our submission management tool
- Peer review process (you will be guided through every step)
- Decision on your paper
- If accepted: you have the option to publish it open access
- Publication online and in print
- Please see the De Gruyter Mouton journal style sheet for further information regarding the proper formatting of your manuscript
- Manuscripts must be written in clear and concise English
- Authors may submit an abstract in their native language as well as in English
- You have the option to also submit an abstract written in a language other than English.
- Before submitting your article please have a look at our Instructions for authors, Publication Ethics Statement and our copyright agreement
- Once your article is accepted you have the option to publish it open access.
- Our repository policy allows you to distribute 30 PDF copies of your published article to colleagues (the PDF has to include the information that it is an author's copy). Please also feel free to distribute the link to the online abstract
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We look forward to receiving your manuscript!
Hybrid Open Access
Authors have the option to publish their article under an open access license. The standard article processing charge for a hybrid open access article is 2,300 Euro (plus VAT if applicable). Please note that corresponding authors from institutions with which we have a transformative agreement, can publish open access without paying the fee. More information on the eligible institutions and articles can be found here.
Editor-in-Chief
Jim O'Driscoll
e-mail: Politeness.Research@degruyter.com
Assistant Managing Editor
Elizabeth Marsden
Åbo Akademi University, Turku, Finland
Book Reviews Editor
Isabelle van der Bom
Technische Universität Chemnitz, Chemnitz, Germany
Editorial Assistant
Irene Inoue, University of Basel, Basel, Switzerland
Editorial Board
Christine Christie (Loughborough University, UK)
Bethan Davies (Leeds University, UK)
Karen Grainger (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
Andrew Merrison (York St John University, UK)
Sara Mills (Sheffield Hallam University, UK)
Louise Mullany (Nottingham University, UK)
Advisory Board
Robert Arundale (University of Alaska Fairbanks, USA)
Penelope Brown (Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, Netherlands)
Jonathan Culpeper (Lancaster University, UK)
Michael Haugh (University of Queensland, Australia)
Janet Holmes (Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand)
Thomas Holtgraves (Ball State University, Indiana, USA)
Juliane House (University of Hamburg, Germany)
Dániel Kádár (Dalian University of Foreign Languages, China)
Luanga Kasanga (University of Bahrain)
Gabriele Kasper (University of Hawai’i, USA)
Abdennour Kharraki (University Mohammed 1, Morocco)
Miriam Locher (University of Basel, Switzerland)
Sinfree Bullock Makoni (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Rosina Márquez-Reiter (The Open University, UK)
Yoshiko Matsumoto (Stanford University, California, USA)
David Morand (Pennsylvania State University, USA)
Yuling Pan (United States Census Bureau, USA)
Barbara Pizziconi (SOAS, University of London, UK)
Maria Sifianou (University of Athens, Greece)
Helen Spencer Oatey (University of Warwick, UK)
Marina Terkourafi (Leiden University, Netherlands)
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Supplementary Materials
Topics
Journal information
Additional information
eISSN:
1613-4877
ISSN:
1612-5681
Language:
English
Publisher:
De Gruyter Mouton
Additional information
First published:
February 23, 2005
Publication Frequency:
2 issues per year
eISSN:
1613-4877
ISSN:
1612-5681
Audience(s) for this journal
researchers and students with an interest in politeness and politeness theory
Safety & product resources
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Manufacturer information:
Walter de Gruyter GmbH
Genthiner Straße 13
10785 Berlin
productsafety@degruyterbrill.com
Creative Commons
BY 4.0
