The Role of Iranian Students’ Gender in Using Email Writing Linguistic Features

Abstract

This study investigated the role of gender in Iranian students’ email writing features as an electronic software to enhance mechanics of email writing. The focal question was whether gender could play any significant role in the quantity and quality of the students’ email writing since it has been made new demands on language that leads to interesting variations in written language use. The design of study was descriptive regarding the evaluation mode of research procedure. Thus, one hundred MA students (57% female, 43% male) with the age ranging from 22 to 26 participated in this study. Two researcher-made instruments were utilized to collect the data. The first one was a-five point Likert self-report questionnaire on the participants’ age, gender, and years of experience using email as well as the amount and type of weekly email use. The next research instrument was the checklist extracted from Mulac, Bardac, and Gibbons’ (2001) linguistic features including interpersonal, textual, and contextual markers. Data were analyzed through percentage and Chi-square (X2) statistics. Results revealed that there was a significant difference between Iranian males and females in the use of email linguistic and stylistic features (p<0.05). Males’ messages had more textual errors. Moreover, it was found that females tended to use more informal and conversation contextual and interpersonal features than males.