Tương đồng và khác biệt giới tính trong chiến lược phàn nàn của khách hàng người Anh - Mĩ trong lĩnh vực du lịch và khách sạ

Abstract

The article aims to investigate the gender similarities and differences in Anglo-American customer complaint strategies in the Tourism and Hospitality Industry to help readers gain some insight into the cultural characteristics of Anglo-Americans through the speech act of complaining. The qualitative and quantitative approaches were used in the study. The data were collected from movies and publications with dialogue extracts containing complaint utterances given by both male and female customers. The complaint strategies identified based on Murphy and Neu’s revised classification of complaint strategies. The findings highlight the gender similarities and differences in the complaint utterances. As regards complaint strategies, both men and women used strategies "Showing disapproval", "Showing annoyance", "Requesting" and "Showing disappointment" and the number of complaint strategies pursued by men and women is almost the same. However, women regularly employed the strategies "Showing disapproval & Showing annoyance & Requesting & Threatening", while men resorted to the strategies "Showing disapproval", "Showing disapproval & Requesting", "Showing annoyance & Showing disapproval", "Showing disapproval & Expressing criticism". The study results show that learners of English need to be fully aware of gender similarities and differences in complaint strategies pursued by Anglo-American customers, so that they can achieve their goals in intra-lingual as well as cross-cultural communication situations where complaints need to be made or addressed.