Gender Differences In Language Use

Text betrays its author's gender

Male and female brains are wired differently, studies confirm, and new diagnostics show those differences surface in the spelling, phraseology, punctuation and other peculiarities of written language.

Distinctive words, syntax, colloquialization, repetition, subordination, capitalization and other features of written text expose the gender of the author. Research confirms the gender of a writer emerges readily from scrutinizing unmistakable clues.

A study by Na Chen and colleagues at Stevens Institute of Technology in New Jersey revealed 157 of 545 "psycholinguistic" factors in written material are gender-specific.

The researchers developed new software that can determine the gender of an author of written material with up to 81 per cent accuracy.

Although the research aimed primarily at discovering methods to uncover "gender deception" in Internet communications, there could be much broader general applications.

At issue was gender identity in short-length multi-purpose emails involving 8,970 authors. The study involved number of words, number of letters per word, richness of vocabulary, number of single and double quotes, number of colons and semicolons, number of question marks, paragraphs, sentences, written lines and other parameters.

"These word-based features and function words play important roles in gender identification," the researchers reported.

Earlier studies by Shalomo Argamon at the Illinois Institute of Technology and colleagues at Bar-Ilan University Ramar Gan in Israel confirmed that in historical documents, male- and female-authored texts differed greatly.

Male authors were found to write more "informationally" whereas females wrote more with personal involvement.

"Females use more personal pronouns that encode the relationship between the writer and the reader (whereas) males use more generic pronouns," they concluded.

"There are indeed different strategies employed by men and women in setting forth information."

Female writers were much more likely to use "I, we or us," very significantly more apt to use "you or your" and almost twice as likely to use "he, him, she or her" in their written material.

"There is greater personalization of text by females," they write.

A study in China concluded error-types in written material are gender-specific. Females are much less likely to err with regard to adverbs, articles, colloquialization, conjunctions, noun phrases, punctuation, spelling and verb forms. Overall, male-written text is more likely to contain errors with respect to many grammatical variables, they reported.

SVForum: Navigating Gender Differences for Business Success

With the inclusion of many talented and qualified women into management positions in today's workplace companies are finding ways to adjust policies, procedures and cultural norms to support the advancement of women today. These revised company policies are making these companies a top choice for employers in the market place; with men taking advantage of these opportunities as well. The changing dynamics of the workplace mean that internal communication takes on a very different dynamic between employees of diverse cultural backgrounds, perspectives, personalities and even gender plays a role in the way people exchange dialogue and ideas with one another. It's repeatedly been shown that men and women communicate differently. The words are the same but the underlying assumptions and perceived nuances are not. There's a reason most men don't ask for directions and why most women don't ask for raises. The good news is that it's easier to learn break down other-gender-speak than it is to learn a totally foreign language. Francine Gordon, Founder and CEO of F Gordon Group, will use her expertise in organizational behavior to allow attendees to navigate and interpret gender differences to create a more cohesive and dynamic workplace that retains both talent and diversity. Ms. Gordon began her professional life as assistant professor of Organization Behavior at the Stanford Graduate School of Business (GSB), one of the first two women on the GSB faculty and the youngest person to hold that position. In addition to teaching M.B.A. and Ph.D. candidates, she consulted with major companies and co-edited a book, Bringing Women Into Management which provides unique solutions to integrating women into executive management positions. Before founding the F Gordon Group, Francine spent over five years with Boston Consulting Group (BCG) as the global knowledge expert on Human Resources issues.

Gender differences in language use, implications for impression formation

Sexual/textual politics, feminist literary theory

Gender voices

Society and Language Use

Gender, language and discourse