Sunday, February 13, 2011

ASSIGNMENT 2 : COMPUTER MEDIATED COMMUNICATION


Group Members: Naheed Binti Azhari (0715986)
       Nik Izyani Bt Nik Nordin (0715784)
       Melati Binti Mohd Noor (0718098)
       Raihan Binti Mansor (0719576)
Section              : 1
Course Code      : ENGL 4740
Course Title       : Computer Applications in Language Studies
Instructor           : Dr. Rozina Bt. Abdul Ghani
Date Submitted: 15th February 2011
Kuliyyah          : IRKHS, IIUM


Introduction
According to Holmes (2008), it is suggested by a linguist called Lakoff that women always use certain linguistic features in their speech. Those features are lexical hedges, tag questions, rising intonation on declaratives, ‘empty’ adjectives, precise colour terms, intensifiers, ‘hypercorrect’ grammars, ‘superpolite’ forms, avoidance of strong swear words and emphatic stress. However, in this paper there will be exclusion on two features i.e.: precise colour terms and ‘hypercorrect’ grammars. This paper will look at how the other linguistic features that are mostly used by women in their speech is transferred into written form specifically while writing comments in one of the most famously used social networking systems (SNS) which is Facebook.  Will there be a similarity in the way it is used in speech form and written form and whether it is only used by female or the features are also found in speeches of males. Other than that, this paper also looks into which linguistic feature that stands out most out of the eight features. Samples of lines (English) written by participants (men and women) were taken randomly from a few profiles of Facebook accounts. The corpus was then analysed by looking at those linguistic features of women’s language suggested by Lakoff.
Literature Review
The advent of internet and social networking system has leading to the advancement of linguistics issues in relations to computational linguistics. Ruane (2007) in Weavers & Warriors? Gender And Online Identity In 1997 And 2007 V1.0 found the advent of internet has reshaped how gender is performed in electronic communication as gender of net users is not only recognized by their words alone (though physically invisible) but in detailed profiles, avatar images and usernames depict the gender of the users since there is no communication in human conditions without physically involve the body as the reference such as women use overtly feminine usernames compare to men (their masculine). Interestingly, the traditional of Lakoff’s theory of women’s language gradually changing with the using of social interactions on the internet in which study found women do not use more passive, cooperative and accommodating language perhaps due to the participant’s changing as well. Further, internet is no longer a boy’s club since recent research shows that woman is increasing in using internet.
Furthermore, the article on Changes in Use and Perception of Facebook by Lampe, Ellison and Steinfield (2008) looked at how the use of Facebook has changed over time. Users of Facebook in particular are amongst college attendees have been growing in other populations as well. According to the authors, the systems can undergo radical changes as user populations may change, and individual users' social context may evolve. Social computing sites can affect how members of a site use and perceive it. Reported uses of the site remain relatively constant over time, but the perceived audience for user profiles and attitudes about the site show differences over the study period. The results shows that pattern, perception and attitude sometimes change over time, even though rarely occur drastically. Lampe et.al assume that when changes occur, it may result from changes in the user's social context such as moving to or from college, and perhaps in response to major changes in features, such as the introduction of the News Feed on Facebook.
Lastly, Gosling, Gaddis and Vazire (2007) in Personality Impressions Based on Facebook Profiles found there is an issue of how viewing an individual’s profile can be claimed as the process of getting to know others and give the very first exposure. The study conducted by them examined on 133 Facebook profiles and compared them with how the targets see themselves and are seen by close friends. So, they were doing the research by comparing personality assessments made solely on the basis of Facebook profiles to a series of other personality’s measurement. They used the Ten Item Personality Inventory (TIPI) which measures the Big Five personality dimensions namely Extraversion, Agreeableness, Conscientiousness, Emotional Stability and Openness to Experience. As a result, it suggests that online social networking websites are in fact a relevant means of communicating personality. This is also quite relevant to what we are going to focus which is how the use of women’s language in Facebook can show someone’s credibility.


Findings


The usage of Women’s Language across genders in social network system:Facebook


Lakoff’s Women’s Language
Gender


Total
Men
Women
1.      Lexical hedges
2
12
14
2.      Tag question
1
2
3
3.      Rising intonation on declaratives
12
40
52
4.      ‘Empty’ adjectives
0
23
23
5.      Intensifiers
3
19
22
6.      ‘Superpolite’ forms
0
7
7
7.      Avoidance of strong swear words
3
7
10
8.      Emphatic stress
0
11
11
Total
21
121
142


Table 1






Discussion
       According to the findings, it is found that women’s language is used in written form the same as it is used in speech form. And some of them are used both by men and women but it is proved that women used all of the features in both forms.
     The most highly used linguistic feature of women’s language is rising intonation on declaratives with 12 times used by men and 40 times used by women. The examples are “I wanna get top’s black shirt!!” and “Haven’t have time to go yet. Uhh!!! I wanna buy Dae’s”. The used of exclamation marks repeatedly in those sentences indicates the rising intonation on declaratives used.
     The least used of linguistic feature of women’s language found in this paper is tag questions where it only appears three times which is once by men and twice by women. In addition, it shows that men did not use any of ‘empty’ adjectives, ‘superpolite’ forms and emphatic stress kind of women’s language in their writing.
Conclusion
     There should be reasons why women tend to use more rising intonation on declaratives rather than other kind of women’s language linguistic features as suggested by Lakoff. From the point of view of this paper, the main reason to why women tend to use rising intonation on declaratives in written form is probably because they want to convey the message as similar as it sounds in their speech as women are known to be categorized as ‘feelers’. They tend to put importance on emotions while conveying messages whether in verbal or written forms. Therefore, it is not surprised that the result of the used of rising intonation on declaratives by women outnumbered other linguistic features of women’s language suggested by Lakoff.


References
C. Lampe, N. B. Ellison & C. Steinfield. (2008). ACM DL LIBRARY: Malaysial Consortium International Islamic University Malaysia- Gombak (IIUM). Retrieved February 7, 2011, from Changes in use and perception of facebook: http://delivery.acm.org/10.1145/1470000/1460675/p721-lampe.pdf?key1=1460675&key2=6190100031&coll=DL&dl=ACM&ip=210.48.222.6&CFID=12200937&CFTOKEN=50748875
D. Ruane. (2007). UTS: Transforming Clutures eJournal. Retrieved February 11, 2011, from Weavers & Warriors? Gender and Online Identity in 1997 and 2007 V1.0: http://epress.lib.uts.edu.au/ojs/index.php/TfC/article/viewArticle/637
Holmes, J. (2008). An Introduction to Sociolinguistics (3rd Edition ed.). UK: Pearson Education Limited.
S. D. Gosling, S. Gaddis & S. Visire.  (2007, March 26-28). International Conference on Weblogs and Social Media. Retrieved February 8, 2007, from Personality Impressions Based on Facebook Profiles: http://www.icwsm.org/papers/3--Gosling-Gaddis-Vazire.pdf

2 comments:

  1. Salam.
    The topic of your analysis is very interesting. The SNS ie. FB that you analysed is also one of the most popular SNSs in Malaysia. The literature review is relevant and adequate. Your findings are actually rich and informative but they are presented very briefly without examples to support them. Otherwise a very good paper.

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  2. Wsalam. The lack of examples to support the findings was due to the fact that we were too much adhering to the guidelines for the paper of the assignment which was not to exceed 5 pages. However,it's good that we still managed to provide some. =) Thank You Dr.

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