Gender Comparative Analysis of College Students’ Consoling Speech Act

Abstract

In order to analyze the gender comparison of consoling speech acts of college students, this paper uses questionnaire survey to investigate 10 male college students and 10 female college students. A total of 4 situations were set up in the questionnaire, and participants were required to fill in the answers according to their own point of view. According to Sekiyama's classification of consoling speech acts, all the answers are divided into suggestion, positive encouragement, negative encouragement, offer of help, shift of responsibility, and others. The conclusions reached were: male and female usually use not a single way of consoling, they combine general consoling speech act and specific consoling speech act. Females tend to be more emotional when consoling others and prefer to comfort others from the psychological level. Male, on the other hand, are more matter-of-fact and rational when it comes to comforting others, and are more likely to use their suggestions to solve problems.