Abstract—Disagreement as a face threatening act is
dispreferred because of violating social solidarity in talk. From
gendered sociolinguistics perspective, men are attached to
disagreement whereas women to agreement. This study,
however, examines the strategies in which women disagree with
one another as an interactional approach to convey their
intended meanings. This paper draws on data from transcribed
audio recorded face to face conversation of 4 groups of Iranian
female friends in informal settings. The analysis of the data
shows that the female participants express their disagreement
boldly and explicitly, disregarding face threatening elements,
just like men. It is also found that they care about maintaining
their own faces more than the others’ faces in the process of
responding to disagreements. In addition, they exhibit a
powerful style to criticize, challenge and contradict. It is finally
argued that socio-cultural changes in the context of Iranian
society had an impact on the females’ interactive attitude.
Index Terms—Disagreements, face and power, Iranian
women, society.
Leila Mohajer is with the Women's Development Research Centre
(KANITA), Universiti Sains Malaysia, 11800 USM, Pulau Pinang, Malaysia
(e-mail: topazleos@yahoo.com).
[PDF]
Cite: Leila Mohajer, " “Take Over Take Over / You are Teachers / Take Over”:
Disagreements and the Construction of Power among
Women," International Journal of Social Science and Humanity vol. 5, no. 12, pp. 1017-1023, 2015.