Gender Difference In Netspeak

Linguists began to pay attention to the issue of language and gender in the early of 20 th century. Linguists Otto Jespersen(1922), Mary Haas(1944 /1964), Key(1975), Coates(1986) and Milroy(1980) explained the gender pattern from different perspectives. The publication of Lakoff’s Language and Women’s Place in 1975 marked the beginning of the study on gender difference in language use. The feminist movement developed quickly at the end of 1960 s and the early 1970 s. Under the influence of this movement, the study on language and gender flourished, and gender became an important sociolinguistic variable in the study of different conversational style between males and females. Up to now, numerous scholars have already applied this variable in their study about language and gender.Since the 20 th century, Internet, because of its great advantages such as effective and economic, has been widely applied in various aspects of society and people’s life. Netspeak, which is quite different from traditional language, emerged subsequently. WeChat, because of its strong function, spread quickly and became the new socialized media after Blog and QQ. Although a few scholars have already paid attention to the study of gender difference in Netspeak, few studies were focused on gender difference on WeChat language. The purpose of this study is to find out the gender difference on WeChat language, explore the influencing factors and certify Lakoff’s hypothesis on language and gender difference for the explanation of gender difference in Wechat language.The data of this study are collected from the communication language on WeChat. All the subjects(30 in total, 15 females and 15 males) have used WeChat for more than one-year time. By the method of quantitative analysis and combined with the features of Netspeak on WeChat, this thesis applies eight variables, including topic selection, amount of speech, tag questions, emoticons, final particles and intensifiers,hedges, and intonation in the study.Finally, by analyzing the gender differences in the language use in WeChat and the causes for those differences, this study draws such a conclusion as the following: the language in Wechat has its own features and there does exist gender difference in the communication on WeChat. Compared with the traditional face-to-face communication, some differences on Wechat are accorded with previous studies, while some others contradict them. What contribute to the gender difference in Wechat communication are social and cultural factors. Through the study of gender difference in Wechat communication, this paper certifies Lakoff’s hypothesis on language and gender difference, and extends the study of language and gender to a broader scope. Furthermore, the study of gender difference on Wechat is of practical significance in fostering the smooth communication cross genders and facilitating the harmonious relation between males and females in society.