This study investigates the roles of biological and psychological gender, as well as assigned discussion topic, in the written language use of nonprofessional writers. University students wrote passages on three specific topics—one socioemotional and descriptive, one functional, and one involving political debate. Effects of biological gender were minimal. Psychological gender played a greater role, particularly when measured explicitly rather than implicitly. Passage topic played the greatest role in language use. Rather than enacting their own gender through their writing, writers used language befitting the passage topic. More female-preferential devices featured in passages involving socioemotional descriptions and more male-preferential features were employed in passages involving political debate. The study demonstrates the relative impacts of gender and contextual constraints on communication.
Anderson, K. J., & Leaper, C. (1998). A meta-analysis of gender effects on conversational interruption: Who, what, when, where, and how. Sex Roles, 39, 225-252.
2.
Argamon, S., Koppel, M., Fine, J., & Shimoni, A. R. (2003). Gender, genre, and writing style in formal written texts. Text, 23, 321-346.
3.
Aries, E. (1982). Verbal and nonverbal behavior in single-sex and mixed-sex groups: Are traditional sex roles changing?Psychological Reports, 51, 127-134.
4.
Banaji, M. R., & Greenwald, A. G. (1995). Implicit gender stereotyping in judgements of fame. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 68, 181-198.
5.
Beall, A. E. (1993). A social constructionist view of gender. In A. E. Beall & R. J. Sternberg (Eds.), The psychology of gender (pp. 127-147). New York: Guilford.
6.
Bem, S. L. (1974). The measurement of psychological androgyny. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology, 42, 155-162.
7.
Bogoch, B. (1997). Gendered lawyering: Difference and dominance in lawyer-client interaction. Law and Society Review, 31, 677-712.
8.
Carli, L. L. (1990). Gender, language, and influence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 59, 941-951.
9.
Carli, L. L. (2001). Gender and social influence. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 725-739.
10.
Carothers, B. J., & Allen, J. B. (1999). Relationships of employment status, gender role, insult, and gender with use of influence tactics. Sex Roles, 41, 375-387.
11.
Coates, J. (1986). Women, men, and language: A sociolinguistic account of sex differences in language. London: Longman.
12.
Cohen, J. (1992). A power primer. Psychological Bulletin, 112, 155-159.
13.
Colley, A., & Todd, Z. (2002). Gender-linked differences in the style and content of emails to friends. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 21, 380-392.
14.
Crosby, F., & Nyquist, L. (1977). The female register: An empirical study of Lakoff’s hypotheses. Language in Society, 6, 519-535.
15.
Dasgupta, N., & Greenwald, A. G. (2001). On the malleability of automatic attitudes: Combating automatic prejudice with images of admired and disliked individuals. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 800-814.
16.
Drass, K. A. (1986). The effect of gender identity on conversation. Social Psychology Quarterly, 49, 294-301.
17.
Eckert, P., & McConnell-Ginet, S. (1992). Think practically and look locally: Language and gender as community-based practice. Annual Review of Anthropology, 21, 461-490.
18.
Fitzpatrick, M. A., & Dindia, K. (1986). Couples and other strangers: Talk time in spouse-stranger interaction. Communication Research, 13, 625-652.
19.
Fitzpatrick, M. A., Mulac, A., & Dindia, K. (1995). Gender-preferential language use in spouse and stranger interaction. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 14, 18-39.
20.
Giles, H., & Powesland, P. F. (1975). Speech style and evaluation. London: Academic.
21.
Goddard, A., & Patterson, L. M. (2000). Language and gender. London: Routledge.
22.
Gray, J. (1992). Men are from Mars, women are from Venus. New York: HarperCollins.
23.
Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. K. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The implicit association test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464-1480.
24.
Greenwald, A. G., Nosek, B. A., & Banaji, M. R. (2003). Understanding and using the Implicit Association Test: An improved scoring algorithm. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 85, 197-116.
25.
Hall, J. A. (1984). Nonverbal sex differences: Communication accuracy and expressive style. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press.
26.
Herring, S., Johnson, D., & DiBenedetto, T. (1995). “This discussion is going too far!” Male resistance to female participation on the Internet. In M. Bucholtz & K. Hall (Eds.), Gender articulated: Language and the socially constructed self (pp. 67-96). New York: Routledge.
27.
Hiatt, M. (1977). The way women write. New York: Teachers College Press.
28.
Holmes, J. (1988). Paying compliments: A sex-preferential politeness strategy. Journal of Pragmatics, 23, 445-465.
29.
Holmes, J. (1992). Women’s talk in public contexts. Discourse and Society, 3, 131-150.
30.
Holmes, J. (1995). Women, men and politeness. London: Longman.
31.
House, A., Dallinger, J., & Kilgallen, D. (1998). Androgyny and rhetorical sensitivity: The connection of gender and communication style. Communication Reports, 11, 11-20.
32.
Janssen, A., & Murachver, T. (2004). The role of gender in New Zealand literature: Comparisons across periods and styles of writing. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 23, 180-203.
