Research was once carried out by linguist Jennifer Coates on the aspect of gender and language. The research was solemnly focused on determining both male and female gender approach on the way they convey different messages, both in writing and also spoken, indiscriminate of whether the message at hand was formal or informal. Interestingly, it was found out that both men and women have a completely different approach to language, be it spoken and/or written. For instance, women are known to spend more of their time gossiping as compared to those of opposite sex. The research further reveals that women are polite and soft-spoken in the way they relay information by word of mouth. When it comes to writing, men were established to have a phenomenon of using abbreviations than complete sentences. These findings tell us a lot that exists between the two genders.
Why do men commonly use abbreviations compared to their female counterparts? This is a kind of a question that is so certain to emerge in any reader’s mind. Could it be due to laziness? Trying to save on time? In any case, men use more abbreviations compared to women.
Linguist Talbot brings to our attention that media plays a vital role more especially on how the gender and language is perceived by the society. It is important to note that other people’s ideologies may be shaped by the media. For instance, if an author (probably a man) is known to write some very interesting columns in a magazine, and is fond of using abbreviations such as ‘ASAP’ instead of ‘ As Soon As Possible’, his/her readers will at one instant be persuaded to follow suit by using the same same abbreviation(s) as well. Studies carried out reveals that majority of the male would most likely adopt the use of the abbreviated words compared to the female. This therefore brings about the gender identities. Other than magazine columns, another common place where the use of abbreviations is frequent is that of social-sites such as Facebook and adult dating sites. A good example of an adult dating site is the Korean Dating Site.
I became much interested in carrying out my research to proof that men are commonly associated with the use of abbreviations, by using the social sites such as the Facebook and the adult partner finder sites, since the sites allow the use of informal language, as long as there is an understanding amongst the users. To some extent, I also incorporated the use of sentence guided movies, whereby the writings appears on the screen as the actor talks; or rather take part in a conversation. I used a systematic approach to establish the frequency of the use of abbreviations in each gender. This however had somehow a different nature of setbacks. This is due to the fact that not all abbreviations are understood to have a similar meaning to all the intended users. The use of the social sites allows the users to interact freely and use the kind of a language they are comfortable with as long as there is communication going on. This therefore implies that the kind of results to be expected would have a high probability of being viable and deemed as a true portray of a person under study.
Methodology
In an attempt to get rid of chances of being biased, I conducted this study using forty (80) Korean citizens. Forty of the respondents were men while the other forty were female. Through their consent, I was able to observe their conversation for the past two days, considering both the adult dating sites and their facebook accounts. My major focus was to establish the frequency of the use of words such as ‘ok’ instead of ‘Okay’, ’ASAP’ instead of ‘As Soon As Possible’, ’Luv’ instead of ‘Love’. I took note each and every time the abbreviation was used, and denoted the user by their initials, ‘M’ for males and’ F’ for female. Also, I took note of the words that the writers chose to write in full instead of using abbreviations, and used the same denotations. It is important to note that the sentence structures entailed those of huge number of words (those exceeding ten words) and the use of abbreviations within those sentences. Also, sentences with few words (not exceeding ten) were also considered in the research, plus the probability of using abbreviations amongst them. This would be useful in determining the results in the long run, and proof whether it is true that men are fond of using abbreviations compared to women, or vice versa. The sole objective of this investigation was to catch the participants in their natural settings where there is no gender parity. The paper is meant to give a detailed analysis of the use of the abbreviated contents in words which individuals use when presenting themselves to their online network friends.
Results
Table 1
Frequency of long and short sentences in Male and Female profiles
Sentence structure
Gender
Total
Male
Female
Huge sentences( exceeding ten sentences)
Use of abbreviation in huge number of sentences
Few sentences(not exceeding ten sentences)
Use of abbreviation within few sentences
Total number of people
After grouping and categorizing the dating sites profiles sentence structure it was found out that the number of male profiles with abbreviations exceeded those of the female profiles. This is even after dividing the sentence structure into tow groups, those above ten sentences and those below ten sentences. This was to eliminate the likeliness that profiles with huge number of sentences would have more reasons to use abbreviation.
On overall there was 70% usage of abbreviations by the male group while female who used abbreviations were 45% of the total female. Thus the male dominated the usage of abbreviation in the profile with a 60.86% presentation of those who used abbreviation and the female with 39.14% presentation. 57.5% of male used long sentences while
The females who used long sentences were 30%. Males who used short sentences were 42.5%, while the females were 70%. Females that used abbreviation in short sentences were46.2% while the male were64.7%. Males who used abbreviations for the group that had huge number of sentences were 73.91%, while the females were 41.6%.
