Impoliteness in turkish underground literature: The relationship between the use of impoliteness triggers and gender

Language reflects the attitudes and values of society and also plays a key role in constructing and maintaining the gender roles assigned to people by the community and culture. As the product of social practice, gender reveals itself via discourse. Studies show that women and men use language differently due to the cultural rules which teach them different gender roles. One of these differences is that women's language is more polite in comparison to that of men. Underground literature is a genre that takes a stand against the prevailing mentality and its discourse, and thus, opposes the mainstream media. Since underground literature presents characters engaging in very different lifestyles that lie outside social norms; slang, swearing and impoliteness are among the most distinctive features of underground literature. For this reason, analyzing underground texts is important to reveal the effect of gender roles on the use of impoliteness triggers by both writers and characters in their novels. In accordance with this purpose, based on Culpeper's (2016) Model of Impoliteness Triggers, the use of impoliteness triggers in selected Turkish underground literature novels was analyzed. Results indicate that female underground writers use more impoliteness triggers than male writers. This finding shows that female writers follow genre conventions more closely. Additionally, it has been observed that male and female writers employ different kinds of impoliteness triggers, reflecting stylistic differences in line with gender roles. Lastly, female characters use more impoliteness triggers in novels written by female writers, while female characters in novels written by male writers are always more polite than their male counterparts. Male writers also tend to include far fewer female characters in their novels. Thus, they contribute to the maintenance of gender roles.