Linguistics Research: Language, Gender, and You

[UVaLNGS1]

Hey all,

I'm currently writing a research paper on Linguistic Performance of Gender in Online Communities. My focus is primarily on how gender can be manipulated in anonymous interaction on the internet. I would very much appreciate your comments and ideas. Here are my hypotheses, and some questions to shape your responses:

Hypothesis 1: People will perform their own gender most of the time, but some will occasionally perform a gender not their own to gain conversational resources (power, authority, respect, sympathy, etc.).

Hypothesis 2: The validity/believability of these performances is judged by other users in terms of both gender-stereotypical content and gendered style.

Research Questions 1: Do you ever or have you ever pretended to be a different gender online? If so, why? How did you perform the other gender? What features of your language did you change, if any, in your performance?

Research Questions 2: When a person's gender is under suspicion online, how would you attempt to discern it? What features of their language or what kind of content might you associate with women or men?

These are general questions, please feel free to respond to some of them, all of them, or none. Any response is appreciated, and I welcome all criticism.

One thing I just want to note here is the difference between the words "sex" and "gender:" sex refers to the biological/genetic difference between men and women--xy and xx chromosomes; gender is how these biological differences are shaped and given meaning in a cultural and social context.

Thank you all very much for your help. I'm happy to answer any questions.

 

[Loop Stricken]

1) No.

2) My tactic is heavy flirting, for the purposes of either creeping out the other person enough for them to drop their front, or get laid.
This has never worked for me, so make of that what you will.

 

[Pimppeter2]

No, I have never pretended to be a girl online (except for when AIM was new and you could prank people using similar screennames to the "hot" girls in class)

I assume that almost anyone is a man. If they're being ambiguous about it, I just assume they're annoying.

 

[Powereaver]

1) Sure i have as a joke a few times to confuse a few losers who used to frequent some chat rooms i was in

2) Usually you can tell a woman from a man from the way they speak i find its just that inkling that smth isnt right and ive also come to a conclusion that anyone with the nick setup femalename-age eg. Sharon32 is most likely a guy

 

[Spectral Dragon]

I think Omegle can be used for that - I've used it, and have been mistaken for a female at times. Maybe because of me actually taking time with grammar and spelling. I've never intentionally pretended to be a girl, but some have made that assumption and I've not said anything either way.

Sometimes more proper punctuation and spelling, but if it's poor, the common stereotype is too many letters - male: ok female: okiiiiiii (exaggerated, but you get my point.). I guess it's mainly about subtle differences. I can't tell you exactly what makes me think of someone as more feminine or masculine.

 

[NegaWiki]

1: I have pretended to be male, though that was not my intention, it was assumed and I just rolled with it. The people I "tricked" think that my male persona is in Iraq right now. The main reason they thought I was a guy was how fast I typed... in an IRC, where I misspelled every other word.

2: I look at word usage, spelling, and that voice I hear whenever I read something.

 

[Emergent System]

Research Questions 1: Do you ever or have you ever pretended to be a different gender online? If so, why? How did you perform the other gender? What features of your language did you change, if any, in your performance?

Research Questions 2: When a person's gender is under suspicion online, how would you attempt to discern it? What features of their language or what kind of content might you associate with women or men?

1) No
2) It is undiscernable without confirmation from the person in question from a non-anonymous source. Whatever differences *may* apply to huge numbers of people *on average* do not apply to the individual.

 

[Folji]

Not intentionally. The few times that's happened it was purely coincidental because there was no easy way to determine male or female. Either that or it was an online game and I decided to play as a female character.

I'd probably start by looking for anything that could remind of conventional stereotypes about either gender. Bringing up certain topics to test the other's reaction can work as well (women stereotypically express a lot of empathy, while men would be more reluctant to do that), though doubt I'd really put in any actual effort if I don't have to. Feels easier to just not factor in the gender until I'm actually sure of it. View everyone with the same lens, kind of.

 

[Mr Thin]

1) No.

2) In my experience with online gaming, women tend to spell better than men, so that's always a small give-away; they also tend to be more polite, and less prone to stupidity.

So if someone is polite, friendly and literate, and claims to be a girl, I'm probably going to believe them. But it doesn't really matter, as I'm not one of those weirdos who would give someone free items because they talk about their boobs. I'm lonely, but I'm not that lonely.

