Language use variation of L2 writers in weblog across different gender and genres

Dian Puspita,Suprayogi Suprayogi

doi:10.15294/rainbow.v10i2.48936

Abstract

Despite the growing interest in investigating learners’ corpora, surprisingly little research has been conducted on the language use of L2 writers and its relation to the gender and genres in writing. Therefore, this study was aimed to find out the variation of language use in different genres or gender in weblogs, one of popular modes of computer-mediated communication (CMC). The study was done by conducting multivariate analysis using R program to weblog entries from a sample balanced of author gender (female or male) and weblog genre (diary or filter). Taking linguistic preferential features by Argamon et al (2003) and Pennebaker (2011) as dependent variables, the effect of genres or gender toward the use of the features was analyzed. The results showed that significant effects of several features can be considered as predictors. Personal pronouns and hedges (I think, and I believe) were found as predictors for diary; while the indefinite articles a/an and numbers were found as predictors for filter. As for the different language use by gender, female predictors were personal pronoun, verbs, negation, certainty words, and hedges. Meanwhile, the indefinite articles a/an, numbers, and preposition were the predictors of male writers.

Highlights

Technology has emerged a new approach of communication called computer-mediated communication (CMC)
The results showing the relationship between genre and gender toward language use in weblog from logistic regression analysis using R are presented below
Two logistic regressions were used to analyze the effect of genre and gender toward the female-preferential features and male-preferential features

Summary

Introduction

Technology has emerged a new approach of communication called computer-mediated communication (CMC). CMC is a way of communication that takes place between human beings via the instrumentality of computers (Herring & Paolillo, 2006). The new means of communication resulted in new and rich characteristics of languages of varied users (Bodomo, 2010; Ess & Sudweeks, n.d.; Herring, 2002). One of sociolinguistic issues which is cherished and interesting to study from CMC is language and gender. A number of studies paying a considerable attention to the effect of gender stereotypes toward linguistic behavior, especially in text-based CMC, have been done by many scholars

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Methods

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Discussion

Conclusion