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Do women use more expressive language here than men?

Women Are Best at Being Social On Social Media

Dr Ruth Page, of the Department of English, University of Leicester, has completed an extensive study of the use of social media

She found that there is a consistent difference in how women and men express themselves in social media sites, ... with women tending to disclose more about emotional topics and write about these in a more expressive way, for example with more emoticons, kisses and unconventional typography...

Has this been true here, in our social medium, with Atheist women and men?

I have a particular interest in visually rich communication such as emoticons and unconventional typography (such as the fonts in my welcome gifs), so I'm biased.
What do you think?

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Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Natalie A Sera on December 14, 2011 at 7:36pm

Well, I can't speak for anyone else, but I do use emoticons a lot, and exclamation points, and CAPITALIZED words to show syntactical stress. I AM (see?) concerned that people understand and interpret my comments as I mean them, because in writing, you can't see the person's facial expression or hear their tone of voice, so I do whatever I can to communicate those.

Permalink Reply by Steph S. on December 14, 2011 at 8:08pm

Well, I haven't exactly been paying attention to that on this site. I would guess that women would tend to be more expressive -- but I don't know for sure. The study you have posted here found a consistent difference in expressive language between women and men.

Permalink Reply by Carl Pastor on December 14, 2011 at 11:50pm

i dunno i tend to just use words, no caps no emticons, to me,what i say is important, not how i say it. it lloks like the good dr is right. its certainly true that in phone texting girls use a lot of emo stuff in japan. im soo lazy i hate to put quotes around book names.

Permalink Reply by leveni on December 15, 2011 at 8:51am

Hi Ruth,

I think the article is pretty accurate. I only want to hear a point of view and put my point of view across and go from there. When you asked me to put insert a photo on my profile, I found it quiet personal and I was at a total loss about what I should upload. It took me months to decide, because you wanted the photo to be some kind of representation of myself. But I guess it is much easier for girls to make a decision about that kind of thing, not that I would know.

Permalink Reply by dr kellie on December 15, 2011 at 11:25am

I've never used an emoticon or any graphic stuff, and I never will. I might be different because I am a dyke.

Permalink Reply by Kacie Tsao on December 15, 2011 at 1:50pm

I think it has more to do with what part of internet subculture you hang around in. I've known some men who use a lot of emoticons and unconventional typography, and some women who don't particularly like them. A lot of popular typographical memes were first coined by men and then spread out to wider use. 1337, for example, used to be a mostly male geek thing, then it became a gender neutral geek thing. Now it's just an internet thing. The word "pwn", also, originated from a typo when a guy was trying to say he "owned" another person in a video game. It has since spread out from the gaming community and become just another internet thing.

Permalink Reply by Lary9 on December 15, 2011 at 3:14pm

I beg to differ. Perhaps one person's expressiveness is another's over-effusiveness.

Permalink Reply by Carl Pastor on December 15, 2011 at 6:09pm

there was one group trhat created an emoticon for me, a old guy with a cane, and there i still use that there all the time. but it has no meaning.

Permalink Reply by Lary9 on December 16, 2011 at 10:37pm

I have given this some further thought and concluded that it certainly has validity.

Permalink Reply by Clarence Dember on December 16, 2011 at 7:55pm

What Dr. Page has asserted about more emotionally ditch posting.gs of women as compared to the postings of men seems to be true. It would especially be valid in the society she studied (Here presumably.)
Perhapse there is an explaination in gender scripting with regards to what is seen as appropriate qua man and qua woman. There have to be acceptions to his assessment albeit in non-tradiditional gender scripting other than strictly heterosexual populations. This is merely conjecture on my part.

Permalink Reply by Ruth Anthony-Gardner on December 16, 2011 at 11:13pm