 

[iFail69]

I don't declare a gender online. I like gender anonymity, and if it comes up in conversation, I'll say that I'm a guy, I'll play both male and female characters online, though I tend to lead towards female due to a small amount of feminist bias on my side.

Funny thing is, a lot of people mistake me for a girl a lot of the time, it's because I apparently have some very typical feminine traits, or the lack of male ones, I don't know which, it's the other people making assumptions, not me.

How I go about discerning the difference between an actual girl, and a G.I.R.L is very simple. Most of the time, girls won't really make a big deal about their gender. A lot of pretenders I see draw attention to the fact that they are apparently a female, to some degree, some are more subtle than others. Of course it's not foolproof, you get attention whores who are actually girls (but I generally dislike them anyway) and G.I.R.Ls who generally don't draw attention to their gender. All of the girls I know over the internet (who are actually girls, confirmed and everything) are just friendly, normal gaming buddies who I really enjoy playing with, gender really plays very little part in it, if they were guys, they'd still be on my friends list because they're awesome people.

The best way is to not care about it, then if they do become good (online) friends, visit them, or bring it up in conversation. A meeting in person dispels any doubts, and a rejection, however it's handled, also dispels all doubts (one way or another).

EDIT: Is my edit showing up? I think the escapist ate half of my post. - Yes it is, nevermind.

 

[UVaLNGS1]

Thanks everyone for the great responses. These are all really helpful.

 

[mb16]

1- yes, whilst pissed on EVE online. and another time on phantasy star universe. its amazing how much in game money nerds will throw at you if they think you have XX chromosomes

2- i assume that they are male until they provide proof in the form of voice chat or multiple pictures (i have been friended twice on facebook by people proving they are female)

 

[Zyxzy]

1) I have never pretended to be another gender.

2) Generally I wait for them to slip up or others to show the truth. I've never been very good at online gender discernment.

 

[Belaam]

1) Have never actively pretended to be the opposite gender online. I have a few MMO characters that are the opposite gender, and some people groups may have assumed I was female, but that's about it. I can't really think of anyone who has asked.

2) I don't really care what someone's actual gender may be versus how they are roleplaying it online. This might be a different answer if I were single, but I'm happily married and really don't care if the person I am talking to is male or female. As to what language I would associate with each gender, I don't know that I do. I know too many people who defy traditional gendered wording to make assumptions. I might possibly associate better grammar with being female, but only because lately more women go to college than men; I wouldn't consider it to be a definite indicator.

 

[LordOmnit]

1) I've never pretended to be another gender online inasmuch as I may have used female avatars, but never actually acted like I was a female intentionally for any type of gain.

2) I'm not too concerned with the human counterparts to online avatars/personas. I'll generally pick out a gender for the person based on whatever picture(s) they put forth as their avatar/character and take a gut feeling based on their language. I don't have any particular indicators that I use to try and discern gender because it's not a big concern to me whether I'm playing with/against a male/female biologically or not.

 

[walrusaurus]

I can't say that i've ever pretended to be a woman online.

I generally just assume that everyone is what they profess to be. Maybe thats naive of me. The exception being when i see a professed female, talking about sex to excess. In which case I'm likely to assume that its a teenage boy being a perv.

 

[Indeterminacy]

One thing I just want to note here is the difference between the words "sex" and "gender:" sex refers to the biological/genetic difference between men and women--xy and xx chromosomes; gender is how these biological differences are shaped and given meaning in a cultural and social context.

Ooh, this old chestnut. Hold on a second, let me just answer your questions.

Research Questions 1: Do you ever or have you ever pretended to be a different gender online? If so, why? How did you perform the other gender? What features of your language did you change, if any, in your performance?

I suppose the first obstacle here is to the question of whether my gender is definitively one or the other. I quite like queer theory, and subscribe pretty strongly to the view that regardless of whether we view sex or sexual organs as determinately bipolar or as a continuum, people have masculine traits and feminine traits to various degrees without gender identity being essential to the individual.

