Though men and women technically speak the same language, some scholars have concluded that men and women use language and converse differently. There are socialized conceptions of how women and men should speak differently as well as how persons of different cultures express themselves.
According to Lakoff (1975), women and men speak English in several different ways. She suggests that women's language makes more frequent use of emotionally intensive adverbs such as "so," "terribly," "awfully," and "quite." Similarly, Eakins and Eakins (1978) observed that men and women use different vocabularies. They suggest that women's language is more punctuated with adjectives and adverbs that "connote triviality or unimportance" such as "sweet," "dreadful," "precious," and "darling" (p.30). Soskin and John (1963), after observing the talks between a couple over a certain period of time, found that wives produce significantly more expressive statements such as "Ouch!" or "Darn!" (p.270), whereas husbands uses more directive and informative statements.
According to Strodtbeck and Mann's investigation (1956) about male and female communication behavior in mock-jury deliberations, females were found to give significantly more positive reactions than males. Males used more aggressive language than females. Above all, men were found to originate significantly more speech acts than women. Furthermore, men "proact" by directing speeches at solving problem while women "react" to the contributions of others, agreeing, understanding and supporting. In a similar vein, Kaplan and Farrell (1994) observe that women's messages are quite short and their participation is driven by their desire to keep the conversation going than the desire to achieve consensus on some issues. These findings are also supported by the work of Aries (1976) and Leet-Peregrini (1980) as cited in Tannen (1990). Tannen categorizes women's talk as "interdependent" and "cooperative," whereas male conversational patterns express "independence" and assertions of vertically hierarchical power.
Herring (1993), in her discourse analysis of a CMC bulletin board, distinguishes the different characteristics of woman's language and men's language. Features of women's language include "attenuated assertions, apologies, questions, personal orientation and support", whereas some features of men's language are "strong assertions, self-promotion, rhetorical questions, authoritative orientation, challenges and humor." Similar results have been found in other cross-gender studies. Investigators find that females ask more questions (Fishman, 1978, 1983) and make more apologies (Eubanks, 1975).
Based on the scholarship cited above, we would ordinarily expect men to be less inclined than women to engage in socioemotional and relational patterns of communication which might exhibit social interdependence. In CMC contexts, these patterns would include emotext, emoticons, expressions of supporting references, self-references and self-disclosure, and references to others.
Although CMC issues have become increasingly addressed in the research literature, there have been relatively few studies which concern gender and power-relationships in CMC contexts (e.g., Selfe & Meyer, 1991). Nevertheless, it is widely held that the "computer world" has been dominated by males. Despite the availability of this medium for both sexes, measured indicators of participation have consistently revealed a heavily skewed male bias (Selfe & Meyer, 1991; Kramarae & Taylor, 1992; Herring, 1993; Herring, Johnson, & DiBenedetto, 1992; We, 1993). It is possible that practical access to, and patterns of use of, CMC differ across gender and other social strata.
Edwards (1990) observes that computer programming, computer engineering and systems analysis are tasks performed primarily by men. He attributes this phenomenon to the modes of thinking involved in computer-related work. Both hardware and software of computers require precise, abstract, and mathematical thinking, thus making computer scientists "hard masters" (p.103). In a similar vein, Benston (1988) views the technology as a "language" for action. Both theorists view the language of technology as symbols of power and masculinity inappropriate for women's involvement. Although the reduction in social cues has been theorized to "democratize" communication (Kiesler et al., 1984) studies indicate that males participate in CMC more than females by a hefty margin (We, 1994; Herring, 1993; Hellerstein, 1985).
Several gender-CMC studies have extended theorized patterns of face-to-face conversation (Tannen, 1990; Lakoff, 1975; Eakins & Eakins, 1980) to CMC modes. Kaplan and Farrell (1994) observed that women's on-line conversation resembles what Tannen (1990) calls "rapport" talk, rather than "report" talk, a style men tend to favor. However, some research reveals that gender-based patterns of conversation patterns might change between FTF and CMC contexts. Bellman, Tindimubona and Arias, Jr. (1993) found that Latin American women anonymously contributed "strong assertive remarks" to a CMC bulletin board while "they did not engage in heated debate" or critiques in their face-to-face classes. There is, therefore, a research precedent which indicates that pseudonymous CMC might mitigate gender-based differences in communication styles.