#languageandgender

[elvisgomesofficial]

Language remains a window into the mind: the words we have constructed over the last couple of decades reflect our new uncertainties and our new possibilities.

- Robin T. Lakoff -

[saraintrospective-blog]

This Twitter post plays on the assumed stereotypes and identifiable difference between male and female written language as depicted on social media. Here, males convey their friendship in a seemingly emotionless, plain way, whereas females enjoy sharing emotional and personal connections to provide evidence for friendship. The stereotype is that men are informative, and females are expressive. Female “rapport talk” versus male “report talk” is how Deborah Tannen would categorize this language-gender intersection. Rapport talk “establishes and maintains social relationships” while report talk “conveys straightforward information rather than emotion or gossip” (Tannen 1990:74ff). 

What makes this Twitter post humorous is that it is based on assumptions. Speaking for myself, I laughed out loud because of the commonality in which I have seen this pattern via Instagram or Facebook birthday posts. Scrolling through social media, my female friends are those whom I see posting long, “sappy” birthday messages. My male friends hardly post for their friends’ birthday. If they do post, it is very simplistic and direct as shown in the Twitter post here. This naturally makes me thinks that girls verbally share more, and guys verbally share less.

The pattern affirms my assumptions, however the patterns I see in my social circle do not represent gender language behavior universally. Psychologist Janet Hyde and researcher Matthias Mehl have actually conducted quantitative research to test whether or not females are more talkative than male. Mehl’s results show that “the data fails to reveal a reliable sex difference in daily word use” (Mehl et al. 2007:82). However, the assumptions of how females and males think and communicate still remains quite established socially. This is what initiates the humorous response evoked by posts like the Twitter one above.

[c0mf0rtable-silence]

Language and gender

Really torn about what I should write for my language and gender essay. We have been given so much freedom and I've so much I want to talk about but don't know how to sum it all up into one "research question"