Gender Styles In Computer-mediated Communication

Research on gender styles in computer-mediated communication (CMC) is still a relatively new area in the field of sociolinguistics, while the development of Internet has renewed our social life and rapidly turned the world into a "global village". The discussion of the thesis is leading to the recognition of a gendered computerized environment, which has been usually misapprehended as gender-neutral.To begin with the topic , the author made a brief introduction for CMC and reviewed the established theories upon the relation between language and gender in the first three chapters. Later, sufficient materials from online discussion and scientific statistics were adopted to investigate in different conversational styles in CMC.Conclusion was drawn that there are noticeable differences in men and women's speech styles used to discuss issues online?in fact an absence of such differences would be surprising if one considers the different upbringing and consequent socialization and integration of individuals of both sexes in society. While the communicational medium is new and different, some of the established theories on gender styles still apply and even exaggerated.In the final part, implications to online education were discussed. It's also the author's hope that these implications will be of some help to the followed authorities who venturing to the computer-mediated communication, conducting experiments and asserting new theories.