A Review Study About Gender Differences in Expressive Language: Spoken And Written Language Differences

Abstract

This review article aimed at explaining gender differences in expressive language that emerge beginning from the childhood from the biopsychosocial model of perspective. Afterwards, especially parental role on emotional component of expressive language was specified by giving example research studies. The most important finding was that parent and child gender may interact on child’s emotional expressiveness; while mothers tend to encourage their children to emotionally express themselves more than fathers, both mothers and fathers of girls motivate their children more to be emotionally assertive as compared to parents of boys. Parental socialization of expressive language and more specifically of emotional expressiveness results in some gender differences in both oral communication and written language among both adults and adolescents. Similar gender differences can also be observed in online communication. It seems that these differences relate both the level of linguistic effectiveness in general and mostly emotional component of the language, which is emotional expressiveness. Literature indicates that a substantial level of gender differences in language is related to socialization processes that children go through and such gender differences may put especially boys at a disadvantaged position in terms of social and emotional development. Future studies may further investigate gender differences in language and reasons behind such differences from both biological and social perspectives. Since Besides, some intervention programs for gender equality can be developed and applied in related contexts such as families and school environment.