This research tends to prove that approaches which suggest the relevance of gender as being the only important variable in analyzing the linguistic differences in cross-sexual interactions should be urgently reconsidered. On the other hand, there are other variables that should be taken into account as they affect the participants' linguistic choices. These variables are: power, age, solidarity and most importantly, one's cognition. The research tends to investigate how relevant gender, power and the use of bold-on-record directives and expressives are relevant to each other. It also explores the relation between power and cognition. This is done through analyzing the frequency and phraseology of the directives and expressives used by the main male and female characters in Arms and the man along with Man and Superman, in addition to analyzing the characters' mental processes.
The qualitative analysis is used in the analysis of this study to analyze the way the directives and expressives are phrased by both the male and female characters in addition to analyzing the mental processes stimulated by the characters.
It has been shown that the assumption that politeness is highly relevant to gender is not always applicable. The argument that females are more polite has been refuted. Additionally, it has been proven that power and gender are not always related to the participants' politeness. This can be pertained to the fact that characters, whether males or females, use more on-record strategies than off-record ones where power is irrelevantly applicable. On the contrary, the less powerful characters almost use the same amount or even more on-record utterances, whereas the more powerful characters show a tendency towards using off-record strategies. Other variables prove themselves to be equally important as they play a considerable role in influencing the characters' linguistic choices in terms of their adherence or overlooking of adopting politeness strategies, amongst of which is one's cognition. Also, solidarity, social distance and age are influential variables that should be taken into account