Course-based Project

An Analysis of Gendered Differences in Apology Strategies

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Abstract

This study uses a corpus-based approach to examine how men and women differ in the ways and how often they apologize. The analysis draws on the Spoken British National Corpus 2014 (BNC2014) and focuses on four frequent apology expressions: I’m sorry, I apologise/apologize, my bad, and forgive me.  The goal is to test whether British women apologize more frequently than British men and whether they use different apology types. Although the raw counts first suggested that men apologized slightly more, a Chi-Square Test of Independence showed no significant difference in overall frequency. However, the same test revealed clear differences in apology strategies. Women tended to use apologies that repaired serious or emotional situations (RA2), while men more often used apologies in advance (AA) to preface their actions. These results indicate that gender shapes the function and context of apologies more than their frequency. The study contributes to ongoing research on gender and language by showing how corpus data can reveal patterns in everyday British speech.

Plain Language Summary

Do women apologize more than men? This study explores this question using a large collection of real conversations from people across the UK. Focusing on common phrases like I’m sorry, I apologise, and my bad, I compared how often men and women used these phrases and the kinds of situations they used them in. My analysis showed there was no clear difference in how often men and women apologized. However, I also looked at the types of apologies. Women were more likely to use apologies in serious or emotional situations. Men were more likely to use them casually for small mistakes or before saying something uncomfortable. These findings suggest that men and women use apologies in different ways. The difference isn’t about how often they say sorry, but about why and when they do so. These findings help us better understand how gender relates to everyday speech and politeness.

Keywords: corpus-based, politness strategies, apologies, gendered politeness strategies