Gender Differences On Netspeak Conversations:A Sociolinguistic Perspective

With the rapid development of science and technology, the Internet has been used in different aspects of people’s life because of its features of economy, efficiency, convenience and user-friendliness. Meanwhile, a new medium which is called Computer-mediated Communication has emerged and welcomed by millions of netizens; the influence of netspeak has already percolated into real-life communication. In recent years, netspeak has captured growing attention from linguists, yet gender differences in netspeak have been barely touched due to the anonymity of CMC. Nevertheless, this obstacle can be overcome with the popularity of the Renren and We Chat. Among the netizens, university students are considered a special group of Internet users because their use of language online demonstrates a series of peculiar features.In this research, the author aims to check the gender differences of netspeak among college students based on the empirical study and hopes to maintain a conclusion of sociolinguistics. The following questions concerning network chat are addressed:1) Do the female and male netizens display statistically significant gender-related differences in netspeak in terms of topic selection,emoticons and code-switching?2) If yes, what are the differences?3) What are the reasons behind the differences?To analyze the reasons behind the possible differences between males and females in the conversations, a matched-guise technique test administered among 100 subjects from Xi’an International Studies University, Northwest University of Politics and Law, and Xidian University. And then a conversational analysis was conducted on the 20 online conversations collected from Renren and We Chat in light of topic selection, emoticons and code-switching. The Microsoft Word(2010) and Excel(2010) are used to save and analyze the data collected. The results show that 1) in topic selection men were more likely to talk about formal and impersonal issues whereas women tend to focus on topics that were closely related to social life; 2)in emoticon use, females used more than that of males; and 3) in code-switching, females are more likely to show their language skills.Based on the analysis of the results from the matched-guise technique test, it can be found that the subjects hold more favorable attitudes towards the text with mixed codes; in addition, female subjects evaluate almost all items more highly than their male counterparts do in the ten items in Chinese-English code-mixing version, which coincides with the existing conclusion that women are the vanguards of language innovation. This probably also helps explain why in foreign language institutions of higher learning in China the female student population accounts for the absolute majority.The research on gender studies of netspeak conversation is a complex subject. Due to the shortage of investigation instruments, there still exist some limitations which need to be further explored in the future study.