Discussion
In this section the results will be reviewed and discussed in accordance to the following perspectives
I. Why the male users as a group used huge sentences in their profile frequently than the female.
II. Why more male used abbreviation in their profiles.
III. How sentence structure, huge or few sentences, in a profile can influence use of abbreviations.
IV. The validity and use of abbreviations
Based on the above queries the hypothesis of this paper has been reproached in the four dimensions. From the research results it has been proved true that men to use abbreviations more than women. The four queries only helps to understand how the hypothesis was met and criteria used to review the hypothesis in the four dimensions.
The profiles descriptions used in the dating sites are meant to give the person browsing for a date an impression about a certain person. Mend tend to give out more detail because they would like to create a beautiful and maybe exaggerated impression of themselves in the profile. The only way to approach such is use of ambiguous language and with abbreviations, because they want to be viewed as powerful men and in the knowhow, education wise. The need for powerful first impression is found in the Korean society is mainly foundation of Confucianism and, therefore, the Korean women tend to respect their male counterparts in regard to what they are shown or how the male potray themselves. The Korean men’s autorities are also seen to be much stronger than those of women and tis has contributed greatly to the difference that is seen on the way they communicate with each other. These behaviors can also be seen in situations and phenomenon in terms of their discourse like in the movies, drama, or advertisements. From the studies and the analysis, it was found that the Korean women usually show their opinions more directly as compared to their male counterpart who often use directive forms to express their opinions. The Korean women also tend to use more Coarse expressions than their men who do avoid the use of such expressions. When the use of languages and fixation of various expressions by Korean men and women is analysed, it was realized that the Korean women tend to show some form of respect to their male counterparts and that the men’s authorities are much stronger than the female authorities.
The male is known to have a first hand when it comes to starting the fire of a relationship. That amounts to starting a chat, small talk or any other conversation with the female. The female, on the other hand, would not like to be exposed as loose by giving out all their information. That notion answers the first query or research discussion, on why the male users as a group used huge sentences in their profile frequently than the female. According to Lakoff (1975), the differential use of language needed to be explained in large part on the basis of women’s inferior social rank and the resulting social uncertainty. She further observed that women’s usage of terms to describe color, adjectives, question tags and weak exclamations had significant difference with the way they were used by men. She further added that women’s linguistic behavior is generally deficient when compared to that of men. This is because women are weak in expressing themselves, especially when it comes to dating issues. Women would want to stay at the back seat and give less information about themselves. For example, when one wants to describe where they work
Female: Am a doctor Lucy.
Male: Am DR. Zack M.F. I hold a PhD in M.E.D from N.P University.
In the above example it is clear that the male uses more words to describe themselves more than the female use. A female may feel shy giving out all her information, unlike the male who is ready and too willing. The male may do this in order to get networked socially or for business venture. The male have an upper hand when it comes to selling themselves business wise.
The second query and the most important is the question of why more male used abbreviations in the profile. The first reason to this is explained through query number one. This is because use of too many sentences to express themselves may necessitate the male to use abbreviations to shorten the sentences. The second concept is that the male is business minded and knows they are selling themselves in the site. Therefore, they would like to look organize and in the know how as much as possible. The profile description in the dating sites is written in the sense of one addressing millions of people through a speech. In such a speech there is no better way for men to express their speech writing skills than use of abbreviation. This is because the other option, use of emoticons, needs a lot of emotional attachment which is not available in men. Women have emotional attachment more than men, and thus men use of abbreviation is a replacement for the place they should rely on emotional attachment expressions such as emoticons. There are various factors that can be considered responsible for the various variations of speeches in men and women. Cultural factors play a very important role in influencing the difference in the way men and women speak. Women and men can be considered to be instituting to different sub-speech groups. The interactional patterns in the same sex and across the two sexes have also provided evidence for the difference that exists between the linguistic behavior of men and women.
The third and fourth query, how sentence structure, huge or few sentences, in a profile can influence use of abbreviations and the validity and use of abbreviations, can be used to explain the necessity of abbreviation. The question here is what would necessitate the use of abbreviations. Is it the use of huge number of sentences in the profile? Can abbreviation be used to save space in the profile? These questions are directly related as the answer to one of them affects the outcome of the other, for example if we say that the abbreviations were used to save space in the profile sentences then we are answering in the affirmative that huge number of sentences necessitates the use of abbreviations. Therefore, the affirmative of each of these questions is also the affirmative of the other. This confirms the position of male character speech manner dictates the usage of abbreviation more than women.
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