Gender Differences In Language Use Of Microblogs

At a time when netizens have lost their interest in lengthy articles and elites seek to be constantly in the spotlight, microblog has risen in response to their wishes. Compared with traditional media of communication, microblog, by encouraging shorter posts, is growing rapidly and influencing people’s lives in ways few people have expected before. Most of the studies, however, concerned themselves with microblogging in terms of its origin, application, functions, maintenance, and impact, etc., with few, if any in the western countries, from the linguistic point of view, especially as regards the relationship between gender and the user’s language.In view of this, the thesis, on the basis of such theories concerning language and gender as proposed by Robin Lakoff and Deborah Tannen, plus the achievements on CMC, blogs and microblogs, puts forward six hypotheses followed by a questionnaire involving the profiles and the contents of the users’ microblogs. It then selects202college students (boys and girls evenly distributed) as subjects, the data from which will later be analyzed by the software SPSS19.0.Consistent with the previous studies, the results, with5hypotheses verified, confirm that there do exist some significant gender differences in terms of the disclosure of personal information, the use of emoticons and intensifiers, the selection of topics, and the concern for language taboos. What deserves attention is that, contrary to expectation, no gender difference so far has been found in the use of network buzzword.The findings reveal that theories of language and gender in western countries also hold true to the Chinese counterparts, demonstrating, to some extent, the universalism of language properties. It is hoped that the study will contribute to the increased attention to this field and the improved teaching and learning English on the Internet.