33.
Jespersen, O. (1922). Language, its nature, development and origin. London: Allen & Unwin.
34.
Kim, M., & Aune, K. S. (1997). The effects of psychological gender orientations on the perceived salience of conversational constraints. Sex Roles, 37, 935-953.
35.
Koppel, M., Argamon, S., & Shimoni, A. R. (2003). Automatically categorizing written texts by author gender. Literacy and Linguistic Computing, 17, 401-412.
36.
Lakoff, R. (1990). Talking power: The politics of language. New York: Basic Books.
37.
Leaper, C., Anderson, K. J., & Sanders, P. (1998). Moderators of gender effects on parents’ talk to their children: A meta-analysis. Developmental Psychology, 34, 3-27.
38.
Leaper, C., & Gleason, J. B. (1996). The relationship of play activity and gender to parent and child sex-typed communication. International Journal of Behavioral Development, 19, 689-703.
39.
Levine, T., & Geldman-Caspar, Z. (1997). What can be learned from informal student writings in a science context?School Science and Mathematics, 97, 359-367.
40.
Marschall, A. (1997). Power and the pen: The gendered politics of peer positioning within the writing process. Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 20, 303-320.
41.
Mulac, A., Bradac, J. J., & Gibbons, P. (2001). Empirical support for the gender-as-culture hypothesis: An intercultural analysis of male/female language differences. Human Communication Research, 27, 121-152.
42.
Mulac, A., & Lundell, T. L. (1986). Linguistic contributors to the gender-linked language effect. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 5, 81-101.
43.
Mulac, A., & Lundell, T. L. (1994). Effects of gender-linked language differences in adults’ written discourse: Multivariate tests of language effects. Language and Communication, 14, 299-309.
44.
Mulac, A., Lundell, T. L., & Bradac, J. (1986). Male/female language differences and attributional consequences in a public speaking situation: Toward an explanation of the gender-linked language effect. Communication Monographs, 53, 115-129.
45.
Mulac, A., Seibold, D. R., & Farris, J. L. (2000). Female and male managers’ and professionals’ criticism giving: Differences in language use and effects. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 9, 389-415.
46.
Mulac, A., Studley, L. B., & Blau, S. (1990). The gender-linked language effect in primary and secondary students’ impromptu essays. Sex Roles, 23, 439-469.
47.
Mulac, A., Wiemann, J. M., Widenmann, S. J., & Gibson, T. W. (1988). Male/female language differences and effects in same-sex and mixed-sex dyads: The gender-linked language effect. Communication Monographs, 55, 315-335.
48.
Peterson, L. H. (1991). Gender and the autobiographical essay: Research perspectives, pedagogical practices. College Composition and Communication, 42, 170-183.
49.
Peterson, S. (2001). Gender identities and self-expression in classroom narrative writing. Language Arts, 78, 451-457.
50.
Robertson, K., & Murachver, T. (2003). Children’s speech accommodation to gendered language styles. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, 22, 321-333.
51.
Rubin, D. L., & Greene, K. (1992). Gender-typical style in written language. Research in the Teaching of English, 26, 7-40.
52.
Rudman, L. A., Ashmore, R. D., & Gary, M. L. (2001). “Unlearning” automatic biases: The malleability of implicit prejudice stereotypes. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 81, 856-868.
53.
Shepard, C. A., Giles, H., & LePoire, B. A. (2001). Communication accommodation theory. In W. P. Robinson, & H. Giles (Eds.), The new handbook of language and social psychology (pp. 33-56). New York: John Wiley.
54.
Simkins-Bullock, J. A., & Wildman, B. G. (1991). An investigation into the relationships between gender and language. Sex Roles, 24, 149-160.
55.
Tannen, D. (1990). You just don’t understand: Women and men in conversation. New York: William Morrow.
56.
Thomson, R., & Murachver, T. (2001). Predicting gender from electronic discourse. British Journal of Social Psychology, 40, 193-208.
57.
Thomson, R., Murachver, T., & Green, J. (2001). Where is the gender in gendered language?Psychological Science, 12, 171-175.
58.
Vaillancourt, T., & Leaper, C. (1997). Pacific Attitudes Toward Gender Scale. Retrieved February 1, 2002, from http:/people.ucsc.edu/%7Ecam/research/patg.html
59.
Wells, J. W. (1989). Sexual language use in different interpersonal contexts: A comparison of gender and sexual orientation. Archives of Sexual Behavior, 18, 127-143.
60.
West, C., & Zimmerman, D. H. (1987). Doing gender. Gender & Society, 1, 125-151.
61.
Zimmerman, T. S., Holm, K. E., & Haddock, S. A. (2001). A decade of advice for women and men in the best-selling self-help literature. Family Relations, 50, 122-133.
62.
Zimmerman, D. H., & West, C. (1975). Sex roles, interruptions and silences in conversations. In B. Thorne & N. Henley (Eds.), Language and sex: Differences and dominance (pp. 105-129). Rowley, MA: Newbury House.
