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when he compared speakers' observed usages with what they claimed to say when questioned directly. If a speaker used a favored variable more than half the time, that person would be classified as using that variable. The Norwich speakers were also asked directly how they normally pronounced certain words that contained the same socially diagnostic variables. In this way, it was possible for a speaker to over-report use of a favored variant (by claiming it was typical of his or her speech when it was actually used less than half the time during the interview), underreport usage (by claiming not to use a favored variant that was actually used more than half the time) or accurately report use (by claiming to use a favored variant that was actually used more than half the time, or not claiming a favored variant used less than half the time) (Fasold, 2000: 97). Using this method, he drew the following table: From this table, we can see that male speakers under-reported their use of socially favored variants far more frequently than female speakers did (50 vs. 14); while female speakers over-reported more often than male speakers did (68 vs. 22). So as Trudgill explained, male paid attention to covert prestige of the variant, females more concerned overt prestige of the variant. But why should it have such a result? And what can be revealed from this result? “Sex varieties are the result of different social attitudes towards the behavior of men and women, and of the attitudes men and women themselves consequently gave to language as a social symbol” (Trudgill, 1983: 94). We all know that for a long history women are regarded as inferior to men. They are treated unequally in society comparing with men. So they are likely to be ordered or tend themselves to the standard social values. In language,RP is the standard established by the society. So even if actually they do not speak RP, women still announce that they speak it in order to get praised and respected by the others. This, in fact, is what Brown and Levinson called positive face in FST. On the contrary, man is the controller of the society. They do not pay much attention to the standard established by themselves in language. Instead they are more concerned with their own power, their firmer control of everyday language. That is to say the vernacular. So they always underreported their language in order to show their power and their independence. This reflect in FST is the negative face. This result actually reveals that man and woman treat “face” differently. Man pays more attention to negative face and woman vice versa. From this perspective, we can see that in FST, gender language difference is a very important factor and need to be considered. 3.2 Redressive strategies In FST, Brown and Levinson also introduced five redressive strategies in order to save face. In fact, male and female also behave differently to these strategies. A. Bald on record without redressive actions This strategy means the speaker reveals his intentions directly and clearly to the hearer. The basic sentence pattern is “Do X.” such as Close the door (HE Zhao-xiong, 2000: 230). However, gender difference also exists in such kind of sentences. Lakoff has ever listed the following range of possibilities: Close the door. Please close the door. Will you close the door? Will you please close the door? Won't you close the door? According to Lakoff's investigation, women are more likely to use