That said, I make no presumptions to physically present myself as anything other than masculine (albeit clean shaven, long hair due to lack of funding for haircuts), and have actively played a physically female character in an online world before as a matter of curiosity (twice, in fact, about 7 years ago in Ragnarok online and about 4 years ago in Maple Story). One of the perks of experiencing social interaction in an online sphere is that people are always treating you in terms of an entirely idealistic presentation that you've constructed, and I thought it interesting to see what certain presentational differences would yield in terms of how people engaged in conversation.

As it turns out, I didn't find much difference. I don't recall much difference in the way of my behaviour; I'm naturally quite a philosophically curious person and like finding out what people really think about an opinion they've hinted at, but I'm not particularly aggressive, and am happy to let that curiosity down if others don't want to talk about it. I think this came across as fairly chatty and non-confrontational, which suited peoples' presuppositions of what girls in games are like. I might have subconsciously toned my sarcasm down and my optimism up a little though (which seems to be increasingly true in general recently. Hmm.)

In terms of syntactic differences in communication, very little was different. I've always tried to avoid abbreviations and gamer slang online, so this carried over. I think in both games I took the time to investigate the use of emote facilities, and it's certainly possible that I might have used them more subconsciously, but I don't remember that being something I didn't subsequently adopt in play in general in those games.

Research Questions 2: When a person's gender is under suspicion online, how would you attempt to discern it? What features of their language or what kind of content might you associate with women or men?

Here's the thing. It doesn't matter to me one bit whether the person I'm talking to is masculine or feminine in this online world. As I mentioned earlier, I have a more chatty or philosophical disposition when it comes to interacting with people in online gaming. How I react to you will not be substantially different if I think you're giving off conflicting gender signals, unless this is tied to a discussion about gender roles anyway.

This seems natural to me, since avatars are just reflections of the person's agency in the game rather than representative of what we take our broader societal roles (like gender or community identity). Yes, girls and boys may more often pick figures matching their respective gender, but these signs come apart from their explicit significance when viewed in the context of an online video game. I'm not visiting this world to find a partner or to sexually perform - I'm just here to play a game, chat about life, the universe and everything, and maybe engage in a little healthy fantasy about living in these weird scenarios.

So to be blunt, I wouldn't even bother trying to discern it. And it seems really unusual that people generally do. What does this say about someone that it makes a difference to them that a world of warcraft character (in whatever way that character is presented) is played by a man or a woman?

Which seems like a good point to discuss something that seems to be assumed in your paper - that gender is tied to sexual physiology. This is the accepted position, but the question is to what extent Gender in virtual media, if it really is gender and not simply the aesthetic appearance of such, carries this connection and infiltrates other modes of online interaction? (beyond a kind of general Freudianism, that is)

Now, on your hypotheses:

Hypothesis 1: People will perform their own gender most of the time, but some will occasionally perform a gender not their own to gain conversational resources (power, authority, respect, sympathy, etc.).

Hypothesis 2: The validity/believability of these performances is judged by other users in terms of both gender-stereotypical content and gendered style.

I think 2 may be correct, though I think you could do with elaborating a bit on what "gendered style" means here. Is this as in conforming to the way women would actually want to dress and present their words? Because while I get this with respect to both spoken word and visual appearence, is it apparent that there's a distinct feminine syntactical style still adhering to grammatical standards?

Hypothesis 1, on the other hand, seems a bit off. I would want to think you're overestimating the influence that the gender aspect of conversational normativity has over online interaction. Mind you, I could yet be surprised.

Hope your paper goes well!

 

[MisterDyslexo]

1. No, although I have been mistaken as female many times. Sometimes because I'm using a female avatar, other times, its usually the content of what I say that misleads a person (sometimes they think I'm a woman instead of being gay, which is a valid assumption). I don't think I'll mislead too many people using this particular username though.

2. Post history, looking into their profile, etc. I sloof rather than be direct. If that doesn't work, oh well. I can't think of an instance where I deliberately tried to uncover somebody's gender after all those failed.

I have pretended to be female IRL, in multiple instances, and I can tell you, that for such a short amount of time as one hour, the experience of just eating in public can be very different. I've always fancied the idea of pervading as a woman on the outside of my home for a few months ever since then. I'm pretty sure people would use it to their advantage in the real world.

Edit: I do play as a lot of female characters in games, but I don't think that matters too much, since most of the gender ambiguity happens on forums rather than in games.