A Pragmatic Study Of Gender Differences In Computer-mediated Communication

The21st century is the Internet era. In this information age, with the rapid development of the computer technology and the spread use of the Internet, the Internet communication has generally become an increasingly important part of life of the modern people. The Internet communication has such characteristics as convenience and efficiency. It differs from the face-to-face communication, the letters communication and the telephone communication. As a brand new communication medium, Netspeak, which is derived from the Internet communication, has become a specific cultural phenomenon and a life pattern in the modern society. Netspeak is the language that Internet users tap on the computer screen, which is communicated through the way of "reading". It is communicated in a written form. This study focuses on gender differences in the computer-mediated communication, and Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle serve as the theoretical framework. This study also explores the reasons that cause the gender differences in the end. Former researchers on gender issues are mainly concerned with communicative styles adopted by men and women in the face-to-face communication. There are not many research endeavors to expand the previous gender-linked linguistic study to the new communicative field.The data in this thesis are collected from the chatting records of the students of Wuhan Railway Vocational College in the Tencent QQ. Based on Cooperative Principle and Politeness Principle, this thesis makes a study of the Netspeak and finds that there exist many gender differences on such aspects as topic choices, greetings, hedges, tag questions and amount of talk. Finally, the thesis finds the reasons that cause these differences. This research, which is conducted in the virtual internet environment, proves some of the established theories on gender styles on one hand; on the other hand, it has its own characteristics. Doing researches on gender differences of the computer-mediated communication has some important practical implications on the cultural developments and changes of the society.